Customer satisfaction antecedents within service recovery context : Evidences from “Big 4” banks in China

Purpose – The intense queuing phenomenon in Chinese banks has been a critical issue for bank managers for a long time, especially in big cities, which increases the possibility of customer dissatisfaction. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of post‐recovery satisfaction within China's “Big 4” commercial banks. By tracking the nature of service failures and examining the overall performance of the service recovery process in the Chinese banking industry, the authors aim to investigate how customer expectations, their perception of recovery justice and recovery quality affect customer satisfaction under service recovery context. Design/methodology/approach – Based on disconfirmation paradigm and fairness theory, a conceptual model with 12 hypotheses was derived for the banking sector. With reference to the instruments RECOVSAT and SERVQUAL scale, a questionnaire was developed and sent to a geographically stratified, random sample of 300 participants in Changsha City. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for reliability/validity testing, and the hypothesised relationships among the latent constructs were estimated using structural equation modelling. Findings – Consistent with most previous researches, the empirical results supported the idea that recovery expectation negatively influenced the recovery quality perceptions, expectancy disconfirmation and satisfaction with service recovery. Other findings included that both positive disconfirmation and recovery quality perceptions had positive effect on recovery satisfaction. However, unlike other studies relating to service justice, interactional justice was found to have no significant effect on quality perception or satisfaction with recovery, and this was attributed to customer's higher tolerance zone under the particular competition environment in China. Originality/value – By exploring the antecedents of post‐recovery satisfaction within China's “Big 4” commercial banks, the study provided valuable findings in relation to participants' perceptions on recovery justice and quality. It highlighted the effect of characteristics of Chinese customers on post‐recovery satisfaction, and the importance of good understanding of customer expectation and employee empowerment in the banking industry.