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Factors influencing consumer Factors

influencing
forgiveness: a systematic literature consumer
forgiveness
review and directions
for future research 601
Yungchul Kim, Ting Hin Ho, Lay Peng Tan and Riza Casidy Received 25 August 2022
Revised 24 November 2022
Department of Marketing, Macquarie Business School, North Ryde, Australia 22 February 2023
24 March 2023
Accepted 24 March 2023
Abstract
Purpose – Consumer forgiveness is an important concept in service failure and recovery research. To advance
knowledge and develop future research agenda in this domain, this paper provides a systematic review of the
literature on factors influencing consumer forgiveness while adopting the customer journey perspective.
Design/methodology/approach – Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-
Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, a systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted of 102 peer-reviewed journal
articles, on factors influencing consumer forgiveness, published between January 2000 and December 2020.
Findings – The authors’ analysis offers a detailed account of the factors influencing consumer forgiveness
across the three stages of the service journey: pre-transgression, transgression and recovery. From the review,
the authors identified significant gaps relating to the interactions between the relevant factors influencing
forgiveness throughout the various stages of the consumer service journey. Based on the findings, the authors
offer several research questions to help managers optimize customer forgiveness following a service failure
throughout each stage of consumer service journey.
Originality/value – The authors’ review synthesizes the literature on factors contributing to consumer
forgiveness and integrates these factors into the customer service journey. The authors’ findings inform
directions for future research and provide insights regarding the measures that service providers should take
to understand and encourage consumer forgiveness.
Keywords Consumer forgiveness, Customer service journey, Service failure, Service recovery,
Systematic literature review
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
In April 2017, a United Airlines passenger was forcibly removed from a plane as the airline
had overbooked (Gunter, 2017). While the airline apologized for the incident and offered
compensation to all passengers on the flight (Smith and Marsh, 2017), a consumer poll
following the incident found that close to 80% of prospective customers who knew about the
incident would avoid flying with United Airlines (Quealy, 2017). This incident shows the
damage a service transgression can do to a firm, such that prospective customers refuse to
forgive the company even after service recovery strategies were implemented. This raises
two questions: what makes customers forgive a firm in the event of a service transgression
and are service recovery strategies sufficient to drive forgiveness? In fact, “earning’ customer
forgiveness is not an easy task. Yet, obtaining forgiveness is an important objective of all
firms given its significance in influencing important outcomes such as customer satisfaction
(Newton et al., 2018), revisit intentions (Tsarenko and Tojib, 2015), word-of-mouth behavior
(WOM) (Harrison-Walker, 2019a) and consumer well-being (Tsarenko et al., 2019).

Author contribution statement: Kim: Methodology, Data curation, Investigation, Analysis, Journal of Service Theory and
Conceptualisation and Writing - original drafts. Ho: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing - Practice
Vol. 33 No. 5, 2023
Substantive Review and Editing, Visualization. Tan: Corresponding Author, Validation, Writing - pp. 601-628
Review and Editing, Supervision. Casidy: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - Review and © Emerald Publishing Limited
2055-6225
Editing, Supervision. DOI 10.1108/JSTP-08-2022-0187
JSTP Consumer forgiveness is an important research topic that has attracted increasing interest
33,5 from service researchers and practitioners alike. A quick search of prominent service
marketing journals from 2010–2020 (e.g. Journal of Service Research, Journal of Services
Marketing and Journal of Service Theory and Practice) using the keyword “forgiveness”
returned approximately 120 papers, a notable increase compared to the nine papers published
a decade earlier. Although consumer forgiveness has gained some traction in recent years,
researchers have recognized research gaps relating to the factors that influence consumers’
602 decision (not) to forgive (Finsterwalder et al., 2017; Tsarenko et al., 2019). While the basic idea
of “forgiving someone” is familiar to most people, a unified conceptualization of consumer
forgiveness is still lacking in the services marketing literature. For instance, consumer
forgiveness is conceptualized as a response to a service transgression (Tsarenko and Tojib,
2011; Zourrig et al., 2009b) or the outcome of a service recovery effort (Harrison-Walker,
2019a), or both (Xie and Peng, 2009). We argue that it could be misleading to conceptualize
forgiveness only as one of the outcomes of service transgressions. While the psychological
process of forgiveness is triggered by a service transgression (Harrison-Walker, 2019a),
factors influencing consumer forgiveness exist throughout various stages of service
experience, with some even pre-dating the service encounter itself.
In fact, researchers have adopted the “journey” perspective in recent years to better
understand the dynamic nature of the service experience. The concept of a customer journey
is related to the notion that the holistic idea of service experience should be conceptualized
and understood as a connected process or a sequence of events, rather than one or multiple
single service encounters. While the term “journey” is commonly used in discussions of
service experience, comprehensive investigations of their dynamic and multi-stage nature are
still limited, with very few exceptions (e.g. Følstad and Kvale, 2018; Khamitov et al., 2020;
Tueanrat et al., 2021; Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2019). In fact, in the literature, Khamitov et al.‘s
(2020) and Van Vaerenbergh et al.’s (2019) works appear to be the only attempts to synthesize
research on service failure and the recovery journey.
The objectives of this study are to provide a synthesized overview of the current state of
knowledge relating to factors influencing consumer forgiveness, highlight gaps in the body of
research and develop future research directions on consumer forgiveness. As such, we conduct
a systematic literature review (SLR) as it is a relevant method to address our research objectives
(Hulland and Houston, 2020). In light of the emerging conceptualization of customer journey
and our theorization that consumer forgiveness should be understood as being more than an
outcome of service transgression, this research adopts the “journey” perspective in
synthesizing the literature and identifies factors influencing forgiveness across different
stages of a customer’s service journey. This work paves the way for future research and theory
development in service research and offers practical insights to service organizations.

Consumer forgiveness: definitions and conceputalizations

Service failures can elicit a diverse range of customer responses, one of which is forgiveness.
However, “forgiveness as a possible outcome of service transgressions receives far less
attention than other outcomes” (Tsarenko et al., 2019, p. 141). Consumer forgiveness is defined
as “consumers’ willingness to give up retaliation, alienation, and other destructive behaviors,
and to respond in constructive ways after an organizational violation of trust and the related
recovery efforts” (Xie and Peng, 2009, p. 578). Scholars have conceptualized the construct of
forgiveness in terms of various aspects including the emotional (e.g. Worthington and
Scherer, 2004; Shin et al., 2018) and the cognitive (Zourrig et al., 2009a) and as a motivational
process (e.g. McCullough, 2001; Tsarenko et al., 2019; Harrison-Walker, 2019a). Although
there is no agreement about which aspects are most important (Worthington and Scherer,
2004, p. 386), most agree that forgiveness is a multidimensional construct (Babin et al., 2020).
 Forgiveness is related to the repair of a violation of trust (Finsterwalder et al., 2017; Exline Factors
et al., 2004) and it is widely agreed that forgiveness involves a process of overcoming negative influencing
emotions (Tsarenko et al., 2019; Worthington and Scherer, 2004; Shin et al., 2018) following an
interpersonal offense. The process of overcoming one’s negative emotions is intrapersonal,
consumer
because forgiveness motivates one to take behavioral actions to restore an impaired forgiveness
relationship with the offender (Babin et al., 2020, p. 2). As Finsterwalder et al. (2017) posit, “To
forgive someone can refer either to the cessation of resentful feelings towards somebody’s
misbehavior or to a pro-social motivation (action that is less likely to harm and more likely to 603
benefit) towards the transgressor” (p.1208). Relevant outcomes of consumer forgiveness in
service settings could include extending acts of goodwill to the offender (Shin et al., 2018),
reconciliation with the offender (Harrison-Walker, 2019b; Babin et al., 2020), revisitation of
post-service failure (Tsarenko and Tojib, 2015) or reduced negative word-of-mouth (Harrison-
Walker, 2019a). Conversely, consumers’ lack of forgiveness may lead to negative outcomes
such as negative word-of-mouth or boycotting of a service provider (Gregoire et al., 2018).
Table 1 highlights some of the main perspectives of the conceptualization and
operationalizations of consumer forgiveness. It is worth noting that, although various
dimensions of forgiveness perform differently in conflict resolution situations (Babin et al.,
2020), they are interconnected with one another (Finsterwalder et al., 2017). For example,
emotional forgiveness was found to influence the intention to forgive the service provider (Babin
et al., 2020). Within the context of celebrity transgression, consumer’s affective, cognitive and
motivational states of forgiveness directly influence their judgment and justification process
which in turn determines behavioral outcomes (Finsterwalder et al., 2017). Next, we provide an
overview of our SLR method based on the conceptualization of forgiveness discussed above.

