Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Commerce - Department of Business Administration

The high degree of personal interactions during service provision makes unfavourable service incidents almost inevitable. To overcome the negative impacts of service failures, effective and prompt service recovery is mandatory. The current research aims to identify an additional source for service recovery. Since literature highlighted the fruitful impact of using customers as partial employees, the current research examines the impact of inter-customer recovery (customer-to-customer interactions in service recovery), compared to services providers{u2019} recovery efforts (apology and compensation) on customers{u2019} satisfaction and behavioural intentions (forgiveness, consumers{u2019} advocacy, propensity to complain, word of mouth and loyalty). Moreover, since literature asserted the contingent impact of service failure attribution and severity on the relationship between recovery efforts and customers{u2019} responses, the direct and the indirect impacts of service failures{u2019} attributions and severity are examined as well.To achieve the research objectives, first, exploratory research was conducted to provide better understanding of the research problem. Then, experimental research approach was adopted to test the formulated hypotheses. Airlines context was chosen to apply the research. Amazon mechanical truck was used for data collection. Multivariate analysis of variance technique and process analysis were used for data analysis. The research results show that service provider recovery, compared to inter-customer recovery, has stronger impact on customers{u2019} satisfaction and behavioural intentions, regardless of the cause and the severity of the failure. However, the customer has better perception of the service provider{u2019}s recovery when the failure is attributed to other customers. The study provides useful insights for both researchers and practitioners for the impact of customers{u2019} engagement behaviours on customers{u2019} satisfaction and behavioural intentions in case of services{u2019} failures and recovery

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