The impact of perceived service recovery justice on brand evangelism: the mediating role of customer forgiveness and the moderating role of customer religiosity

Purpose Service failures have increased considerably in recent years, as seen by the rising number of consumer complaints. Service failure is unavoidable owing to human involvement in service delivery. This study aims to examine the relationship between perceived service recovery justice and brand evangelism of banks directly and indirectly through mediating customer forgiveness. As well as this study examines the moderating role of religiosity in the relationship between perceived service recovery justice and customer forgiveness. Design/methodology/approach The data collected from 384 bank customers in Egypt were evaluated using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method. Findings The results confirmed that perceived distributive, interpersonal and informational service recovery justice significantly affects banks’ customer forgiveness and brand evangelism. Moreover, customer forgiveness partially mediated the positive relationship between perceived distributive, interpersonal and informational service recovery justice and brand evangelism of banks. In addition, religiosity moderated the relationship between interpersonal and informational service recovery justice and customer forgiveness. Originality/value This study is unique in banking because it goes beyond emotion and cognition to examine responses such as evangelism. Furthermore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study to investigate the mediating effect of forgiveness and the moderating role of religiosity in banking.