EFFECT OF PERCEIVED RECOVERY JUSTICE ON REPURCHASE INTENTION THROUGH THE MEDIATING ROLE OF CUSTOMER RECOVERY

Objective: The purpose of the study is to examine a relationship between Perceived Recovery Justice and Customer Repurchase Intention in Service firms. It also examines the mediating role of Emotional forgiveness between Perceived Recovery Justice and Repurchase Intention and moderating role of Gender between perceived recovery justice and customer recovery satisfaction. Theoretical framework: Justice theory assess the consumer’s recovery experience by assessing the satisfaction level over the joint performance in terms of various types of justice, such as interaction, procedure, and distribution. Customer recovery satisfaction plays a crucial role in deciding repurchase intention and the growth of service firms. Due to this fact Customer Recovery in After-sales services has proven to be of significant area for formulating a strategic framework for a company. Therefore, the study focuses on assessing the effect of Recovery Justice of customers on Repurchase Intention. The study includes various factors such as procedural justice, interactional justice, distributive justice, emotional forgiveness on repurchases intention of customers. Moderating effect of gender between perceived recovery justice and customer recovery satisfaction is assessed. Method: Descriptive cross sectional research design was adopted for the study. A Structured Questionnaire was shared with the Customers of selected service firms that reported a Service Grievance recently. Convenience sampling technique was adopted in the study. Questionnaire was distributed to a total of 212 respondents out of which 196 valid responses were taken for data analysis. Results and conclusion: The results of the study reveal that perceived recovery justice had a significant impact on Customer Recovery Satisfaction, which in turn positively affected repurchase intention. Implications of the research: The Findings of the study may enable the service providers to provide consumers with clearly understandable explanations for any service failure and explain how the recovery efforts will be compensated for the failure. Originality/value: This paper offers insight for service firms into how to effectively deal with service grievances and bring service recovery satisfaction.


