Building e-loyalty for e-retailers: role of justice perception and consumer forgiveness

This study aims at exploring e-loyalty in the e-commerce context by emphasising the mediating roles of customer forgiveness with respect to the perceived fairness of recovery efforts and customers' e-loyalty towards e-retailers. The data were collected from 380 respondents who experienced an online failure and had a recovery. This study demonstrates that the customers who experienced a service failure and received recovery evaluated functional justice (distributive, procedural and informational), and relational justice (interpersonal justice) in a different way. On the other hand, this research shows whilst emotional forgiveness mediates the relationship between functional justice and e-loyalty, forgiveness is affected by a religious commitment as well as fairness perception of customers. However, customers' empathy is not an indicator of forgiveness in e-commerce context. The results help e-commerce providers to develop effective recovery strategies and to empower the interactional role of virtual assistants to build a more empathetic relationship with the victims.