Pre-recovery emotions and satisfaction: A moderated mediation model of service recovery and reputation in the banking sector

This study examines the mediating role of service recovery judgments between pre-recovery emotions and post-recovery satisfaction, and investigates the role of firm reputation in this mediation context. Using a moderated mediation framework, the authors test the model with data from 366 customers who experienced a banking service failure and complained to a third party. The results show that distributive, procedural, and interactional justice dimensions mediate the relationship between pre-recovery emotions and satisfaction. Firm reputation moderates the relationship between emotions and satisfaction via distributive and interactional justice, but not via procedural justice. This study provides evidence for the notion that pre-recovery emotion is an antecedent of service recovery process and firm reputation plays an essential role in this process.