INTRODUCTION
Service firms need to deliver satisfying consumption experiences that appeal to consumers as a way of maintaining or increasing their market share. However, due to the inevitability of service failures, providing good service recovery following a service failure becomes an important goal for companies. Relative to research on Service Recovery justice, the role of forgiveness has received limited attention from marketing researchers. This research contributes to the service marketing literature by building upon and extending emerging assessments of consumers' evaluations of service recovery by investigating the neglected concept of forgiveness.
Customers' level of satisfaction and their future loyalty depend upon whether the customers are treated fairly (i.e., whether justice done). They found in their study that distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice are defining the service recovery process (McColl-Kennedy, J. R., & Sparks, B. A, 2003).
Based on justice theory, it is evident that consumers determine the extent of service failure recovery by assessing the ratio of what they receive from the service provider to what they contribute to the recovery process" (Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2018). "Consumers assess the After-sales services have proven to be of importance, and a strategic after-sales framework is necessary. However, intensive studies regarding after-sales in a specific industry are lacking. After-sales service is considered a tool for enhancing a valuable advantage for the customer as well as it is a business opportunity for the company. The Project focuses on the effect of Customer Recovery Satisfaction through the mediating effect of Customer Emotional forgiveness.
From perspective of service organization if there is an increase in customer service complaints and if it is not addressed properly then the service organization may lose respective customers. In order to overcome the challenges service organization, need to understand the customer in various perspectives. Since service firms facing such challenges, this study has been carried out to understand the customer complaints and its follow ups to answer the following research questions: Does perceived recovery justice affect repurchase intention? Does customer recovery satisfaction and emotional forgiveness influence repurchase intention? Hence, there is a need to analyse and study on after sales service, marketing, and consumer repurchase intentions of service firms. Therefore, the objective of the present study is to (1) Assess the effect of Perceived Recovery Justice on Customer Recovery Satisfaction, (2) examine the effect of Customer Recovery Satisfaction on Repurchase Intention, (3) analyse the effect of Perceived Recovery Justice on Emotional Forgiveness, (4) identify the effect of Emotional Forgiveness on Repurchase Intention, (5) Study the mediating effect of Customer Recovery Satisfaction between Perceived Recovery Justice and Repurchase Intention, (6) observe the mediating effect of Emotional Forgiveness between Perceived Recovery Justice and Repurchase Intention, (7) study the moderating effect of gender on Customer Recovery Satisfaction, and (8) assess the comprehensive model effect portraying the relationship between Customer Service Recovery and Repurchase Intention.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Consumer Decision Making refers to the process under which consumers go through in deciding what to purchase, including problem recognition, information searching, evaluation of alternatives, making the decision and post-purchase evaluation. Consumers decisions are the results of their life-style, which in turn is influenced by the marketing activities, culture, subculture, values, social status, demographics, family type, emotions, personality traits, motives, perception, and learning. Information search and then processing it, links these influences to consumers. The field of consumer behaviour, researchers have developed some fairly elaborate model of consumer decision process. Some well-known models are Nicosia Model, Howard-Sheth, and Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) model. A consumer has a lot of options while taking any decision. But basically, the consumer has five decision dimensions. What to buy? How much to buy? Where to buy? When to buy? How to buy?. By improving service quality, organisations can build customer loyalty which helps in increasing overall sales and leads sectors to have a high profit Sharma et al, (2023). Customer loyalty increases with a higher degree of satisfaction (Abdullah O et al, 2023). Bundschuh and Dezvane (2003) mentioned that "over the past few years, as sales growth for new products has slowed and product margins have fallen, Service-typically with higher margins and returns on invested capital-have become an increasingly attractive way to provide a point of competitive differentiation". Posselt and Gerstner (2005) states that, "there are two types of service for sales; service before the sale take place (pre-sale service), and after the sales is over (after sales service). Considering these categories of sales service which each has marked characteristics which are unique". Customer services offered by service firms needs to documented with positive and negative feedback for future references. A proper procedure and guidelines must be implemented so that customer services can refer and follow (Zailani et al, 2023). Porter (1980) has suggested that "there are two ways that a firm can succeed relative to its competitors-either become low-cost producer or develop a sustainable differentiation of the firm's product". Arvinder (1996) states that "the demand for service support in a distribution environment has steadily increased in recent times. He also mentions; Anecdotal evidence suggest that in order to compete effectively in the market place, today's firms need to reevaluate their existing distribution and after sales service support channels, and make adjustments when necessary". Larissa (1994) "the concept of customer service has been a generic term used by industry and academia to describe a set of activities in which a firm engages to win and keep customers. Simply differentiation of customer service refers it to a variable that expands the image of a product and thereby offers the possibility of giving the firm's product market acceptance, growth and the possibility of market dominance". Eppinette (1997) customer service has been emerging as a competitive weapon for business firms it is becoming harder and harder to compete on manufacturing excellence alone".
Interactional justice refers to a customer's perceived interpersonal treatment based on the company employees' behaviour. Examples include employees' politeness, dignity, and respect through the interactions between customers and employees. Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of how costs and benefits are distributed to customers. For instance, service providers may offer either financial or non-financial compensation to restore a relationship with their customers. Procedural justice concerns the perceived fairness of the processes by which service failures are resolved. As an example, service providers could establish customer-oriented policies and procedures to support customer communication and encourage customer participation in the recovery process. The foundation of justice theory lies in social psychology.
Emotional forgiveness relates to the process of "the replacement of negative unforgiving emotions with positive other-oriented emotions."

Service Recovery Experience of Consumers
Firms implement different strategies aimed at providing excellent service quality to consumers. However, all services firms face service failures due to the inevitability of occasional poor performances. A service failure refers to a service performance that falls below a customer's expectations (You et al., 2020). : "When service failures occur, customers expect firms to respond effectively and quickly with long recovery times leading to additional negative consequences, including negative word of mouth, and lower levels of recovery satisfaction". Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2019 "Service recovery is the process by which a firm responds to a customer's complaint in an effort to retain that customer". Seiders and Berry, 1998, "When a customer evaluates his/her recovery experience, the perceived justice/fairness about the complaint resolution process will impact the customer's satisfaction with the service recovery. The justice literature defines service recovery fairness as a customer's perceived degree of justice during the complaint-handling process". Seiders and Berry, 1998;Tax et al., 1998: The service justice construct is usually studied on the basis of three related justice dimensions: interactional justice, distributive justice, and procedural justice. The justice concept is widely studied in both consumer behaviour (Homburg et al., 2007;Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2018) and organizational behaviour (Colquitt et al., 2001;Haynie et al., 2016) to explain how individuals react mentally and behaviourally to complex conflicts. Justice theory suggests that consumers determine the extent of service failure recovery by assessing the ratio of what they receive from the service provider to what they contribute to the recovery process (Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2018).
Specifically, consumers evaluate the recovery experience by assessing the satisfaction level over the joint performance in terms of various types of justice, such as interaction, procedure, and distribution. The more a consumer feels satisfied with the service provider's resolution performance, the better chance for the consumer to forgive the firm and continue the business relationship.

