The evolution of customer defection intentions in the online travel agency industry

Abstract

The drivers of customer defection intentions following service failures are dynamic. However, scant research has focused on how these intentions evolve in response to early and later-stage recovery efforts. Using a three time-lag interval survey design, our findings demonstrate that defection intentions are a function of brand distrust in the early recovery stage. However, these intentions change in later stages as the effects of perceived recovery and brand avoidance strengthen. Specifically, within the early stage, brand distrust is a central cue for customer defection, but in later stages, perceived recovery and brand avoidance strongly facilitate customer defection intentions. Over time, a notable theoretical implication is that brand distrust and avoidance can effectively bridge the attitude-based mediators of perceived recovery on defection intentions. Therefore, these findings can be used to predict both the brand and the customer relationship of the mechanism of a dominant defection logic in a recovery category.