Method
There are various types of articles offering a SLR: framework-based, hybrid, conceptual and
bibliometric (e.g. Paul and Criado, 2020; Subramony et al., 2021). In this paper, we adopt a
“conceptual’ SLR type in which the factors influencing consumer forgiveness in customer
service journey will be outlined. Further, consistent with recent published literature review
works in the service literature (e.g. Riedel et al., 2021; Pasca et al., 2021), we conducted the SLR
according to the PRISMA protocol (Moher et al., 2015).
Our review process commenced with the development of a search strategy to identify
relevant articles; this included selecting appropriate search terms and databases and
establishing the inclusion and exclusion criteria (Snyder, 2019). The literature search was
conducted using keywords [(forgiv* OR revenge* OR reconciliat*) AND (customer OR
consumer OR consumption)]. These keywords were chosen because consumer forgiveness
includes the notion of revenge (i.e. lack of forgiveness) and reconciliation (i.e. forgiveness)
(Gregoire et al., 2010; Tsarenko and Tojib, 2012). Moreover, we expected that by adding those
keywords, the search would yield articles that indirectly explored consumer forgiveness. For
example, Gregoire et al. (2009) did not directly measure forgiveness, but included measures of
consumer revenge and avoidance to “reflect a lack of forgiveness toward firms”. Consistent
with prior research (e.g. Elg et al., 2020; Furrer et al., 2020), we limited our main source of
evidence to peer-reviewed journal papers, excluding books, theses, editorials, brief
commentaries and practitioner publications. Several online databases were searched:
ProQuest, EBSCOHost, Scopus, Web of Science and JSTOR. Given the increasing interest in
forgiveness research in recent years, and in keeping with other published SLRs (e.g. Montoro-
Pons et al., 2021; Pomirleanu et al., 2013), we searched for articles published over the past
two decades (i.e. between January 2000 and December 2020). The year 2000 was chosen as the
starting point as it was the start of a new decade where there was a notable increase in
forgiveness-related articles published in consumer and marketing journals.
JSTP Conceptualization in the Operationalization
33,5 Orientation Definitions service context examples

Motivational “The set of motivational
changes whereby one
becomes (a) decreasingly
motivated to retaliate
604 against an offending
relationship partner, (b)
decreasingly motivated to
maintain estrangement from
the offender, and (c)
increasingly motivated by
conciliation and goodwill for
the offender, despite the
offender’s hurtful actions”
(McCullough et al., 1997, p.
321-2)
Cognitive “Cognitive processes occur
within the mind of the
forgiver (intrapersonal) in
judging and justifying
rational factors such as self-
interest, self-protection and
value system in relation to
self” (Finsterwalder et al.,
2017)
Affective “An emotional juxtaposition
of positive emotions (i.e.
empathy, sympathy,
compassion, or love) against
the negative emotions of
unforgiveness”
(Worthington and Scherer,
2004, p. 385)
“A process that allows one to
let go of and reduce negative
Table 1. emotions such as anger and
Definitions, resentment and no longer
conceptualizations and hold a grudge toward the
operationalization of perpetrator” (Babin et al.,
consumer forgiveness 2020, p. 2)
“A motivational process of
relinquishing vengeful
thoughts and feelings toward
providers in the aftermath of
service transgressions”
(Tsarenko et al., 2019, p. 139)
The extent to which customers
are willing to abandon
negative attitudes toward the
service provider after a service
failure (Zourrig et al., 2009b)
The extent to which consumers
are willing to relinquish
negative emotions following a
service failure (Shin et al., 2018)
e.g. letting go of motives of
revenge (Gregoire et al., 2010;
Tsarenko and Tojib, 2012)
Casidy and Shin (2015)
I will give the firm an
opportunity to make it up to
me
I will make an effort to be
more friendly in my future
interactions with this firm
I will continue my
relationship with this firm
Harrison-Walker (2019a)
I wish for good things to
happen to the service
provider who wronged me
If I encountered the service
provider who wronged me,
I would feel at peace
Even though the service
provider’s actions hurt me, I
have goodwill for him/her
Tsarenko and Tojib (2012)
I will hold onto the hurt and
anger
I continue to think how
much I hate this service
provider
I am going to get even
I am not letting go of my
negative emotions

The article-collection process yielded 1,828 papers. The exclusion of duplicates resulted in
1,227 unique articles. When selecting articles, we followed the procedure recommended by
Snyder (2019). First, we examined the titles and abstracts of these articles and excluded non-
peer-reviewed articles, resulting in 1,002 peer-reviewed articles. In addition, articles that were
not written in English (n 5 30) and those that were irrelevant to consumer forgiveness
(n 5 870) were excluded. Of the 870 articles we excluded, 681 were contextually unrelated (e.g.
“reconciliation” in chemistry), 125 contained keywords connoting forgiveness but with
meanings that were unrelated to consumer forgiveness (e.g. “provide a theoretical
reconciliation”). Next, we screened the remaining articles in full to ensure that they met the
inclusion criteria (Snyder, 2019). This resulted in the exclusion of 64 articles which focused on
service failure contexts but did not discuss forgiveness-related themes. Thus, these articles Factors
did not meet the inclusion criterion for our review of the factors contributing to consumer influencing
forgiveness. In the end, the review process yielded a total of 102 papers (Figure 1). For a better
understanding of what drives consumer forgiveness from diverse theoretical perspectives,
consumer
our review synthesized relevant papers beyond the service context. Of the 102 papers, 70 forgiveness
(69%) specified a service context(s), 17 (16%) focused on brand transgression/product failure
and 15 (15%) papers discussed consumer forgiveness either in both product/service context
and/or conceptually without mentioning any specific context. 605

Articles retrieved from:

Databases: ProQuest, EBSCOHost,
Scopus, Web of Science and JSTOR
Search terms: [(forgiv* OR revenge*
OR reconciliat*) AND (customer OR
consumer OR consumption)]
Duration: January 2000 to December
2020
Yield: n = 1,828

Exclusion (1): Duplicates

n = 601

Unique articles
n = 1,227
Exclusion (2): Non-peer-reviewed
articles e.g., books, thesis, news,
conference papers
n = 225

Peer-reviewed articles
n = 1,007

Exclusion (3): Non-English articles

n = 30

Exclusion (4): Irrelevant articles

Total peer-reviewed articles
included in this study
n = 102
Source(s): Figure created by author
(n = 870)
● 681 non-business/psychology
domains (e.g., “reconciliation” in
chemistry)
● 125 within business/psychology
domains, but irrelevant to
consumer forgiveness (e.g.,
“provide a theoretical
reconciliation”)
● 64 were in service transgression
contexts but did not have consumer Figure 1.
forgiveness in their studies. Article-collection and -
selection process
JSTP Findings
33,5 Our review of the final 102 papers found that the number of publications on consumer
forgiveness has increased in recent years, with 88 papers (86%) published over the past decade
(2010–2020). The 102 papers were derived from 54 academic journals covering a wide range of
disciplines including marketing (n 5 30), management (n 5 8), information systems (n 5 5),
hospitality (n 5 4) and psychology (n 5 3). Importantly, over 23% of the papers were published
in specialized service journals: Journal of Service Research (n 5 7), Journal of Services Marketing
606 (n 5 6), Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (n 5 4), Journal of Service Theory and
Practice (n 5 2) and Services Marketing Quarterly (n 5 2), further confirming the importance of
forgiveness as a research topic in the service domain. Most studies adopted a quantitative
method including experiments (n 5 31) and surveys (n 5 39). In total, the final set of reviewed
papers concern services (69%), goods (16%), or a combination of both or neither (15%),
involving respondents from North America (48%), Asia (21%), Oceania (8%), Europe (11%),
Africa and the Middle East (5%) and respondents from multiple countries (7%).
Our review found that most consumer forgiveness studies adopted a quantitative (67%) or
a mixed-method (12%) approach involving surveys, experiments, or a combination of both.
Only recently have scholars begun to gather qualitative data by means of in-depth interviews
(e.g. Tsarenko et al., 2019) and critical incident techniques (Bath and Bawa, 2020; Chong and
Ahmed, 2018) in order to discover the mechanisms underlying consumer forgiveness.
Following an iterative process, the researchers synthesized, analyzed, discussed and
interpreted the key themes, concepts and findings derived from the final set of papers. Each
paper was entered into a database comprising the following information: (1) paper details
(author/year), (2) journal title, (3) study location, (4) method and (5) key findings/contribution.
The analysis process began with the identification and coding of elements influencing
consumer forgiveness. For instance, articles that included anger or fear were coded under
different labels (i.e. anger, fear). This was followed by a categorization process where the
researchers grouped related elements under specific factors. For example, in this instance
both anger and fear were grouped under “emotions”. This process is akin to the thematic
analysis method used in qualitative research to identify, analyze and report thematic patterns
within a text (Snyder, 2019; Braun and Clarke, 2006).
Next, we adopted the “journey” perspective to organize our findings (Figure 2). The three
key service stages identified by the analysis are (1) pre-transgression stage, (2) transgression

First occurrence of a First implementation of a

service transgression service recovery strategy

Pre-transgression Stage Transgression Stage Recovery Stage

• Personal characteristics • Attribution • Apology

• Firm characteristics • Perceived transgression severity • Compensation
• Relationship quality • Transgression types • Voice
• Servicescape • Time • Informational recovery
• Consumers’ role • Reprimand
Figure 2. • Perceived power • Justice
Factors influencing • Emotions
consumer forgiveness • Empathy
Source(s): Figure created by author
stage and (3) recovery stage. We categorized the factors contributing to consumer Factors
forgiveness based on the “stage” in which these factors occur. Note that we focused on a influencing
singular focal service encounter, instead of a lifetime interaction between the customer and
the firm. For instance, because an existing high-quality relationship between a customer and
consumer
a firm exists prior to the occurrence of the service failure, it is considered as a factor that pre- forgiveness
dates the focal service encounter.
Table 2 summarizes the outcomes of the synthesis process including the contributing
factors, the percentage of papers accounted for each contributing factor, their elements and 607
selected key articles. It is important to note that the percentage of papers does not add up to
100% because it is common for researchers to investigate multiple contributing factors in one
paper. In the following section, we discuss our findings which include (1) three key stages of
customer journey, (2) factors influencing consumer forgiveness under each stage and (3)
research gaps and future research questions pertaining to these factors.

