Previous studies have shown how a strong relationship between a customer and a firm can exacerbate dissatisfaction after a service failure. However, the effectiveness of providing preferential benefits to loyal customers during a service recovery has been less explored. The purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of differential treatment on post-recovery responses by customers’ loyalty status as well as the moderating role of scarcity cues. By using a between subjects factorial design, the results revealed that less loyal customers’ post-recovery evaluations could be less positive when they were given less compensation than loyal customers. Moreover, scarcity cues were not sufficient to alleviate less loyal customers’ negative feelings in this circumstance. Hospitality practitioners may want to treat customers equally during service failures and use scarcity cues to mitigate loyal customers’ feelings. Future studies may find it fruitful to research individual differences in such effects.

先前的研究表明，客户与公司之间的牢固关系如何加剧服务故障后的不满。但是，在服务恢复期间向忠诚客户提供优惠的有效性的研究很少。本文的目的是通过客户的忠诚度以及稀缺线索的调节作用，研究差异对待对恢复后响应的影响。通过使用主体间析因设计，结果表明，与忠诚客户相比，忠诚度客户获得的报酬较少时，忠诚度较低的客户对恢复后的评估可能会没有那么积极。此外，在这种情况下，稀缺性提示不足以减轻忠诚度较低的客户的负面情绪。酒店从业人员可能希望在服务故障期间平等对待客户，并使用稀缺线索来减轻忠实客户的感觉。未来的研究可能会发现研究此类效应的个体差异很有成果。