Pre‐recovery and post‐recovery emotions in the service context: a preliminary study

Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze the mediating role of pre‐recovery emotions on the relationship between severity of service failure and post‐recovery positive and negative emotions and to examine the mediating role of justice perceptions on the interaction between pre‐recovery and post‐recovery emotions. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative data were collected in the form of questionnaire which was applied to 238 respondents. The respondents include the consumers who experienced a service failure followed by a service recovery. In this study, post‐recovery positive and negative emotions were dependent variables whereas severity of service failure, pre‐recovery emotions and three dimensions of justice perceptions were the other main variables. In line with this purpose, eight hypotheses aiming to clarify the relations among these variables were tested using correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. Findings The results suggest that post‐recovery negative emotions were affected by pre‐recovery emotions with the mediating role of distributive justice perceptions. The findings of this research reveal that dealing successfully with pre‐recovery emotions and integrating these emotions with favorable distributive justice perceptions have critical importance in mitigating the post‐recovery negative emotions. Practical implications During service recovery, service providers must concentrate on positive and negative emotions concurrently. Besides, managers also have to take pre‐recovery emotions into consideration and exert a special effort on distributive justice in order to decrease the intensity of post‐recovery negative emotions. Selection of recovery types, the effects of these on distributive justice perception and responding promptly to prevent pre‐recovery negative emotions are critically important for service providers. Originality/Value This study differs by focusing on pre‐recovery and post‐recovery emotions within a holistic view, which recommends the service providers an alternative perspective for being more proactive.