Factors (% of the 102

papers) Elements Selected key articles

Stage 1: Pre-transgression
Personal Religiosity, spirituality, emotional
characteristics (18%) intelligence, self-constructs (e.g.
independent vs interdependent;
idiocentric vs allocentric
Firm Characteristics Brand personality, brand biography,
(7%) corporate social responsibility history,
industry types and country of origin
Relationship quality Commitment, brand love, customer
(28%) loyalty, attachment, emotional bond,
trust and relational benefits
Servicescape (2%) Religious-related elements and activation
of customer power
Stage 2: Transgression
Attribution (19%) Blame attribution, internal and external
attribution and causal attribution
Perceived Perceived severity
Transgression
severity (22%)
Transgression types Performance vs value, communal vs
(6%) functional, relational vs non-relational
and single vs double deviations
Bavik and Bavik (2015), Hur and Jang
(2019), Hyodo and Bolton (2021),*
Newton et al. (2018), Sinha and Lu (2016),
Tsarenko and Tojib (2012) and Zourrig
et al. (2015)
Hassey (2019), Kim et al. (2019) and
Tsarenko and Tojib (2015)
Bowen et al. (2018), Chen et al. (2019),
Fedorikhin et al. (2008), Gr
egoire and
Fisher (2006), Gregoire et al. (2009),
Hegner et al. (2017), Kordrostami and
Kordrostami (2019), Riquelme et al.
(2019), Schnebelen and Bruhn (2018),
Tripathi (2017), Weitzl and Einwiller
(2019), Weitzl and Hutzinger (2019) and
Wolter et al. (2019)
Lockwood and Pyun (2019) and Park
et al. (2019)
Antonetti and Maklan (2016), Gregoire
et al. (2010), Harrison-Walker (2020), Hsu
et al. (2019), Ribeiro et al. (2018), Yagil
and Luria (2016) and Zourrig et al.
(2009a, 2009b)
Antonetti and Maklan (2016), Fetscherin
and Sampedro (2019), Karaosmanoglu
et al. (2018) and Tsarenko and Tojib
(2012, 2015)
Fetscherin and Sampedro (2019), Kim
et al. (2019) and Sembada et al. (2016)
Table 2.
Factors influencing
(continued ) consumer forgiveness
JSTP Factors (% of the 102
33,5 papers) Elements Selected key articles

Time (3%) Time lapse between service failure and Gregoire et al. (2009), Ghosh (2017) and
service recovery Lee and Kwak (2017)
Consumers’ Role (3%) Direct vs indirect harm, bystanders and Casidy and Shin (2015), Newton et al.
608 victim vs observers (2018) and Shin et al. (2018)
Perceived power (3%) Consumer power Gregoire et al. (2010), Obeidat et al. (2017)
and Sembada et al. (2016)
Emotions (8%) Anger, inward and outward emotions, Antonetti (2016), Gregoire et al. (2010),
retaliation, disgust, contempt, frustration, Haj-Salem and Chebat (2014), Hegner
irritation, regret, betrayal, et al. (2017), McColl-Kennedy et al. (2009)
disappointment, guilt and fear and Obeidat et al. (2020)
Empathy (6%) Consumers’ empathy and employees’ Bove (2019), Ortiz et al. (2017), Ribeiro
empathy et al. (2018) and Wieseke et al. (2012)
Stage 3: Service recovery
Apology (23%) Affective repair, acknowledgment, Harrison-Walker (2019a,b), Hill and
remorse and providers’ emotional Boyd (2015), Hyodo and Bolton (2021)*,
responses Joireman et al. (2013), Ran et al. (2016),
Weitzl and Einwiller (2019), Wei and
Ran (2019) and Yuan et al. (2016)
Compensation (12%) Functional repair Gregoire et al. (2009), Harrison-Walker
(2019a,b), Hyodo and Bolton (2021) and
Joireman et al. (2013)
Voice (1%) Functional and value-expressive roles Harrison-Walker (2019a,b)
Informational Perception of firm integrity and Xie and Peng (2009), Eysteinsson and
Recovery (4%) competence Gudlaugsson (2013) and Joireman et al.
(2013)
Reprimand (2%) Verbal criticism about performance (by a Koppitsch et al. (2013) and Porath et al.
manager to a subordinate) (2011)
Justice (35%) Distributive, interactive, procedural Antonetti and Maklan (2016), Aquino
justice, deontic justice, fairness and et al. (1999), Funches et al. (2009),
perceived injustice Gregoire et al. (2010), Gregoire et al.
(2018), Karabas et al. (2019) and
Muhammad and Gul (2020)
Table 2. Note(s): * This article was included in our data set as it was available in press in 2020

Pre-transgression stage
The pre-transgression stage does not have a specific starting point, but ends before the first
occurrence of a service transgression. This stage covers two important timestamps: (1) the time
period before the service interaction and (2) the period between the initiation of service encounter
and the occurrence of a service transgression. On the one hand, this stage comprises factors
influencing forgiveness that exist prior to the actual service encounter itself, which may or may
not be related with the service provider. For instance, research suggests that individuals with
certain personal characteristics (e.g. gender, self-construal style) tend to be more forgiving than
others (Sinha and Lu, 2016; Tsarenko and Tojib, 2012). Firm characteristics (e.g. brand
personality) (Hassey, 2019) and the prior relationship between the customer and the firm
(Kordrostami and Kordrostami, 2019) were also shown to influence consumer forgiveness. On
the other hand, several other factors can influence consumer forgiveness during the service Factors
encounter, such as the nature of service environment (Park et al., 2019). Hence, the beginning influencing
point and the duration of this stage could vary significantly between customers. For example,
some customers would be more (less) likely to forgive because of their individual characteristics
consumer
regardless of what happened during the service encounter. Others are more (less) likely to forgiveness
forgive due to firm-related factors (e.g. brand reputation) that exist before the occurrence of
service transgressions. In light of the discussions above, we have identified four factors
influencing consumer forgiveness in the pre-transgression stage, namely: (1) personal 609
characteristics, (2) firm characteristics, (3) relationship quality and (4) servicescape.
Personal Characteristics. Studies have found that personal characteristics such as
religiosity (Tsarenko and Tojib, 2012; Cowart et al., 2014), self-construal styles (Sinha and Lu, 2016;
Bavik and Bavik, 2015; Zourrig et al., 2015) and gender (Hur and Jang, 2019) can influence
consumer forgiveness. Newton et al. (2018) found that customers with a Christian upbringing are
more forgiving following a service failure when they are reminded of their faith via religious
symbols (i.e. Christmas decorations). Sinha and Lu (2016) found that consumers with an
interdependent self-construal are more forgiving even when the firm is at fault, whereas those with
an independent self-construal are more forgiving when the firm has no control over the
transgression. Hur and Jang (2019) found gender difference in customers’ intention to forgive a
service provider through the psychological process of rumination and distraction. They found that
male customers are more likely than female customers to link rumination and distraction to their
intention to forgive a service provider. Wieseke et al. (2012) found that consumers’ empathy trait in
a service encounter could interact with employees’ empathy trait in influencing forgiveness,
thereby activating ”symbiotic interactions” of empathy. These findings imply that consumers’
forgiveness can vary as a function of customers’ personal characteristics. However, few studies
have examined the influence of the dynamic interactions between various elements of consumer
characteristics on forgiveness. Given the importance of self-construal in influencing consumer
reactions to service failure as discussed above, future studies could examine how consumers’
characteristics such as gender and religiosity interact with self-construal styles in influencing
forgiveness. Future research could also investigate how trait empathy interacts with self-construal
and the extent to which cognitive empathy (i.e. one’s ability to take the perspective of others) and
emotional empathy (i.e. one’s ability to experience the feeling of others) (Umasuthan et al., 2017) are
influenced by customers’ levels of independence and interdependence. These findings will provide
service organizations with useful insights on service recovery strategies that could be developed
according to consumer characteristics so as to promote forgiveness.
Firm Characteristics. These refer to the personality of a service provider (i.e. brand
personality) that can affect consumers’ willingness to forgive the firm following a service failure
(Hassey, 2019). In the case of a scandal, consumers may be less forgiving towards Disney
compared to Nike because of Disney’s “family-oriented’ personality that would influence
consumers’ expectations. Studies have also found that consumers are less forgiving when top-
dog (vs. under-dog) brands have committed a performance-based (vs relational) transgression
(Kim et al., 2019). Future studies could examine how specific brand personality dimensions (e.g.
sincerity vs. competence) (Aaker, 1997) could relate to forgiveness, thereby offering firms
optimal strategies for enhancing forgiveness by managing their brand personality.
Relationship Quality. This reflects customers’ connection with a firm, demonstrated by
the extent of commitment to and trust in the firm (Gr
egoire and Fisher, 2006; Weitzl and
Einwiller, 2019; Bowen et al., 2018; Weitzl and Hutzinger, 2019). Studies have found mixed results
regarding how and why relationship quality influences consumer forgiveness. According to the
"love becomes blind effect” (Schnebelen and Bruhn, 2018; Riquelme et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2013),
relationship quality could encourage forgiveness by reducing customer dissatisfaction following
a service failure (Fedorikhin et al., 2008; Kordrostami and Kordrostami, 2019; Chen et al., 2019;
Hegner et al., 2017). For example, Hegner et al. (2017) found that consumers who experience
JSTP “a feeling of love for their brand” are more forgiving in times of disappointment. Conversely,
33,5 according to the “love becomes hate effect” (Gregoire et al., 2009), relationship quality can hinder
customer forgiveness, as loyal consumers would feel more betrayed than non-loyal customers
following a service transgression (Gregoire et al., 2009; Wolter et al., 2019; Tripathi, 2017;
Chen et al., 2019). Future research should examine the conditions in which relationship quality
drive/deter forgiveness to help service providers develop effective service recovery strategies
based on the quality of their relationship with customers.
610 Servicescape. Prior studies have found that servicescape can influence consumer
forgiveness following a service transgression (Park et al., 2019; Lockwood and Pyun, 2019). As
discussed earlier, scholars have examined the use of religious priming stimuli (Newton et al., 2018)
and power stimuli (Sembada et al., 2016) to encourage consumer forgiveness. Given the limited
number of servicescape studies in the forgiveness domain, more studies are needed to examine
other priming stimuli that can be embedded in a service environment to prompt forgiveness. For
example, future studies could attempt to prime customers’ empathy in a service environment (e.g.
Christian and Alm, 2014) to promote forgiveness following a service failure. Such research would
help service organizations to optimize servicescape design to encourage forgiveness.

