The Effectiveness of Customer Participation and Affective Misforecasting in Online Post-Recovery Satisfaction

Abstract

Online service recovery is directly related to customer follow-up behavior and plays a central role in the sustainable service-oriented enterprise development. This study explored the influence mechanism about how the type of customer participation (physical, mental, and emotional) improves customers’ post-recovery satisfaction by reducing negative bias. Furthermore, the moderating effect of the information format of opening remarks (informal, formal, or hybrid) on the relationship between customer participation and affective misforecasting was investigated. A total of 720 Chinese individuals participated in an online experiment. The results show that, first, only mental and physical participation can improve customers’ post-recovery satisfaction, whereas emotional participation cannot. Second, the direction of affective misforecasting is a mediator between customer participation and post-recovery satisfaction, and compared with negative bias (feeling worse than forecasted), when customers form positive bias (feeling better than forecasted), their post-recovery satisfaction is higher. Third, the fit of the information format of the opening remarks and customer participation type can make customers feel better than forecasted—to generate higher post-recovery satisfaction, for physical and mental participation specifically, the formal format of opening remarks is most suitable, whereas for emotional participation, the hybrid format of opening remarks is most suitable.