The use of AI chatbots in frontline customer service is beneficial as it can provide quick service responses, cost-saving on human employees and accelerate customers’ decision-making process. However, implementing chatbots can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, companies benefit from the use of chatbots. On the other hand, it may hurt customer experience as customers perceive chatbots are less trustworthy and show less social presence. Service failures today have become more unpredictable with the increasing complexity of social environments. Aligning with the trends of online customer service, customers are most likely to encounter a chatbot when seeking online customer service to solve service failures. With most of the previous literature investigating customers’ perceptions of chatbots and chatbot-related service failures, little research has focused on the area where chatbots as service recovery agents and how customers perceive the use of chatbots handling their service requests after service failures.

Due to fierce competition, many domestic fashion businesses are suffering difficulty in securing and maintaining customers. Accordingly, fashion companies are devoting all their energy to secure customers by using high quality and diverse strategies for distribution and promotion, and to secure loyalty by satisfying customers with the offer of excellent service. Thus, it is very important to provide systematic service recovery strategy available for handling service failure effectively. Therefore, the purpose of this study is comprehensively analyzing influences of expectation dis-confirmation and perceived justice for service recovery upon consumers' satisfaction and loyalty. The findings are as follows. First, as for the service failure that customers experienced, the more consumers who expect it to be recovered led to the higher formation of expectation-compensation dis-confirmation. Second, it was indicated that the higher seriousness in service failure that customers experienced led to the lower satisfaction and loyalty to service recovery. Third, as a result of examining influence of expectation-compensation dis-confirmation for servicefailure recovery upon consumer satisfaction and loyalty, the customers who showed more positive dis-confirmation to expectation-compensation were indicated to form the more satisfaction and loyalty. Fourth, as a result of examining the influence of the perceived justice in the process of service-failure recovery upon customer satisfaction, all in 3 dimensions of justice had effect on customer satisfaction.

This paper reviewed the relationship between perceived justice and service quality, and the moderating effect of gender in the franchise system of food service business. Based on the responses from 135 franchisees, the results of multiple regression analysis showed that distributive and procedural justice have positive relationships with almost service quality factors. The results of moderating analysis showed that male franchisees have more positive relationships with almost service quality factors than female franchisee while in distributive justice, and that female franchisees have more positive relationships with almost service quality factors than male franchisee while in procedural justice.

Purpose – Past research has not given much attention to the roles of consumers’ social relationship type in the effects of justice type of service failure recovery alternatives on their satisfaction to the alternative exposed to them. Current research aimed at exploring the moderation role of consumers’ social relationship central versus peripheral in the effects of justice types of service failure recovery alternatives on the recovery satisfaction, and this research also explored whether the level of satisfaction to interaction justice-focused alternative are significantly different between the two, their social relationship central and peripheral relationship. Research design, data, and methodology – 2(social relationship central versus peripheral) between-subjects design was employed. 50 participants for each experimental group there were. Participants of each group took forceful steps in choosing one between the procedural justice-focused alternative and the distribution justice-focused alternative. χ2-analysis was used to verify that the number of choosing each alternative becomes different between the two experimental groups, and a one way ANOVA was used to verify that the extent to which participants are satisfied to the alternative chosen by them becomes different between the two groups. Results – The number of participants choosing procedural justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship central was larger than that at the group of social relationship peripheral, whereas the number of participants choosing distribution justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship peripheral was larger than that at the group of social relationship central. And the level of satisfaction to procedural justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship central was higher than that at the group of social relationship peripheral, whereas the level of satisfaction to distribution justice-focused alternative at the group of social relationship peripheral was higher than that at the group of social relationship central. In addition, the level of satisfaction to interaction justice-focused alternative was not significantly different between the two groups. Conclusions – Marketers should give attention to the type of justice when developing alternatives by which consumers’ service failure can be recovered. They should suggest procedural justice-focused alternative to consumers under social relationship central, whereas they should develop distribution justice-focused alternative for consumers under social relationship peripheral. And in the process of recovering service failure they also should focus on interaction justice.