Transgression stage
The transgression stage starts with the first occurrence of a service transgression and ends before
the service provider’s implementation of any service recovery strategies. At this stage, forgiveness
is influenced by the nature of the transgression and the way that customers evaluate and react to
the service transgression cognitively and/or emotionally. Customers would evaluate, for example,
the nature of transgression (e.g. performance-related vs. relational) (Kim et al., 2019), whether the
transgression is controllable by service providers (Harrison-Walker, 2020), the severity of
transgression (Antonetti and Maklan, 2016) and whether they are the victims or observers of the
transgression (Casidy and Shin, 2015). Customers’ emotional responses to the service
transgression (e.g. anger) have also been demonstrated to be critical factors influencing
forgiveness (Gregoire et al., 2010). In the transgression stage, we have identified eight factors
influencing consumer forgiveness: (1) attribution, (2) perceived transgression severity, (3)
transgression types, (4) time, (5) customers’ role, (6) perceived power, (7) emotions and (8) empathy.
Attribution, defined as “the degree to which customers perceive a firm to be accountable
for the causation of a failed recovery” (Gregoire et al., 2010, p. 742), has a strong influence on
forgiveness (Ribeiro et al., 2018; Hsu et al., 2019; Antonetti and Maklan, 2016). Customers who do
not attribute the cause of service failure to the service provider are more likely to forgive the
service provider (Zourrig et al., 2009a, b), particularly when the cause of the failure is beyond the
provider’s control (e.g. electrical disruptions; Yagil and Luria, 2016). However, consumers are
less likely to forgive if they believe that the service cause of the service failure was due to the
“incompetence of the service provider” (Harrison-Walker, 2020, p. 76) (e.g. when a service failure
resulted from poor or incompetent training provided by the restaurant).
Our SLR found a notable research gap regarding the factors that could influence the type of
consumer attribution following a service failure incident. This is particularly important in the
context of co-produced service experiences where customers may contribute to the service
failure (i.e. co-produced service failure; Dong et al., 2016). In such situations, customers who
attribute service failure to themselves (i.e. self-attribution) would be more likely to forgive the
service provider compared to those who attribute the failure to the service provider (i.e. blame
attribution). Drawing upon the expectancy-attribution model (Teas and McElroy, 1986), future
research could explore various strategies by which service providers can reduce consumers’
attribution of blame to the service provider by identifying the dynamic interactions between
consumer expectation and attribution styles in influencing forgiveness. Such research would
help service providers to encourage forgiveness by managing customer expectations and
adapting their service recovery strategies based on customer attribution styles.
 Perceived Transgression Severity. Customer’s perception of the severity of a service Factors
transgression has important implications for consumer forgiveness (Karaosmanoglu et al., influencing
2018). The more severe a service transgression is perceived to be, the less likely it is that the
consumer will forgive the service provider (Antonetti and Maklan, 2016; Fetscherin and
consumer
Sampedro, 2019). Future studies could examine how perceived transgression severity forgiveness
interacts with other factors, such as control and attribution, in influencing consumer
forgiveness. For example, consumers may be more forgiving towards a highly severe service
failure which was caused by factors beyond the control of the service provider. On the other 611
hand, consumers may be less forgiving towards a minor service failure which was caused by
the incompetence of the service provider.
Transgression Types. Different types of service transgressions can have different
effects on consumer forgiveness. In general, consumers are more likely to forgive a
performance-based failure (e.g. defective product/service) than a relational transgression (e.g.
rude staff behavior) (Kim et al., 2019; Fetscherin and Sampedro, 2019). Future research could
investigate the different effects of performance-based and relational transgression on
forgiveness under different service contexts (e.g. hedonic vs. utilitarian). Consumers also tend
to be more forgiving when a transgression is caused by system errors beyond the control of
the service employee (Kim et al., 2019). Moreover, service transgression may occur more than
once and scholars have found that the positive effect of priming consumer power on
forgiveness is reduced in a double-deviation service failure (Sembada et al., 2016). Future
research could examine the dynamic interaction between double-deviation transgression and
service co-production on consumer forgiveness (Heidenreich et al., 2015).
Time. The amount of time that elapses between a service failure incident and when
service recovery is offered is an important factor contributing to forgiveness. In a
longitudinal study, Lee and Kwak (2017) found that post-transgression recovery efforts to
restore trust could enhance forgiveness over time. Gregoire et al. (2009) found that consumers’
revenge intentions following a transgression decreased after a few weeks. However, the same
study also found that loyal customers bear a grudge against the provider longer than non-
loyal customers, driven by a greater sense of betrayal over time (Gregoire et al., 2009). An
important question remains regarding the effectiveness of service recovery strategies in
promoting forgiveness when a service provider fails to provide a timely recovery response to
the affected customers. Thus, future research could examine how time interacts with provider
response (i.e. apology, compensation, voice) in influencing forgiveness. For example, offering
apologies immediately following a service failure incident may be more effective than offering
compensation a long time after the service failure has occurred. These findings would help
service organizations to provide appropriate service recovery efforts in a timely manner.
Customers’ Role. Many service encounters occur in the presence of other customers.
Prior studies have found that customers’ willingness to forgive a service provider depends on
their roles during the service failure incident (i.e. victim vs observer; Shin et al., 2018; Casidy
and Shin, 2015). Our SLR found that the effects of customers’ role on forgiveness is not always
straightforward. On one hand, studies found that observers are more forgiving than victims
when an apology is offered (Shin et al., 2018; Casidy and Shin, 2015). However, observers may
also be less forgiving towards a service provider when vulnerable customers experience the
service failure incident (Newton et al., 2018). Although the role of the customer as an observer
of a service failure incident has been extensively researched (Baker and Kim, 2018; Mattila
et al., 2014), few studies have considered the interaction between tie-strength and the
customers’ role in influencing forgiveness. It is reasonable to assume that observers may be
less inclined to forgive a service provider when they have strong ties with the victim. Future
research could draw upon interpersonal relationship research in service literature (Orsingher
and Wirtz, 2018; Lin et al., 2019) to provide practical insights for firms to encourage the
forgiveness of victims and observers following a service failure incident.
JSTP Perceived Power. This refers to “customers’ perceived ability to influence a firm in an
33,5 advantageous manner” (Gregoire et al., 2010). Customers with a stronger sense of power may
react differently to a service failure compared to those who feel powerless (Obeidat et al.,
2017). Gregoire et al. (2010) found that consumers with greater perceived power are less
forgiving and engage in more retaliatory behaviors following a service failure. Conversely,
Sembada et al. (2016) found that consumers who were primed by power stimuli (e.g. “you have
power over us”) were more forgiving following a service failure. Indeed, “the effects of power
612 are not straightforward and vary depending on the category of behaviors” (Gregoire et al.,
2010, p. 739). These mixed findings suggest an extant research gap in the understanding of
boundary conditions for the effects of power on consumer forgiveness. Future studies could
draw upon power theory from psychology literature to examine the conditions under which
power could encourage or hinder consumer forgiveness based on different types of power (i.e.
discursive, sovereignty, cultural; Denegri-Knott et al., 2006). For example, the types of service
(i.e. credence vs experiential) may influence the effects of perceived power on forgiveness.
Customers may feel powerless when interacting with credence service providers (e.g. doctors)
due to the customers’ lack of expertise, thereby hindering forgiveness. Such studies would
generate useful insights for firms, enabling them to better manage customers’ power to
promote forgiveness following a service failure.
Emotions. Consumers may experience a diverse range of negative emotions following a
service transgression, such as anger (Antonetti, 2016; Gregoire et al., 2010; Hsu et al., 2019;
McColl-Kennedy et al., 2009; Obeidat et al., 2020; Porath et al., 2011), disappointment, irritation
and regret (Harrison-Walker, 2012). Anger, in particular, is recognized as a significant driver
of consumers’ revenge intention following a service failure (Obeidat et al., 2020; Porath et al.,
2011; Antonetti, 2016; Haj-Salem and Chebat, 2014; Tuzovic, 2010; Xu et al., 2012; Zourrig
et al., 2009a; Hegner et al., 2017). Conversely, positive emotions may motivate forgiveness.
However, these different types of emotions might not have the same effect on forgiveness.
Thus, future research could explore elements within the service experience that can trigger
each emotion and the distinctive effect of each (e.g. anger vs. helplessness) on forgiveness
(Gelbrich, 2010). Future research could also examine the ways by which service providers can
trigger positive emotions (e.g. optimism, gratitude) to encourage forgiveness.
Service researchers have examined how customers manage their emotions in order to cope
with service failure. For example, Strizhakova et al. (2012) found that anger drives customers
to engage in expressive coping, which in turns encourages rumination, hinders forgiveness
and increases revenge-seeking behavior (Chih et al., 2019; Weitzl and Einwiller, 2019).
Conversely, some customers use their anger to engage in active coping strategies by focusing
on actions to resolve the problem, which in turn reduces rumination and promotes
forgiveness.
Empathy, defined as “a person’s ability to sense another’s thoughts, feelings and
experiences” (Wieseke et al., 2012), can facilitate consumer forgiveness following a service
transgression, particularly when customers empathize with the service employees during
service failure (Bove, 2019; Ribeiro et al., 2018). On the other hand, empathy could have
adverse effects on forgiveness when customers empathize with the victims of a service
transgression (Ribeiro et al., 2018), particularly if the victims are perceived to be vulnerable
customers (Newton et al., 2018). Given the non-linear effects of empathy on forgiveness, more
research is needed to examine the ways that service providers can improve the “symbiotic
interactions” of empathy (Wieseke et al., 2012). Drawing upon self-congruity theory (Sirgy,
1982), future studies could examine whether the alignment of customers’ and employees’
characteristics would enhance symbiotic interactions of empathy which in turn encourage
forgiveness. Such research would help service organizations to improve the likelihood of
customer forgiveness by facilitating symbiotic interactions of empathy between customers
and employees.
Recovery stage Factors
In the recovery stage, service providers have the opportunity to implement various remedies influencing
to elicit customer forgiveness following a service transgression. Our SLR identified six
factors contributing to consumer forgiveness: (1) apology, (2) compensation, (3) voice, (4)
consumer
informational recovery, (5) reprimand and (6) justice. forgiveness
Apology. Prior studies have found that the offer of an apology decreases consumers’
revenge motivations and increases reconciliation motivations (Joireman et al., 2013; Weitzl and
Einwiller, 2019; Haenel et al., 2019). However, our SLR found that the effectiveness of apologies 613
in encouraging forgiveness depends on the manner in which they are offered and the person
delivering the apologies. For example, Yuan et al. (2016) found that customers are more likely to
forgive firms that admit responsibility for their failures (i.e. internal attribution) than firms that
attribute the service failures to external forces (i.e. external attribution). Ran et al. (2016) found
that a service provider’s admission of guilt is effective in increasing the likelihood of obtaining
forgiveness from angry customers, whereas an expression of shame is more effective in eliciting
forgiveness from consumers who experience fear. Using a scenario involving an electricity
outage, Hill and Boyd (2015) found differences in the effectiveness of chief executive officer
(CEO) and employee apologies based on their apology styles. Specifically, an apology from a
remorseful employee is more effective in eliciting forgiveness than an apology from a
remorseful CEO because consumers empathize more with the employee. On the other hand, a
compensatory CEO apology is more effective in eliciting forgiveness than a compensatory
employee apology because of increased perceived justice (Hill and Boyd, 2015). Wei and Ran
(2019) found that gender interacts with the types of apologies that influence forgiveness.
Specifically, an apology offered by a male employee is more effective in eliciting forgiveness
than an apology from a female employee for a performance-related failure, but an apology
offered by a female employee is more effective in eliciting forgiveness for a value-related failure
(Wei and Ran, 2019). While the effect of apology as service recovery strategy is generally well-
researched in the literature, future research could investigate the role of an emotional
expression of apology in stimulating consumer forgiveness. This may point to different
research directions such as the way that customers perceive employee deep-acting and surface-
acting when expressing an apology (Gruber, 2011) and the different customer reactions to an
apology offered by human employees and that given by service robots (Choi et al., 2021).
Compensation refers to the economic resources offered by companies as a means of
recovering from a service transgression (Harrison-Walker, 2019a). Compensation has been found
to effectively reduce anger (Joireman et al., 2013) and encourage forgiveness (Gregoire et al., 2009).
Our SLR found that most studies assume a linear effect of compensation on forgiveness, with a
larger, rather than a modest, amount of compensation considered more effective in eliciting
forgiveness (Gregoire et al., 2009). However, recent studies suggest otherwise. For example,
Hyodo and Bolton (2021) found that compensation can backfire when consumers view it merely
as a tactic used by the service provider to “buy’ forgiveness rather than as a demonstration of
genuine remorse. Gelbrich et al. (2015) found that the positive impact of monetary compensation
on service recovery evaluations may cease after the magnitude of monetary compensation
reaches certain levels, or may even backfire and cause customer dissatisfaction (Kanuri and
Andrews, 2019; Sharifi and Aghazadeh, 2016). Harrison-Walker (2019a) stated that while the
offer of compensation may lead to re-patronage, “it will not lead to forgiveness and will have no
impact on the prized outcome of reconciliation” (p.385). These recent findings suggest that the
amount of compensation might not have a linear effect on forgiveness due to other factors beyond
the control of the service provider. Future research could identify the optimal compensation for
different service contexts; for example, utilitarian services may require more compensation than
hedonic services. Moreover, future research could further investigate the idea of genuine
forgiveness in the context of compensation as service recovery and explore different strategies
for reducing the perception of “buying forgiveness”.
JSTP Voice refers to giving customers a chance to express their concerns and feelings to the
33,5 service provider (Hui and Au, 2001). Harrison-Walker (2019a) found that customers who are
allowed to express their feelings are more likely to forgive the service provider. Voice is a
particularly important recovery strategy in health care (i.e. high credence services), although
it can also encourage forgiveness in experiential service contexts such as restaurants
(Harrison-Walker, 2019b). Indeed, allowing customers to voice their concerns can help to
reduce their negative emotions and enhance positive feelings toward the firm, thus
614 facilitating forgiveness. To further understand the impact of voice during the service
recovery phase, future research could consider the role of voice in co-produced service
context. For example, the influence of voice on consumer forgiveness after a failed co-
produced service, or the importance of voice in co-produced service recovery could be
examined (Dong et al., 2008).
Informational Recovery. Hur and Jang (2019) found that informational recovery
following service failures can elicit consumer forgiveness by influencing consumers’
rumination processes. Moreover, some scholars argue that providing relevant information
following a service failure (i.e. informational recovery) may outweigh the benefits of offering
compensation to consumers. For example, Xie and Peng (2009) suggested that consumers
who receive appropriate information about a transgression are more likely to forgive the firm
due to their enhanced perception of firm integrity and competence. Future research could
differentiate between types of informational recovery strategies and investigates their
effectiveness in promoting consumer forgiveness. For example, Gelbrich (2010) differentiated
between the effects of retrospective explanation (i.e. information regarding reasons behind
the transgression) and prospective explanation (i.e. information regarding firm’s strategies
on preventing the transgression from reoccurring) on consumer reactions to service failure.
Future research could also examine the effectiveness of information recovery strategies in
stimulating consumer forgiveness in the context of online services (Singh and Crisafulli,
2016). For example, the effectiveness of verbal and non-verbal cues when implementing
online informational recovery strategies could be explored (Huang et al., 2021).
A reprimand is a verbal rebuke directed at staff (Koppitsch et al., 2013) and is an
important determinant of forgiveness. Studies have found that customers are more
satisfied when they know that the offending employee is reprimanded following a service
failure (Pugh et al., 2018). However, a reprimand may backfire when it is perceived to be
“uncivilized” and may lead to customer revenge (Porath et al., 2011). Indeed, public
humiliation of an employee is likely to draw negative reactions from customers. Recently, a
top airline CEO was forced to apologize after a viral online video showed him rudely
reprimanding an employee in front of hundreds of other staff (Hakim, 2021). These
findings suggest that the effects of reprimand on forgiveness may be contingent upon the
public/private nature of such act (Pugh et al., 2018).
Although the reprimanding of an employee can be an effective strategy for obtaining
forgiveness, further research is needed to understand the optimal level of reprimand that
meets the customers’ expectations. This is important because customers may empathize with
the reprimanded employee during a service encounter. According to appraisal theory of
vicarious emotions (Wondra and Ellsworth, 2015), customers are less forgiving towards a
service provider when directly witnessing an employee being reprimanded because the
customers feel guilty for causing trouble for the employee (i.e. self-conscious emotions).
Further research could draw upon the intersection of appraisal theory of vicarious emotions
and self-congruity theory (Sirgy, 1982) to examine whether customers would have stronger
self-conscious emotions towards a reprimanded employee with whom they can identify due to
congruent self-concept. Such research would help service providers to develop workplace
policies (e.g. verbal reprimand, written warning) relevant to the target customers’
expectations to elicit forgiveness following a service failure.
 Justice. Our SLR identifies three types of justice that influence forgiveness: (1) Factors
distributive justice (i.e. relating to the outcome of service recovery), (1) interactional justice (i.e. influencing
perception of fair interaction with employees) and (3) procedural justice (i.e. relating to the
procedures involved in the service recovery) (Muhammad and Gul, 2020; Gregoire et al., 2010,
consumer
2018; Aquino et al., 1999; Funches et al., 2009). Studies have found that consumers with lower forgiveness
levels of perceived justice tend to show less forgiveness (Antonetti and Maklan, 2016;
Gregoire et al., 2018; Funches et al., 2009). For example, Karabas et al. (2019) found that
customers who witness uncivil interactions between an employee and another customer 615
following a service failure might punish the employee by reducing gratuities due to perceived
deontic injustice. On the other hand, customers who believe that the three types of justice
have been restored following a service failure are more likely to forgive the service provider
(Muhammad and Gul, 2020). While it is not surprising that the restoration of justice may lead
to consumer forgiveness, future research could investigate the specific type of justice that is
most crucial to forgiveness.
While our SLR demonstrated that each of these factors plays an important role in
encouraging or hindering consumer forgiveness, these factors are not mutually exclusive. In
other words, given the dynamic nature of service experience and encounters as well as the
psychological process underlying forgiveness, we expect that these factors would interact
with each other in influencing forgiveness. For example, the effect of one factor on consumer
forgiveness may be mediated or moderated by another factor. We identify possible areas of
meaningful interaction between each factor in the section that suggests future research
directions.

