Perceived justice and customer loyalty in the retail banking sector in the UAE Abstract In this study, the

impacts of the three dimensions of justice (distributive, interactional, and procedural) on customers post-complaint behaviour (ie exit vs loyalty) of both conventional and Islamic banks in the UAE were investigated. The results showed that interactional justice(eg courtesy) and distributive justice (eg refund) play predominant roles, since they impact both positive and negative emotions and the

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exit-loyalty behaviour of customers regardless of the type of bank

(conventional or Islamic). The results show, however, that procedural justice(eg timeliness) has no impact on either negative or positive emotions and the exit-loyalty behaviour - ()

of either conventional bank customers or Islamic bank customers. The limitations of this study are also discussed at the end. CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND The direct impacts of perceived justice on loyalty The theme of justice has preoccupied writers and philosophers throughout the ages. The systematic study of fair process in social settings and organisations, however, can be traced back recently to the 1960s. As reported by Greenberg, research in this 40-year period has shown that justice in organisational settings can be depicted as a three-dimensional phenomenon: fairness of the outcomes (distributive justice), fairness of the process used by decision makers to reach and allocate those outcomes (procedural justice), and fairness in the quality of the treatment that the employee receives from decision makers (interactional justice). () () () Greenberg 40 1960

Early research on justice in organisations 1960 that emerged in the 1960s focused on distributive justice, in the mid-1970s on procedural justice, and in the 1990s, justice research shifted its focus again and emphasised interactional justice. 90 () 70

In a customer complaint context, distributive justice refers to resource allocation and the outcome of exchange, for example, refund rebate. Procedural

justice is about procedures used to reach outcomes of an exchange, for example, refund policies, and the organisation level involved in the process, time to obtain the refund (timing). The concept of timing is identified as the central attribute of procedural justice in a customer complaint context. Hence, procedural justice is operationalised in terms of timing in this study. Interactional justice can be viewed as the process of communication, for example courtesy, politeness, and language. In the field of services marketing, a theoretical understanding of how

different facets of justice affect consumers post- complaint behaviour has been discussed in several studies. For instance, Smith et al. showed that consumers assign a higher fairness value to both distributive and procedural justice (ie compensation and quick

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response) when they experience outcome failures. When they experience process failures, however, the marginal return on () interactive justice (ie apology or proactive response) is higher. Moreover, Blodgett et al. found that the three facets of justice impacted significantly on subjects repatronage intentions or on their negative word-of-mouth intentions. Similarly, Chebat and Witold studied the effect of perceived justice on loyalty as a post-complaint behaviour in service recovery situations. They found that perceived justice has a direct impact on loyalty. Therefore, in the present study, the following relationships are hypothesised: Chebat Witold Blodgett

H1: There is a direct effect of distributive justice on customers exit-loyalty behaviour. H2: There is a direct effect of interact ional justice on customers exit-loyalty behaviour. H3: There is a direct effect of procedural justice on customers exit-loyalty behaviour.

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