A Qualitative Assessment of the Service Encounter

This qualitative study collected regarding recalled service encounters by consumers across a broad range of encounters not just in service failures found respondents recalled service encounters from the hospitality leisure industry in 42% of encounters. Usually, the consumer recalls and reports at least two types of fairness when recalling a service encounter with procedural fairness the most reported, followed by interactional and then distributive fairness. The study suggests using fairness across a spectrum of service encounters and not just when a service failure is recalled and is also the first hospitality or service sector study to view service encounter outcomes into types of initial satisfaction, service recovery, and double deviation and then to follow up by assessing fairness types across outcomes.