Discussion
Theoretical contribution
Our SLR contributes to the service literature in various ways. First, our work addresses
Tsarenko et al. (2019, p. 152) call for research to explore “how transgression severity, specific
provider responses, and providers’ individual characteristics influence forgiveness pathways
. . . [and] the potential relationships and dynamics across the different forgiveness
pathways”. We bring together the literature to synthesize the relevant factors that
influence consumer forgiveness. While it has been demonstrated that forgiveness is one of the
most crucial drivers of satisfaction and repatronage intention following a service
transgression (Newton et al., 2018; Tsarenko and Tojib, 2015), research on the factors that
influence forgiveness is still in its infancy. In fact, we found only 88 papers on consumer
forgiveness published in the past decade, with only 23% of them appearing in specialized
service journals. Moreover, findings pertaining to each factor are also limited. This is
concerning given the history of service failure and recovery literature, and it truly reflects the
lack of adequate knowledge of this area. Given the current state of the literature, it is timely to
conduct a SLR to contextualize extant research and develop future research agenda to ignite
stronger research interest in consumer forgiveness.
Second, we apply a “journey” perspective in recognition of the emerging approach that
considers the various stages of the customer journey (Khamitov et al., 2020; Van Vaerenbergh
et al., 2019). While the technique of customer journey mapping has been implemented by
marketing practitioners to identify, for example, (1) customers’ expectations, goals and pain
points and (2) firm touchpoints and strategies at different stages, literature on the
understanding of forgiveness concepts from a “journey” perspective is limited due to the
complexity of conceptualizing and analyzing the intertwined relationships of factors
influencing forgiveness (Følstad and Kvale, 2018). In the context of service failure recovery,
Van Vaerenbergh et al.’s (2019) work that introduced the idea of a service recovery journey
and integrated the research on firm responses at the pre-recovery, recovery and post-recovery
JSTP phases, confirmed the value of a “journey” approach as a means of understanding the
33,5 literature on customer service experience more holistically. In light of this, our research
applies the “journey” perspective to synthesize factors contributing to consumer forgiveness.
Specifically, we differentiate between the pre-transgression, transgression and recovery
stages and identify their respective factors that contribute to consumer forgiveness. Our
findings suggest that forgiveness, which is generally conceptualized as an outcome of service
transgression or service recovery (Harrison-Walker, 2019a; Zourrig et al., 2009b) should in
616 fact be understood more systematically, as some factors pre-date the service encounter, while
others emerge in the event of a service failure or after a service recovery strategy is
implemented. To this end, our work demonstrates that consumers’ psychological and
motivational responses, specifically in the context of service failure and recovery, can in fact
be understood through the customer journey lens. Therefore, we call on service researchers to
start considering the adoption of a “journey” perspective when examining customers’
responses to service failure and recovery.
Finally, by adopting the “journey” approach, our synthesis advances the idea of theoretical
integration in the study of consumer forgiveness, which moves beyond the three individual
stages and offers insights on inter-stage effects. Specifically, we identify the potential
intersection between theories including equity theory (e.g. justice 3 customer traits),
expectancy-attribution model (e.g. customers’ expectations 3 attribution styles), self-
congruity theory (e.g. customers’ self-concept 3 service employees’ personality and
customers’ empathy 3 service employees’ empathy), appraisal theory of vicarious emotions
(e.g. customers’ self-conscious emotions 3 reprimanded employees) and social exchange
theory (e.g. relationship quality between customers and providers 3 transgression type) to
guide future research on forgiveness. Ultimately, we contribute to the integrated perspective
not only on consumer forgiveness but also on service experience journey. We encourage future
researchers to investigate the dynamic relationships between factors influencing forgiveness
both between and across the various stages of a customer’s service journey.

