Online Service Recovery: Exploring the Effects of Justice Theory on Managerial Responses to Negative Online Reviews

Abstract

This conceptual paper intends to a) analyse the effects of distributive, interactional and procedural justice on mana-gerial responses to negative online reviews to new guest hotel choice, b) determine which dimension of justice theory has the largest impact on new guests’ hotel choice, and c) suggest the elements that a managerial response to an nega-tive online review needs to contain in order to obtain better effects for new potential guests. This conceptual paper proposes an experimental design with three conditions, in order to shed light on the elements -based on justice theory- that a managerial response should contain, to mitigate the effects of a negative online review. Expected results are likely to support the four propositions suggesting that the three dimensions of justice theory have a positive effect on purchase intention. However, negative online reviews that are addressed by management who offer some kind of physical compensation (distributive justice) are expected to generate greater purchase intentions from new poten-tial guests that are looking for online information to assist them in their decisions regarding a trip. Insights from this research might help managers to design specific answer policies to negative online reviews. It is recommended that hotel managers should fully understand the different justice dimensions, specifically, the distributive component. Hotels can implement better compensation strategies that can be offered by managers when they reply to a negative online review. This conceptual paper addresses the online service recovery efforts and how they affect new potential customers -unrelated to the service failure- indirectly on an online rating website. Specifically, results from the propo-sed study are expected to build on previous research on service recovery by considering the impacts of justice theory of traditional marketing strategies for complaint handling in an online marketing context.