The Effect of Perceived Justice on Satisfaction , Value , Trust and Affect : Evidence from a Business-to-Business Context

This research investigates the effect of distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice on satisfaction, value, trust and affect. Furthermore, this study argues whether this variables influences behavioral intentions in a B2B setting. To test these relationships, the present study uses data from 198 members of purchasing committee in medical laboratory. Structural equations modeling using PLS was performed to empirically test the relationship between the constructions this study. The results of the structural equation analysis reveal that all of these hypotheses are supported. Following a discussion of the results, research limitations and directions for future research are offered.


INTRODUCTION
The concepts and principles of justice, as an evaluative judgment about the appropriateness of a person's treatment by others have stemmed from the attempt of social scientists (Adams, 1965;Blau, 1964).Recent research has examined the effects of customer justice perception on satisfaction with service recovery, affect, organization commitment, trust; purchase intention, consumption experience and word-of-mouth communication (Yi and Gong, 2008;Aurier and Siadou-Martin, 2007;Homburg and Fürst, 2005;Tax et al., 1998;Blodgett et al., 1997).More recently, academic and managerial interest in the conceptualization of justice principles (distributive, procedural and interactional justice) increased in the marketing literature (Smith et al., 1999;Sparks and McColl-Kennedy, 1998;Tax et al., 1998).Oliver and Swan (1989a) suggest that justice is an additional factor in explaining customers' satisfaction that is not captured in the expectancy disconfirmation paradigm of measuring service quality.In order to more fundamentally comprehend effective service recovery, researchers have utilized justice theory as the main framework for examining service recovery methods.A justice theory framework has gained popularity in explaining how consumers evaluate service providers' reactions to service failure/recovery (Nikbin et al., 2010).Justice refers to an act considered "just" because someone perceives it as such (Cropanzano and Greenberg, 1997;Leventhal, 1980;Seiders and Berry, 1998).Likewise, fairness has been viewed as a fundamental base against which people judge the nature of relationships among people and between social institutions and individuals (Clemmer and Schneider, 1996).Bagozzi (1974) introduced the issue of fairness/equity to marketing through marketing exchange theory.Justice perception is a multifaceted construct, encompassing three dimensions: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice (Yi and Gong, 2008;Homburg and Fürst, 2005).Distributive justice refers to the degree to which customers feel they have been treated fairly.Procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness of the policies and procedures by the organization.Interactional justice refers to the extent to which customers are treated fairly in their interactions with organization employees (Yi and Gong, 2008;Voorhees and Brady, 2005;Tax et al., 1998).
Although the influential research by Oliver and Swan (1989a) facilitated the application of the justice framework to customer evaluations of products or services, little is known about the relative impact of the different justice dimensions beyond the wellestablished expectancy disconfirmation paradigm.Despite recent advances in marketing, there is still much to learn about influence of customer perceptions of justice on satisfaction, trust, affect and value and intention customer.Though some research has examined the effects of perceived justice in service recovery (McCollough et al., 2000;Smith et al., 1999;Tax et al., 1998;Blodgett et al., 1993), the relative effects of the dimensions of justice on satisfaction and other variables and in other contexts have not been well addressed.Thus research is needed that examines these relationships.
The main objective of this study is to identify the nature of justice components experienced by individuals in purchase experiences in business to business context and also to investigate interrelationships among perceived justice, affect, trust, satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