Forgiveness in Service Recovery Process
According to Homburg et al., 2007;Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2018 "In addressing the effects of customer perceived justice, much research focuses on outcomes such as customer satisfaction, word of mouth, brand loyalty, and behaviour intention". Relative to research on these more popular concepts, forgiveness has received limited attention from marketing researchers (Suri et al., 2019). Although there is no a universal definition for what the forgiveness is, it is widely agreed by researchers that forgiveness is a multidimensional concept. In this research, we anchor our study based on the thought that forgiveness concept encompasses both interpersonal and intrapersonal components (Baumeister et al., 1998). Enright & the Human Development Study Group, 1996, p. 108, "Enright and his colleagues define the intrapersonal dimension of forgiveness as "a willingness to abandon one's right to resentment, condemnation, and subtle revenge toward an offender who acts unjustly, while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and even love toward him or her." Intrapersonal forgiveness refers to a process that allows one to let go of and reduce negative emotions such as anger and resentment and no longer hold a grudge toward the perpetrator".
Additionally, McCullough and his colleagues (1997, pp.321-322) define the interpersonal dimension of forgiveness as "the set of motivational changes whereby one becomes (a) decreasingly motivated to retaliate 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." According to Worthington et al. (2007, p.291), "decisional forgiveness refers to "a behavioural intention to resist an unforgiving stance and to respond differently toward a transgressor," and emotional forgiveness relates to the process of "the replacement of negative unforgiving emotions with positive other-oriented emotions." The literature reviews pertaining to forgiveness suggests that emotional and decisional forgiveness are different processes that perform differently in conflict resolution situations. Specifically, emotional forgiveness encompasses changed cognition and emotion that motivate one to forgive the transgression and cultivate positive affect toward the offender. In contrast, decisional forgiveness could be a sincere form of forgiving that involves deciding to change one's behaviour (Worthington and Scherer, 2004). 6 Behavioural forgiving and emotional forgiving are two different forms of forgiving. The present study draws from the literature to present a theoretical framework where perceived justice leads to behavioural forgiveness through emotional forgiveness, which is considered a key in explaining post-transgression behavioural reactions (Worthington et al., 2007)".
From the literature it is evident that various studies have been conducted on the topic of Service Recovery to know its future potential, to find the effectiveness of it in after sales services. However, lack of information and the changing needs of people may have limited those studies. The literature indicates a lack of research in connecting Emotional forgiveness and Repurchase Intention. The study therefore fills a gap by integrating Recovery Justice, Forgiveness Component and Repurchase Intention. The study also addresses whether the gender have any moderating role in influencing recovery decisions.

METHODOLOGY
Objective is to find effect of forgiveness on managing the service recovery experience for after sales service. Research Model Contains Perceived Justice Factors (Interactional justice, Distributive justice, and Procedural justice) as independent variables and, Repurchase intention as Dependent Variables. Gender act as moderating Variable, Recovery Satisfaction and Emotional Forgiveness as Mediating Variable. Quantitative Research Design is used in this study. Quantitative research is referred to as the process of collecting as well as analysing numerical data. It is generally used to find patterns, averages, predictions, as well as causeeffect relationships between the variables being studied. It is also used to generalize the results of a particular study to the population in consideration.
Convenience sampling techniques was adopted for the study. A Structured Questionnaire was shared with the Customers of service firms have recently reported a Service Grievance. Convenience sampling technique was adopted in the study. Questionnaire was distributed to a total of 212 respondents out of which 196 valid responses were taken for data analysis. Target respondents where customers of service firms have recorded their complaints. The method used for data collection was "Questionnaire method" that is structured one. The words used were simple and helps in avoiding confusion and misinterpretation among the respondents. Various Visualization tools were used for analysing and presenting our research The survey asked the participants to recall a service problem that the participants recently encountered and worked with the service company/service provider to resolve the issue. The participants were also asked to describe the service failure scenarios before responding to the structured questions. The reported failures incidents included a variety of service problems such as booking of wrong service, rescheduling a service appointment, not fulfilling the service on time, and requesting a refund due to poor service. In summary, the survey required that the participants were recently contacted, communicated with, and interacted with a service provider to resolve the service failure. The items are measured on 5point Likert's scale. All the questions in the instrument have been constructed based on the existing literature.

