Managing Service Quality

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify types of service failures in a double deviation scenario within the contexts of online retailing.

Design/methodology/approach – Critical incident technique; customer complaints to online third parties; and four-factor justice dimensionality.

Findings – Findings of this paper show distinctive sets of service failures in two separate service failure stages of double deviation (i.e. the initial service failure and recovery failure stages) within online retailing. Initial service failures mainly reflect cognitive issues generated from an online-specific store atmosphere and threaten distributive or procedural justice perceptions. In comparison with distributive and procedural justice perceptions still being dominant, service failures in the recovery failure stage consist of interpersonal and emotional issues generated from customer-company interactions, threatening interpersonal justice perceptions.

Originality/value – This paper contributes to broadening the current understanding of the dynamics of online customer dissatisfaction, by first identifying types of service failures that occur in both stages of online double deviation. This paper also introduces customer complaints to online third parties as a useful data resource for the study of service failure/recovery.