Managerial implications
For a service provider, “earning’ forgiveness from transgressed customers so as to increase
their likelihood to return is always more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. Our
findings suggest that firms must first acknowledge the dynamic nature of consumer
forgiveness, such that forgiveness should not be viewed as a simple outcome of customers’
perception of transgression severity or reaction to service recovery strategy. While actively
preventing and/or responding to transgression is the most crucial of service strategies, our SLR
identifies ways by which firms could optimize their strategies to encourage customer
forgiveness after the occurrence of a service transgression. For example, planting the seeds of
forgiveness can be done by developing an optimal servicescape and brand personality that pre-
date a focal service encounter. In other words, firms and service employees do not have to wait
for a service transgression to occur before planning strategies for encouraging forgiveness.
Our application of the “journey” perspective provides a guide for firms that will enable
them to develop a more holistic understanding of the factors that elicit consumer forgiveness.
Specifically, we recommend that service firms develop a customer journey map for consumer
forgiveness. Figure 3 depicts practical insights for service firms across the customer journey.
We encourage firms, managers and frontline service employees to consider these questions
derived from our SLR. Given the dynamic nature of the service industry, we also recommend
that firms generate their own questions based on their past experiences of their unique
service encounters, transgressions and service recovery incidents. The answers to these
questions will lay the foundation for understanding the current state of the service
environment and evaluating the performance of their practices. In the long run, this opens the

