Case: Research Design

Recollecting her initial days at her job with the Caring Bank of Indore helped Aditi prepare her first
assignment for the Research Methodology course. She had defined the research problem she had
experienced and the research questions. This also helped her come up with relevant hypotheses and
in proposing the theoretical model to be examined. Following are the excerpts from her first
assignment:
Definitions of Important Terms
Service:
A service is a process consisting of a series of more or less intangible activities that normally,
but not necessarily always, take place in interactions between the customer and service
employees and/or physical resources or goods and/or systems of the service provider, which
are provided as solutions to customer problems.

Consumer Satisfaction:
Consumer satisfaction is the consumer’s response in a particular consumption experience to
the evaluation of the perceived discrepancy between prior expectations (or some other norm
of performance) and the actual performance as perceived after the consumption experience.

Service Failure:
A consumer’s perception that a service has failed to live up to the expectations..

Service Recovery:
A firms’ effort to restore consumer equity after a service has failed to live up to the
expectations.

Consumer Trust:
A party’s belief that the other exchange partner has motives beneficial for the relationship to
continue.

Consumers’ Repatronage Intentions:

The degree to which consumers intend to avail a firm’s services in the future.

Consumers’ Word-of-Mouth Intentions:

The degree to which consumers intend to informally communicate favorably or unfavorably
about a service.

Distributive Justice:
Complainants’ perceived fairness of the tangible outcomes of a service recovery.

Procedural Justice:
Complainants’ perceived fairness of the procedures employed in a service recovery.

Interactional Justice:
Complainants’ perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment received in a service recovery.

Research Problem:

What are the effects of complaining customers’ perceptions of fairness on customer satisfaction and
what are the effects of customer satisfaction on trust and behaviour?
Research Questions:

(I) What are the effects of the perceived service recovery justice (distributive,
procedural, and interactional) on complaining customers’ satisfaction?
(II) What are the effects of post-service recovery satisfaction on complaining customers’
trust and behavioral intentions (repatronage and negative word-of-mouth)?
(III) What are the effects of post-service recovery trust on complaining customers’
behavioral intentions (repatronage and negative word-of-mouth)?
Research Hypotheses:

H1 Consumer satisfaction from service recovery (RSAT) is higher (lower) when the
perceptions of distributive justice (DIJ) are higher (lower).

H2 Consumer satisfaction from service recovery (RSAT) is higher (lower) when the
perceptions of procedural justice (PRJ) are higher (lower).

H3 Consumer satisfaction from service recovery (RSAT) is higher (lower) when the
perceptions of interactional justice (INJ) are higher (lower).

H4 Repatronage intentions (RPAT) are higher (lower) when satisfaction from service
recovery (RSAT) is higher (lower).

H5 Negative word-of-mouth intentions (RWOM) are higher (lower) when satisfaction

from service recovery (RSAT) is lower (higher).

H6 Consumer trust (RTRT) towards the service provider is higher (lower) when the
satisfaction from service recovery (RSAT) is higher (lower).

H7 Repatronage intentions (RPAT) are higher (lower) when post service recovery trust
(RTRT) is higher (lower).

H8 Negative word-of-mouth intentions (RWOM) are higher (lower) when post service
recovery trust (RTRT) is lower (higher).

Proposed Theoretical Model:

Distributive + Satisfactio + Repatronag

Justice n e Intentions

+ (-)
Procedural
Justice +

+
+
Negative Word-
Interactiona (-)
of-Mouth
l Justice Trust Intentions
Aditi’s next assignment was to decide upon the appropriate research design to examine the research
hypotheses that she had proposed. Her primary consideration was to decide upon the data collection
methodology to be able to empirically test each of the hypotheses. After discussing with some fellow
researchers and her research methodology professor, she arrived at the alternative research designs
that could possibly facilitate her research work. Her choices were:

1. Get data from some bank(s) customer service centres.

This was the easiest option she could exercise. She knew that she might be able to get
customer complaint data from her previous employer. The bank frequently took feedback
from complaining customers after handling their complaints.

2. Get field data by contacting customers.

Such an exercise, although time-taking, might provide her with very rich data on customers’
experiences with service failures particular to this context, their complaints and resolutions,
and also their post-complaint behaviours.

3. Design an experiment.
Exercising this option meant that she had to treat complaint resolution as an experimental
stimulus. She would also have to follow certain rules of experimentation to ensure internal
validity of the study.

As usual, Aditi was confused. Her professor suggested her to think about the benefits and limitations
of alternative research designs and then select one that, according to her, would fit in with her
research requirements and available resources.