Evaluation of methods used in the compensation of logistics service failures by customers: An experimental research

E-commerce has grown exponentially in recent years and has become more popular and widespread, especially due to the pandemic. In this highly competitive sector, businesses face a number of pressures from time to time and this leads to serious logistics service failures. Although all businesses aim to provide flawless products and services, today even the best performing businesses face service failures. Since logistics service failures are inevitable for businesses, it is very important to develop effective strategies to recovery for these failures and to offer recovery that will increase customers' satisfaction levels and repurchase intentions. Although past research has focused on how to effectively compensate for logistics service failures, there is no research that clearly demonstrates whether the response time or the amount of discount offered is more important to customers. Aiming to fill this gap in the literature, this study aims to determine whether the response time or the amount of the discount has a greater impact on customers' satisfaction levels and repurchase intentions for recovery offered for high and low criticality defects. The study also aimed to identify the type of compensation that most increases the satisfaction levels and repurchase intentions of both male and female customers, as well as Generation Z, Y and X customers in the case of high and low criticality. Accordingly, a scenario-based experimental design method was adopted to collect data and a total of 697 participants aged 18-53 were reached. In the study, frequency analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis and factorial univariate anova analysis were conducted. The results reveal that in the case of high criticality, customers attach more importance to the response time in terms of satisfaction level and in the case of low criticality, customers attach more importance to the amount of discount in the recovery in terms of repurchase intention. In addition, it has been found that there are significant differences in the level of importance of recovery time and discount amount in case of high and low criticality for both male and female customers and for Generation Z, Y and X customers, and the impact of these two elements on their satisfaction level and repurchase intentions. These differences are mentioned in the sections on discussion, conclusions and recommendations, theoretical evaluations and recommendations for the sector.