Stage 1: Pre-transgression
Personal characteristics
Who are our target customers? Do they have
any identifiable and significant individual
characteristics?
Firm characteristics
What is our brand image and personality? How
do our customers see us as a brand?
Relationship quality
Do we have a good relationship with our
customers? How many of our existing
customers are considered loyal?
Servicescape
Can we incorporate some of the above elements
into our service environment?
Source(s): Figure created by author
Factors
Stage 2: Transgression stage Stage 3: Recovery stage influencing
Attribution Apology
consumer
What were the causes of our past
transgressions? Were they controllable?
Are our employees trained to offer sincere
apology? How often do they apologize because
forgiveness
Perceived transgression severity of internal vs. external causes?
In general, how severe were our past service Compensation
transgressions? What are our compensation policies? How do
Transgression type
How often do performance-related vs.
employees decide when to offer compensation?
Voice
617
relational transgressions occur? Are our employees trained to give transgressed
Time customers an opportunity to voice their
How efficient were our employees in initiating concern?
a service recovery? Information recovery
Customers’ role Was informational recovery effective given the
How often did a service transgression occur in nature of our service? How do we decide when
the presence of observing customers? to offer informational recovery?
Perceived power Reprimand
What is the power distance between customers How often were our employees reprimanded
and our service providers? following a service transgression? Do our
Emotions customers usually expect employees to be
What are some of the most prominent negative reprimanded?
emotions expressed by our transgressed Justice
customers? How important to our customers are the three
Empathy types of justice? Do our customers focus more Figure 3.
Usually, how empathetic are our customers on the outcome of the recovery, interaction
towards service transgressed? Usually, how with our employees, or our service recovery
Consumer forgiveness
empathetic are our employees towards policies and procedures? journey map-practical
transgressed customers? insights

opportunity to identifying limitations in their strategies and explore undiscovered insights

through experimentation (Cui, 2020).
Furthermore, we recommend firms to take further advantage of our consumer forgiveness
journey map by applying marketing analytic techniques. Specifically, firms can implement
marketing attribution methods to determine the degree to which contributing factors identified
in our SLR attribute to consumer forgiveness. Marketing attribution is generally defined as the
practice of attributing value of strategies to marketing touchpoints along the customer journey
(Buhalis and Volchek, 2021). For example, using marketing attribution, retail firms could
analyze the effectiveness of online advertisements via social media in raising brand or product
awareness, or service firms could examine the extent to which review websites drive
consumer’s purchase decision at the consideration stage (Kannan et al., 2016). The fundamental
idea behind customer journey mapping and marketing attribution, however, is that they are
used to understand consumer interaction and consumption experience and how different
factors and strategies influence customer decision making. Similarly, firms can use our
consumer forgiveness journey map in conjunction with the marketing attribution methodology,
with the aim to attribute different contributing factors to consumer forgiveness across three
stages (i.e. pre-transgression, transgression and recovery stage). Such an application takes full
advantage of the integration between theoretical-driven knowledge (i.e. our SLR) and
marketing data analytics (i.e. marketing attribution) (Buhalis and Volchek, 2021).
Firms with considerable financial resources may also consult with technology solution
providers in developing models and plans for marketing attribution. Neustar is an example of
companies that offer tailor-made marketing attribution and data analytics solutions (Neustar,
2023). While the capability to conduct marketing attribution analysis varies between firms,
with medium-sized firms and large enterprises being more capable of collecting, storing and
analyzing data. We still encourage service firms to adopt similar practices in terms of
analyzing service strategies and service interaction data, even on a smaller scale. This will
assist firms to develop more focused strategies to encourage forgiveness in the event of
service transgressions. For a detailed discussion on marketing attribution taxonomy and
method, see Buhalis and Volchek (2021).
JSTP Directions for future research
33,5 Building on our SLR, we identified significant knowledge gaps within the consumer
forgiveness literature that need to be addressed by future research. In Table 3, we propose
research questions for future studies pertaining to each factor influencing consumer
forgiveness. In the following section, we further discuss some meaningful interaction effects
between various factors for future explorations. Notably, the discussion below and the
questions in Table 3 are intended to stimulate discussion and research interest in the topic of
618 factors influencing consumer forgiveness. The list is by no means exhaustive.

Future research: interaction amongst factors

Our SLR indicates that extant literature provides limited discussions and insights on the
interaction effect between different factors contributing to consumer forgiveness. Therefore,
we encourage future researchers to examine the relative importance of each contributing
factor using a path modeling approach to enable the observation of the interaction effects
between each factor in terms of their influence on forgiveness and its outcomes (e.g. revisit
intention, positive word-of-mouth). Our SLR suggests that the effects of each factor may be
moderated and/or mediated by other factors. Below, we summarize several areas of potential
interactions that warrant future research.
Justice, Consumer Characteristics, Empathy. While studies have made a
significant contribution by examining the roles of perceived justice in forgiveness contexts, a
key question arises regarding the relationship between justice and forgiveness: what are the
boundary conditions that may reduce the effect of justice on forgiveness? Drawing upon
equity theory (Leventhal, 1980), future research could determine whether the effects of justice
perception on forgiveness are moderated by customer traits such as forgivingness/
agreeableness (Berry et al., 2005), in order to better understand how service providers can
encourage forgiveness by effectively restoring justice following a service failure. Further
work is also needed to explore how the interaction between perceived justice and empathy
might influence consumer forgiveness in service settings. For example, Ortiz et al. (2017)
found that customers are less empathetic towards the service provider when they perceive
injustice in the service delivery, which in turn hinders forgiveness.
Relationship Quality, Transgression Type. Transgression Severity. Studies have
shown that the effects of relationship quality on consumer forgiveness are not straightforward
(Gregoire et al., 2018; Riquelme et al., 2019). Therefore, we know little about whether and in what
situations, service providers should leverage their relationship with customers in their service
recovery effort to encourage forgiveness. More research is needed to determine the boundary
conditions for the effects of relationship quality on forgiveness. Relevant moderators, such as
transgression type and perceived transgression severity, need to be examined to better
understand how service firms should manage customer relationships so as to elicit forgiveness.
For example, loyal customers may be less forgiving towards a service provider when it comes to a
relational transgression due to a feeling of betrayal, but more forgiving of a performance-based
failure. Future service researchers could leverage existing relationship quality studies in service
literature and social exchange theory (e.g. Macintosh, 2007; Holloway et al., 2009) to provide a
more comprehensive analysis of the interaction between relationship quality and transgression
type and its influence on consumer forgiveness. Such research could offer useful insights to
service providers and could encourage them to customize their service recovery strategies to elicit
forgiveness on the basis of their relationship with customers and transgression types.
Servicescape and Perceived Transgression Severity. There is an extant research
gap regarding the way that service providers can develop effective strategies to promote
particular coping mechanisms of their consumers following a service failure. Future research
could draw upon servicescape literature (Bitner, 1992) to explore how a service environment
Stage Future research questions Factors
Stage 1: Pre- Personal characteristics
influencing
transgression Do male and female customers with different religious beliefs differ in their forgiveness? To what extent religiosity consumer
strengthen or weaken the relationships between rumination and distraction, and forgiveness for male and female
customers?
forgiveness
How does interdependent self-construal and independent self-construal influence forgiveness for customers with
different religious beliefs? Does religiosity activate customers’ perception of seeing themselves as part of the social
context or the brand, making them more or less likely to forgive?
To what extent do customers’ self-construal styles interact with their trait empathy? To what extent does 619
interdependent self-construal affect customers’ ability to consider the point of view of others and/or the ability to
share others’ emotional state, and their subsequent forgiveness?
Firm characteristics
How do different types of brand personality influence consumer forgiveness? Do brands with a “sincerity”
personality (characterized by warmth and honesty) and brands with a “competence” personality (characterized by
security and success) differ in terms of being forgiven by customers?
Relationship quality
What are the boundary conditions that govern the role of relationship quality in consumer forgiveness? To what
extent can the “love becomes blind effect” and “love becomes hate effect” make customers more or less forgiving
respectively? How can employees reverse the “love becomes hate effect” effect?
Servicescape
Which factors contributing to consumer forgiveness at the pre-transgression stage (e.g. personal and firm
characteristics, and relationship quality) can become part of the servicescape to stimulate forgiveness? What
priming stimuli in the servicescape are more or less effective in prompting forgiveness?
Stage 2: Transgression Attribution
What is the role of co-production in consumer forgiveness? How does co-produced service experience influence
customers’ attribution of service failure, and their subsequent intention to forgive?
To what extent can customers’ expectations toward the service providers stimulate their self- and blame-
attribution and forgiveness? How can service providers adjust customers’ expectations to better fit with their
attribution style?
Perceived transgression severity
How does transgression severity interact with control and attribution in influencing consumer forgiveness? How
does a highly severe service failure caused by factors beyond the control of the service provider differ from a minor
service failure that occurs due to the service provider’s mistakes in terms of consumer forgiveness?
Transgression types
To what extent performance-based and relational transgression influence consumer forgiveness in different
service contexts? To what extent hedonic vs. utilitarian service context affect customers’ perception of
performance-based vs relational transgression?
What is the relationship between co-production and forgiveness in the context of double-deviation service failure?
Is there an interaction effect between successful vs. failed co-produced service and single vs. double-deviation
transgression on consumer forgiveness?
Time
To what extent timelapse between the transgression and implementation of service recovery strategies change
customers’ evaluation of service recovery strategies? Do customers prefer a timely apology or a delayed
compensation? How can service providers shorten this timelapse more effectively?
Customers’ role
How does being a victim vs. a bystander influence customers’ likelihood to forgive, depending on their social ties
with the service providers?
What is the role of consumer forgiveness in a group service encounter context? As observers, how does witnessing
a transgression experienced by the focal customers who share a weak social tie affect their forgiveness?
Perceived power
To what extent should service providers utilize the power distance with the customers to better stimulate
forgiveness?
Do different types of power (e.g. discursive, sovereignty, cultural) differ in affect consumer forgiveness, and under
which service contexts?
Emotions
How do different facets of negative emotions affect consumer forgiveness? Is the customer’s likelihood of forgiving
when feeling anger the same as when feeling helplessness? Does feeling anger the same as feeling helpless in
affecting customers’ likelihood to forgive? How do negative emotions such as guilt affect customer forgiveness?
Which positive emotions are most effective in promoting forgiveness? How does feeling optimistic toward a
positive post-recovery outcome influence customer forgiveness? If customers feel grateful towards the firm’s past
service, are they more likely to forgive a service transgression?
Empathy
How can service providers trigger state empathy more effectively in different service contexts?
What is the optimal level of state empathy when encouraging consumer forgiveness?
How should firms train their employees in better expressing their empathy, hence triggering customers’ empathy
and their subsequent forgiveness? Table 3.
Future research
(continued ) questions
JSTP Stage Future research questions
33,5
Stage 3: Recovery Apology
Is employees’ emotional labor important in triggering consumer forgiveness when making an apology? Can
customers distinguish between employees’ surface acting and deep acting when they apologize?
How do customers perceive an apology offered by a human service employee compared to a service robot? Are
service robots capable of expressing sincerity when apologizing, and can this be detected by customers?
Compensation
What are the boundary conditions for the optimal compensation? In addition to the amount of compensation, are
620 there any factors (e.g. service context) that shift this optimal point?
Can compensation lead to genuine forgiveness from customers? How can firms alter the perception of “buying
forgiveness”?
Voice
How does giving customers the opportunity to voice during a co-produced service encounter influence forgiveness?
Is voicing more beneficial or harmful when recovering a failed co- produced service?
To what extent does voicing influence forgiveness when co-producing service recovery with customers?
Informational recovery
Which information recovery types are critical for promoting consumer forgiveness?
Are in-person informational recovery strategies as effective as online informational recovery strategies?
What is the role of verbal and non-verbal cues in implementing informational recovery? Do verbal and non-verbal
cues differ in influencing forgiveness when implementing online information recovery strategies?
Reprimand
Are customers more or less likely to forgive the firm if the reprimanded employees share a similar or same social
identity with the customer?
Justice
Table 3. Which types of justice (i.e. distributive, procedural, or interactional) are most crucial for triggering forgiveness?

