Perceived justice and consumer post service failure behaviour: the moderating role of failure severity, attachment styles, and brand authenticity

This study aims to investigate the role of failure severity, attachment styles and brand authenticity within the failure and recovery framework, which is widely recognised as fundamental in the body of research for service failure and recovery. Failure severity is a critical factor influencing consumers’ perceived justice of recovery efforts and corresponding satisfaction. However, most studies tend to address failure severity at one level even though it can be of low and high levels, which consequently impacts recovery satisfaction and behavioural responses differently. Past studies have also found mixed findings on the impact that recovery satisfaction can have on positive behavioural responses, and the extant literature indicates that personality traits and brand-related factors can better explain consumer behaviours. This study firstly examines the direct and indirect relationship between perceived justice and behavioural responses and the impact of failure severity on the relationship between perceived justice and consumers’ recovery satisfaction through the tenets of justice theory and regulatory focus theory. Secondly, this study tests the moderating role of attachment styles and brand authenticity on the relationship between recovery satisfaction and behavioural responses based on the proponents of attachment theory and semiotics theory respectively. The inclusion of failure severity, attachment styles, and brand authenticity offers an integrated framework of service failure and recovery. This study applies an experimental design and employs scenario-based survey questionnaires are used to collect responses from Malaysian mobile phone users. Three scenario-based experimental studies are conducted to examine the research objectives. Constructs are tested for their reliability and validity through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and scale reliabilities. The dataset is subjected to manipulation checks and tested for main and interaction effects of the independent and control variables on the dependent variables through multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). Mediation and moderated mediation analyses are conducted by using Hayes’ PROCESS macro. The results of analyses indicate that failure severity moderates the relationship between perceived justice of recovery efforts and recovery satisfaction when failure severity is high. It also finds that highly anxious consumers, rather than lowly anxious consumers, will continue to repurchase when they are satisfied with the recovery efforts. The brand-related construct of brand authenticity is found to display a moderating role, but instead of promoting it reduces the positive behavioural responses. The findings of this study advance theoretical understanding by highlighting the need to consider service failure severity, individual and brand-related factors to understand the complex and dynamic behaviour of consumers in the context of service failure and recovery. Furthermore, the theories support and reflect the robustness of the framework. Managers, on the other hand, can gain an understanding of how failure severity of low and high levels influences recovery satisfaction. The understanding would allow managers to allocate resources effectively in their service recovery design and implementation. Managers stand to gain by segmenting consumers by their attachment styles as it can impact behaviours. In addition, the insight on consumers’ perception of a brand’s authenticity and how it impacts behaviours will lead managers to consider building and promoting consumers’ perception of their brand authenticity according to how consumers evaluate and perceive authenticity. This study contributes from a methodological perspective by testing the nomological validity of constructs through the three scenario-based experimental studies and the systematic presentation of the findings of the hypotheses tested using Hayes’ PROCESS macro