• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-36
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• 2012

Service failure is one of the major reasons for customer defection. As the business environment gets tougher and more competitive, a single service failure might bring about fatal consequences to a service provider or a firm. Sometimes a failure won't end up with an unsatisfied customer's simple complaining but with a wide-spread animosity against the service provider or the firm, leading to a threat to the firm's survival itself in the society. Therefore, we are in need of comprehensive understandings of complainants' attitudes and behaviors toward service failures and firm's recovery efforts. Even though a failure itself couldn't be fixed completely, marketers should repair the mind and heart of unsatisfied customers, which can be regarded as an successful recovery strategy in the end. As the outcome of recovery efforts exerted by service providers or firms, recovery of the relationship between customer and service provider need to put on the top in the recovery goal list. With these motivations, the study investigates how service failure and recovery makes the changes in dynamics of fundamental elements of customer-firm relationship, such as customer affection, customer trust and loyalty intention by comparing two time points, before the service failure and after the recovery, focusing on the effects of recovery satisfaction and the failure severity. We adopted La & Choi (2012)'s framework for development of the research model that was based on the previous research stream like Yim et al. (2008) and Thomson et al. (2005). The pivotal background theories of the model are mainly from relationship marketing and social relationships of social psychology. For example, Love, Emotional attachment, Intimacy, and Equity theories regarding human relationships were reviewed. As the results, when recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust that were established before the service failure are carried over to the future after the recovery. However, when recovery satisfaction is low, customer-firm relationship that had already established in the past are not carried over but broken up. Regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, once a failure occurs loyalty intention is not carried over to the future and the impact of customer trust on loyalty intention becomes stronger. Such changes imply that customers become more prudent and more risk-aversive than the time prior to service failure. The impact of severity of failure on customer affection and customer trust matters only when recovery satisfaction is low. When recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust become severity-proof. Interestingly, regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, failure severity has a significant negative influence on loyalty intention. Loyalty intention is the most fragile target when a service failure occurs no matter how severe the failure criticality is. Consequently, the ultimate goal of service recovery should be the restoration of customer-firm relationship and recovery of customer trust should be the primary objective to accomplish for a successful recovery performance. Especially when failure severity is high, service recovery should be perceived highly satisfied by the complainants because failure severity matters more when recovery satisfaction is low. Marketers can implement recovery strategies to enhance emotional appeals as well as fair treatments since the both impacts of affection and trust on loyalty intention are significant. In the case of high severity of failure, recovery efforts should be exerted to overreach customer expectation, designed to directly repair customer trust and elaborately designed in the focus of customer-firm communications during the interactional recovery process to affect customer trust rebuilding indirectly. Because it is a longer and harder way to rebuild customer-firm relationship for high severity cases, low recovery satisfaction cannot guarantee customer retention. To prevent customer defection due to service failure of high severity, unexpected rewards as a recovery will be likely to be useful since those will lead to customer delight or customer gratitude toward the service firm. Based on the results of analyses, theoretical and managerial implications are presented. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.

• Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-45
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• 2014

Mystic experience such as seeing an vision could be explained as experiencing elusive and mysterious unique existence in religious way. In depth psychology, which is based on unconsciousness like analytical psychology, this could be explained as a something that gives a meaning of life and purpose through discovering health and healing. The importance of primodial experience in depth psychology is that it can possibly discover the base of present acts. In Christian theology, symbolic mystery and truth of religious experience that appear in Christian tradition have interest on human situation. These two fields' approach methods are different, but both show common interest on unique experience which can be said properly as raw experience. Various visions appear in many parts of the Bible. Among many visions, the book of Zechariah, one of the 12 Prophets, describes rich and diverse 8 visions through chapter 1 to chapter 8. However, due to the Genre of revelation, it lacks historicity, and because of vagueness and symbolic meanings, its visions are hard to understand and interpret. Theologically, visions of Zechariah show communality of Israelites by reconstructing kingdom of Judah and church in a way of historical circumstances. Though, these visions could deliver the meaning of an ethnical aspect as reporting continuous conversation between the God and humans. Furthermore, it could mean a personal aspect of the Prophet Zechariah as reaching for a opportunity of new change. Moreover, those who read these visions could try to interpret the meanings of various images which represent meeting mysterious existences. Therefore, the Author would concentrate on the fact that 8 visions in the book of Zechariah, which has not been received much attention to neither Christians nor non-believers, develop in chiastic structure (stylistic contrast), so that tries to interpret the first, second, seventh, and the eighth visions in analytic psychology way. In visions of Zechariah, excepting the 4th vision which probably was inserted later, rest of 7 visions each shows the stage of the hours of darkness. 1st to 3rd visions represent evening, 5th vision represents deep in the night, and 6th to 8th visions represent dawn to morning. Moreover, since structure of visions arranged in chiastic way, horse appears in 1st and 8th vision, measuring rope and measure tools are used as main motif in 2nd and 7th vision. However, same motifs could have different symbolic meanings and roles as visions are formed in different situations and conditions. In the first vision, angels who ride horses look around the world and report it is calm and peaceful. Concerning the political situation back in the day, the world being calm and peaceful in the beginning of evening means that it is not ready to change to a whole new world. Psychologically, if there is no readiness to adopt new world, it means being hopeless. It is sending you a message to get out of those kinds of situation. Moreover, appearance of four angels who rode red, brown, and white horses to a myrtus tree in the valley means that it is time for individuation and it is right and good timing for changing. In second vision, you will be able to see that Israelites had long years being caught in the shadows by foreign country, and long years succumbed by the strength of four horns, which shows the progress of renewing strength and being oneness with oneself from overwhelmed situation by paternity. In seventh vision, meaning of two women bringing the godness of the sky, who were locked up in a rice basket, back to the temple in Babylon is going towards in a level of Self-actualization by separating one's ego captured excessively by matherhood and putting back to a place where it was before. In eighth vision, chariots pulled by horses are scattered far and wide, and horses which went to north had rest in the land of North. After horses and chariots are seen between two mountains of bronze with the image of Self and anima/animus. These images can be explained as the changing progress are almost completed and the God and human, in other words Self and ego are being united and is now time for rest. All of 8 visions contains the conversation between angel and Zechariah who willing to know the meaning of visions. Zechariah asks the angel actively about the meaning of visions because of his wish for Israelites to return home and rebuild church. Conversation among the God, Zechariah, who asks questions until he knows everything, an Angel, who gives answer to given questions, is conversation between ego and anima/animus. Eventually, it is a conversation between Self and ego.