can be designed to encourage consumers’ active coping strategies so as to reduce rumination

and increase the likelihood forgiveness. For example, Sembada et al. (2016) found that
priming customers with power stimuli enhances their coping ability, thereby reducing
perceived transgression severity and revenge intention. Newton et al. (2018) found that the
exposure of respondents to religious stimuli (i.e. Christmas decorations) reduces the perceived
transgression severity of those with a Christian upbringing.
Firm Characteristics and Consumer Characteristics. Despite the recent
advances in our understanding of the effects of firm characteristics on forgiveness, future
work is needed to examine how firm characteristics interact with respondents’ characteristics
in influencing forgiveness. Prior studies have found that self-congruity plays an important
role in influencing customer attitudes towards a service provider (See for example Moliner
et al., 2018; Kim and Lee, 2017). Future research could build upon these recent findings by
extending the self-congruity theory (Sirgy, 1982) to the forgiveness domain to examine
whether customers are more forgiving towards a service provider with a personality that is
congruent with their self-concept. Such research would help service firms to leverage their
brand personality to encourage forgiveness by developing specific recovery strategies for
customers whose personality is congruent with that of the firm.
Reprimanding the Staff and Consumer’s Empathy. The reprimanding of a
service employee can restore customers’ perceived power (Pugh et al., 2018), which leads to
stronger forgiving intentions (Sembada et al., 2016). In this case, power could mediate the
effects of reprimanding staff on forgiveness, although these mediating effects may be
moderated by other contributing factors such as customers’ empathy (Wondra and
Ellsworth, 2015), the nature of the reprimand interactions (Porath et al., 2011) and the location
where the reprimand is given (Pugh et al., 2018).
Service Recovery Strategy and other Contributing Factors. There is a notable
gap in forgiveness research regarding the role of transgression severity as a boundary
condition of the provider’s service recovery strategies (i.e. apology, compensation, voice).
Prior studies have found that compensation that is not commensurate with the perceived
level of transgression severity perceived by consumers (i.e. under- or over-compensation) can
lead to unfavorable outcomes (Sparks and McColl-Kennedy, 2001; Sharifi and Aghazadeh, Factors
2016). Future studies could investigate whether transgression severity moderates the effects influencing
of service recovery strategy on forgiveness. Such insights would help service organizations to
design optimal recovery strategies to apply after a service failure incident. More research is
consumer
also needed to understand the relationship between consumer characteristics and the forgiveness
expected type of compensation and its influence on forgiveness. For example, females are
more concerned about the outcomes of service failure (i.e. distributive justice), whereas males
are more concerned about procedural justice (Hartman et al., 1999). Hence, female customers 621
may be more forgiving than male customers when compensation is offered for a service
failure, whereas male customers’ forgiveness may be more affected by informational recovery
than by compensation. Further insights would help service providers to offer an optimal
amount of compensation based on consumer characteristics as a means of eliciting
forgiveness following a service failure. Moreover, existing literature demonstrates that
financial compensation is not always the best recovery strategy, as in the case of high
credence services such as healthcare, where voice is the appropriate recovery strategy
(Harrison-Walker, 2019b). Further work could explore whether the effectiveness of voice as a
recovery strategy is contingent on consumers’ characteristics (e.g. perceived power) and the
quality of their relationship with the service providers.
More work is also needed to examine the relationship between consumer characteristics
and type of apology and their relative importance to compensation. A recent study by Hyodo
and Bolton (2021) found that religious consumers react more favorably to apology than to
compensation, particularly when they are reminded of their religious belief via priming
stimuli. This implies the need for more research to examine how consumer characteristics
such as ideological beliefs (e.g. political ideology) influence consumers’ preference for a
particular service recovery type (i.e. apology vs. compensation).
We acknowledge that this is not an exhaustive list of potential interactions. We call for
future research to examine the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of factors
influencing forgiveness in order to enrich our understanding of what drives consumer
forgiveness following a service failure and recovery and the conditions which may attenuate
or amplify the effect of each contributing factor.

Limitations and conclusion

We recognize the limitations of our study, particularly in relation to our method. First, we selected
only those articles written in English that were published in international peer-reviewed journals.
We acknowledge that useful insights can be obtained from other published works and non-
English peer-reviewed journals. However, our focus on international peer-reviewed journals
allowed us to establish a precise categorization of factors influencing consumer forgiveness based
on validated empirical findings from prior works. It is anticipated that this study will attract more
scholarly attention to the important study of consumer forgiveness in service research.
The purpose of the current study is to provide a synthesized overview of the current state
of knowledge relating to factors influencing consumer forgiveness, organized around the
three stages of consumer journey. As such, conducting a meta-analysis on the antecedents of
forgiveness is beyond the scope of the current study. We call for future research to build upon
our SLR by conducting a meta-analysis on the antecedents of consumer forgiveness based
upon the articles identified in the present study, to provide more precise estimates of the
effects of each forgiveness antecedent on consumer forgiveness outcomes.
Despite the long history of service failure and recovery research, our knowledge and
understanding of consumer forgiveness remains limited. Our SLR synthesizes research on
factors that influence consumer forgiveness while adopting the “journey” perspective.
Accordingly, we have proposed research directions for future studies pertaining to each
JSTP contributing factor and managerial tools that can help firms to map a consumer forgiveness
33,5 journey. To this end, we believe our work offers inspiration to service researchers and firms
as it raises their awareness of the breadth of factors that contribute to consumer forgiveness.
We encourage scholars and practitioners to continue to explore the concept of consumer
forgiveness given its significance to theory and practice.

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Corresponding author
Lay Peng Tan can be contacted at: laypeng.tan@mq.edu.au

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