A study on emotions and complaining behaviour following service failure at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad

Airport organization may have customer satisfaction as a major goal, not all airport experiences are satisfactory from customer perspective. Service failures can and do occur. Service failure-a breakdown in the delivery of a service-can result from a wide range of sources. Airport may be particularly susceptible to the problem of service failure because of the number of different service providers involved and fact that it is an important and heavily people-based service. This study examines the role of customer emotions in the context of service failure and recovery encounters. It investigates how customers’ emotional responses to service failures influence their satisfaction judgments after accounting for cognitive antecedents of satisfaction. The study also considers how customers’ emotional responses to service failures influence how they evaluate an organization's recovery efforts. The results suggest that customers’ emotional responses to service failures will influence their recovery effort evaluations and satisfaction judgments in some circumstances and that the effects of emotion vary across industry settings. This study identifies the types of efforts that are most effective in helping customers “recover” from the negative emotions caused by service failures.