E-commerce service failure and recovery

Purpose
This paper critically reviews existing literature on e-commerce service failure and recovery with an objective to determine the current state of research in this relatively new business context and propose an agenda for research to tackle important under-researched themes.

Design/methodology/approach
The systematic literature review method highlights and synthesizes the most important issues in e-commerce service failure and recovery.

Findings
The review found two major themes around perspectives of customers and operations. The former includes issues of justice, ethics, and the customer’s familiarity and history with a service provider. The latter included issues of e-commerce service design incorporating failure, fair and equitable compensation, and product returns.

Research limitations/implications
This paper is a systematic literature review with no empirical study or findings.

Practical implications
The proposed research agenda should provide practical implications for practitioners to consider and validate the themes emerging from the systematic literature review.

Social implications
The findings synthesize customer and operational perspectives to service failure and recovery initiatives. The proposed follow-on research provides a better understanding of how practitioners might address these perspectives to enhance the customer experience.

Original/value
This paper’s systematic literature review contributes by synthesizing e-commerce service failure and recovery, which is an under-researched topic, for better understanding.