Hypothesis
H1: There is a positive significant relationship between PRJ and CRS H2: There is a positive significant relationship between PRJ and EF H3: There is a positive significant relationship between CRS and RI H4: There is a positive significant relationship between EF and RI H5: There is a positive significant mediating effect of CRS between PRJ and RI H6: There is a positive significant mediating effect of EF between PRJ and RI H7: There is a positive significant moderating effect of Gender. H8: There is a significant model fit among the variables of the study.
The sample size of 196 respondents' primary data collected through questionnaire and the same was evaluated with the help of statistical tools like reliability analysis, and Regression analysis. The results of demographic analysis indicate the frequencies of the gender. Out of 196 responses there were 127 Male respondents forming a percentage of 65 while there were 66 female respondents forming a percentage of 34. This confirms the fact that most of the Customers who registered their grievances were men. With respect to age distribution of respondents, the table shows that 132 (67%) of the respondents are 20-30 years. 38(20%) are within the age group of 31-40 years, 18(9%) are within the age group of 41-50 years and 8(4%) are within the age group 50 & above. Majority of respondents were between the age group of 20-30. From the survey, the result reveals that the 75(38%) are married, 115(59%) are unmarried. The marital status of the respondents is important to know the customer's perception of Service recovery. Also, the result reveals that 107(55%) are Working, 61(31%) are Students, and 28(14%) are Home Makers.
The questionnaire was checked for reliability. The reliability of the instrument was assessed using Cronbach alpha test and it was found that the instrument was reliable. Results of reliability test are based on final survey results and are shown in the table. Cronbach is a coefficient of internal consistency. Alpha coefficient ranges in value from 0 to 1 and may be 8 used to describe the reliability of factors extracted from multi-point formatted questionnaires or scales (i.e. 1=strongly agree to 5=strongly Disagree). The higher the score, the more reliable the generated scale is. The reliability statistics indicates that the Cronbach's alpha value of 0.966 and confirms the instrument found to be reliable.

Descriptive Statistics
The following table shows the mean and standard deviation for both the independent and dependent variables. N -the number of valid observations for the variables. Mean is the arithmetic mean across the observations. It is the most widely used measure of central tendency. It is commonly called the average. The mean is sensitive to extremely large or small values. Std.-Standard deviation is the square root of the variance. It measures the spread of a set of observations. The larger the standard deviation is, the more spread out the observations.

Correlation Analysis
Correlation is a statistic measure used to determine the size and direction of relationship between two variables. Correlation analyses are done to find out whether there is significant relationship among the variables used. The below table indicates the correlation between the variables used in the model. All the variables are significantly correlated with each other and have relationships with each other variable.

Regression Analysis
Regression analysis is a technique for determining the statistical relationship in between two or more variables where a change in the dependent variables is associated with and depends on a change in one or more independent variables. It was found that, • 68% significant relationship between PRJ and CRS • 59% significant relationship between PRJ and EF • 61% significant relationship between CRS and RI • 55% significant relationship between EF and RI H1: There is a positive significant relationship between PRJ and CRS According to the result of the study, there is a significant positive relationship between Perceived Recovery Justice and Customer Recovery Satisfaction with p<0.05.
This means that the Perceived Recovery Justice influences customer recovery satisfaction by 68%. Therefore, it validates the H1.
H2: There is a positive significant relationship between PRJ and EF The Result shows that there is a significant positive relationship between Perceived Recovery Justice and Emotional Forgiveness with p<0.05. This means that the Perceived Recovery Justice influences Emotional forgiveness by 59%. Hence H2 is accepted.
H3: There is a positive significant relationship between CRS and RI The Customer Recovery Satisfaction has 61% influences over Repurchase Intention, which is a positive significant relationship with p<0.05.H3 is valid.
H4: There is a positive significant relationship between EF and RI The Result shows that there is a significant positive relationship between Emotional Forgiveness and Repurchase Intention with p<0.05. This means that the Perceived Recovery Justice influences Emotional forgiveness by 55%. Hence H2 is accepted.

Mediating Analysis
Mediation analysis is done to assess the mediation role of Customer Recovery Satisfaction and Emotional forgiveness in achieving the Repurchasing intention of the customers. The results show that there is a significant mediation of Customer recovery satisfaction and emotional forgiveness in influencing the decisions of customer repurchase intention. There is a direct significant effect between Perceived Justice and Repurchase Intention, with inclusion of the mediator the relationship was still significant and hence Customer Recovery Satisfaction and Emotional Forgiveness partially mediate between Customer Perceived Justice and Repurchase Intention to adopt. Therefore, H5 and H6 are supported.   12

Moderation Analysis
Moderation analysis is done to determine whether the relationship between two variables depends on (is moderated by) the value of a third variable. From the results, it is found that Gender moderates the impact of Perceived Justice on Customer Recovery Satisfaction.
H7: To study the moderating effect of Gender. It was found that Gender has 76% significant moderating effect.

