The recovery paradox: The effect of recovery performance and service failure harm on post-recovery customer satisfaction

Service failures differ in the harm they cause the consumer (McCollough, Berry, and Yadav 2000; Smith and Bolton 1998). Research suggests that the greater the harm caused by the service failure the greater the recovery performance necessary to convert the customers' dissatisfaction into satisfaction (McCollough, Berry, and Yadav 2000; Smith and Bolton 1998; Sundaram, Jurowski, and Webster 1997) and the more difficult it should be for the service provider to achieve fall recovery. This research investigates the recovery paradox (McCollough, Berry, and Yadav 2000; McCollough and Bharadwaj 1992; Smith and Bolton 1998), or the proposition that superior recovery can leave a customer as satisfied, if not more satisfied, than if nothing had gone wrong by investigating the post-recovery satisfaction of consumers following service failures that cause differing degrees of harm and recoveries of varying degrees of superiority.