Effect of Recovery Efforts on Consumer Trust and Loyalty in E-Tail: A Contingency Model

Customer complaints are endemic in e-tail. How they are handled by the seller is vital to its recovery from the problem and its continuing success. Investigation of the moderating roles of the contingency variables of familiarity, quality of prior experiences, and failure types extends the theoretical framework of retailer recovery efforts to the on-line purchasing environment. Based on survey data from 3,206 on-line consumers, the study makes several significant findings: (1) the interactional aspects of an e-tailer's recovery efforts improve consumer perceptions of the recovery process; (2) recovery efforts are essential for building and maintaining long-lasting relationships with customers but do not affect their overall view of e-commerce; (3) a history of positive e-commerce experience will diminish the negative impact on consumer trust of a new purchasing experience with unsatisfactory complaint handling; (4) familiarity has a positive effect on the relationship between trust and loyalty and diminishes the effect on trust of dis/satisfaction with complaint handling; and (5) conditional to the type of failure, dimensions of perceived fairness have variable impacts on consumer satisfaction with complaint handling.