An examination of the nature of service recovery within the airline industry and its impact on customer loyalty

Abstract

Expansion of the airline market has resulted in an increase of servicefailures with a 30% rise in airline complaints in 2015 (Park and Park 2016;Eilliott 2016). Airlines across the globe have been facing severecompetition from low-cost carriers (Wise Guy Reports 2017) and thereforeretaining customer loyalty after service failures has never been morecritical in the sector (Johan et al. 2014). There has been limited discussionabout how service recovery can be used to rebuild loyalty and improvecustomer retention in the airline context (Park and Park 2016). This paperaims to address the issue of understanding and implementing servicerecovery strategies by synthesizing theoretical and empirical knowledgeon service recovery into a clear conceptual framework. The paperexamines the antecedents of successful service recovery and customerloyalty and applies the proposed framework to the airline