PLS-SEM Analysis
SEM Analysis is done to assess the comprehensive model fit of the study variable The PLS-SEM was applied to analyze the collected data. It assesses the relationship between the latent variables. Hypothesis testing and mediation analysis is done using the above structural model. The R Square value for each variable is found to be significant.
H8: There is a significant model fit among the variables of the study.  13

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The findings of the study shows that the Perceived Recovery Justice such as Procedural Justice, Distributive Justice, and Interactional Justice has significant relation with Customer Repurchase intention. The result has shown that Customer Recovery Satisfaction and Emotional forgiveness acts as significant mediating variables. Gender has a significant moderating role in influencing the Recovery Satisfaction of Consumers. The Study addresses an important gap in the marketing literature in terms of testing emotional forgiveness as a mediating lever that links Perceived Recovery Justice to Customer Repurchase Intention. The result of the study has shown that by improving the interpersonal treatment and the procedural way of interpreting the customer's grievance, chance of increasing the repurchase intention is high. The study further analyses the role of gender on the impacts of perceived justice on consumer's recovery satisfaction. Consequently, the results provide timely and important evidence to help understand the fast-growing after sales consumer segment as well as service providers. The summary of the findings include: • There is a 68% positive significant relationship between PRJ and CRS • There is a 59% a positive significant relationship between PRJ and EF • There is a 61% positive significant relationship between CRS and RI • There is a 55% positive significant relationship between EF and RI • Customer Recovery Satisfaction partially mediates between Customer Perceived Justice and Repurchase Intention • Emotional Forgiveness partially mediates between Customer Perceived Justice and Repurchase Intention The Implications of the study shows that the Customer Perceived Justice has a significant relationship with Repurchase intentions of Customer. The literature indicates a lack of research in connecting Emotional forgiveness and Repurchase Intention. . The study therefore fills a gap by integrating Recovery Justice, Forgiveness Component and Repurchase Intention. Also, the Gender has been considered as a moderating role which will be highly useful for further studies based on this research. Moreover, these findings enrich other marketing literature in the context of Service Recovery Process. In addition, the study contributed to the quality-of-service marketing literature by identifying new dimensions and confirmed the validity of these dimensions with an intention to improve service recovery.
The study has several implications for management that can be derived from the results of the study model. The Result has shown that by improving the Perceived Recovery Justice, there is a high probability of improving the service recovery process which in turn increases the repurchase intention of customers. This can result in the increase of Net Performing Score of the company. Since service firms gives more importance to the satisfaction of customers, the company can appeal more to the interactional and distributive justice in order to retain their customer base. This will also prevent the negative word of mouth about the services of the company.
Another contribution of this study is to develop an integrated framework in dealing with service recovery issues. Based on available data, the firms should approach a person with service grievance in a way that he should consider an option of repurchasing from the company. The research also suggests that within the model, Customer Recovery Satisfaction and Emotional forgiveness are influencing factors. Therefore, administrators and managers should consider these aspects in order to increase the expected performance and effort of the service provided by the company.

CONCLUSION
The study aims at assessing the relationship between Perceived Recovery Justice and Customer Repurchase Intention in Service firms. The study addressed the research questions with the findings that perceived recovery justice positively influence the customers repurchase intention. Also, the study addresses that customer recovery satisfaction and emotional forgiveness positively and significantly influence repurchase intention. The customer recovery satisfaction and emotional forgiveness partially mediates the relationship between perceived recovery justice and repurchase intention. The study also examined the moderating role of Gender between perceived recovery justice and customer recovery satisfaction and found significant. The results of the study reveal that the service firms may emphasis more on the consumer perceived recovery justice to make the satisfied which in turn makes them to buy again or get service again from the same service provider. The Findings of the study may enable the service providers to provide consumers with clearly understandable explanations for any service failure and explain how the recovery efforts will be compensated for the failure. It contributes to the service recovery justice literature and adds value to the existing contributions towards customer recovery satisfaction and emotional foregiveness.
The current study has certain limitations that can be addressed in the future research. Research conducted is confined to a particular geographical region. The Study is limited to Chennai residents only and findings of the study are on the assumption that information provided by the respondents is correct and unbiased. Since after sales service of Air conditioner alone is considered, the results may be subject to change for after sales services of other devices. Only the gender is considered as moderating role in this project. Since all the participants of the survey are customers from same company, it may restrict the generalization validity of the result. Future research can be done with a large number of sample sizes to better understand the impact of Perceived Justice and Emotional Forgiveness in the Service Recovery Process. Not only for after sales service providers, can the hypothesis be tested but for other service providers as well. And the research can also be conducted based on other variables including behavioural forgiveness as this study limits itself only on emotional forgiveness of the customers. Several other beneficial areas can be explored regarding service recovery such as quality of Service recovery and integration of models also can be utilized to analyse more specific functions in recovery process like mode of contact and also for determining factors leading to brand acceptance and continuance intention of usage.