Interaction between functional and relational service quality: hierarchy vs. compensation

The main goal of this research study is to examine the form of interaction between functional and relational service quality in their links to customer satisfaction. Two competing hypotheses were tested: hierarchy and compensation-seeking. According to the hierarchy hypothesis, emotional-relational facets (relational service quality) only become important when core aspects are provided in an efficient manner (functional service quality). By contrast, the compensation-seeking hypothesis proposes that relational service quality helps to compensate for a sub-optimal level of functional service quality. To examine the generalizability of results to different types of service contexts, customers from three independent service settings participated in the research study. Our results confirmed the compensation-seeking hypothesis in the three samples. Accordingly, relational service quality was able to attenuate the reduction in customer satisfaction when functional service quality was sub-optimal. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of findings and ideas for research and practice.