Conceptual framework and hypotheses:
Customer justice perception: Recent researches has investigate the effects of customer justice perception on satisfaction with service recovery, affect, organization commitment, trust, purchase intention, consumption experience and word-of-mouth communication (Yi and Gong, 2008;Aurier and Siadou-Martin, 2007;Homburg and Fürst, 2005;Tax et al., 1998;Blodgett et al., 1997).Justice refers to an act considered "just" because someone perceives it as such (Seiders and Berry, 1998;Cropanzano and Greenberg, 1997;Leventhal, 1980).However, few studies have examined outcome variables in a service delivery setting.Customer justice perception is a multifaceted construct, encompassing three dimensions: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice (Yi and Gong, 2008;Homburg and Fürst, 2005).
Distributive justice: distributive justice refers to the degree to which customers feel they have been treated fairly (Yi and Gong, 2008).Distributive justice focuses on the outcome of the exchange that includes such monetary rewards as refunds for failed service, discount, coupons and etc. Furthermore it has been mentioned that distributive justice relates to the compensation offered to dissatisfied customers to resolve their complaints (Mattila, 2001).
Procedural justice: Procedural justice refers to the perceived justice of the policies and methods by the organization.In fact Procedural justice refers to the methods that the firm uses to deal with the problems arising during service delivery in aspect such as accessibility, timing/speed, process control, delay and flexibility to a dapt to the customer needs (Rio-Lanza et al., 2009).
Interactional justice: Interactional justice refers to the extent to which customers are treated fairly in their relationships with organization employees (Yi and Gong, 2008;Voorhees and Brady, 2005;Tax et al., 1998).
Distributive justice involves three principles: cost, amount of service and excellence.
Procedural justice includes responding to unusual requests, efficient service, low waiting times and helpful service employees.
Interactional justice concerns the extent to which employees treat customers with friendliness, objectivity, honesty, politeness and genuine interest (Yi and Gong, 2008).
Customer justice perception, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions: Customer satisfaction is a concept that has been widely discussed in the literature (Bigne et al., 2005).Understanding what influences consumer satisfaction can help business owners and managers design and deliver appropriate offers that cater to market demand (Wu and Liang, 2009).It can be defined as the degree to which one believes that an experience create positive feelings (Rust and Oliver, 1994).Customer satisfaction in the B2B context is often defined as a positive affective state resulting from the appraisal of all aspects of a firm's working relationship with another firm (Geyskens et al., 1999).Paste studied indicated that justice have a positive effect on customer satisfaction.Goodwin and Ross (1992) applied a theory of equity to explain how service recovery influences customer satisfaction.Their study indicated that customer response to service recovery is determined by two types of perceived justice: procedural justice and interactive justice.The Goodwin study presented the justice framework for customer service scenarios in four different service businesses.
• Distributive justice: The tangible compensation received by a customer after a complaint • Procedural justice: The opportunity for the customer to present information and express feelings • Interactive justice: The apology to the customer Other studies found that, when tangible compensation is offered, an apology and an opportunity for the consumer to express the problem and his/her feelings increase the perception of justice and customer satisfaction.When no tangible compensation is offered, an apology and the opportunity for the customer to present information and express his/her feelings have a reduced effect on perception of justice and satisfaction (Chang et al., 2007).Also, the positive relationship between perceptions of distributive justice and consumer satisfaction is well established, specifically in the handling of complaints (Aurier and Martin, 2007).
Oliver (1997) referred to behavioral intentions as the stated likelihood to engage in a specific behavior.Zeithaml et al. (1996) grouped behavioral intentions into favorable behavioral intentions (positive word of mouth, recommending, remaining loyal, spend more and paying a price premium) and unfavorable behavioral intentions (negative word of mouth, switching to another company, complaining to external agencies, less business with company).Research findings indicate that satisfaction is highly correlated with behavioral responses such as complaining behavior, negative/positive word of mouth and repurchase intentions (Bigne et al., 2008;Ladhari, 2007;Athanassopoulos et al., 2001;Szymanski and Henard, 2001).
We test the relationship between Customer justice perception, satisfaction and behavioral intentions in our research to ascertain whether the relationships identified in previous studies can be supported in an industrial setting.Based on these arguments, we test the following hypotheses: H1: Distributive justice is positively related to customer satisfaction.H2: Procedural justice is positively related to customer satisfaction.H3: Interactional justice is positively related to customer satisfaction.H4: Customer satisfaction is positively related to behavioral intentions.

Customer justice perception, perceived value and behavioral intentions:
The role of value is becoming an increasing concern to costomers and marketers because it is one of the most important forces in today's marketplace (Ryu et al., 2008).Zeithaml (1988) defines value as the consumer overall assessment of the utility of a product based on perception of what's received and what is given.More specific, perceived value can be summarized as a trade-off between perceived benefits and perceived costs (Lovelock, 2000).As discussed in Oliver and Swan (1989a), distributive justice implies a comparison between costs and benefits.In other words, customers focus on whether they get what they deserved.Time spent and price paid are compared to the received outcome.The perception of distributive justice may contribute to perceived value.Moreover, some local issues also appear to be particularly relevant in the service evaluation, such as the time needed for delivery of the service and the convenience of the overall process (Taylor, 1994;Gilly and Gelb, 1982).
The current research attempts to investigation of relationship between of Customer justice perception, perceived value and behavioral intentions as part of our research model.This leads to our next hypotheses: H5: Distributive justice is positively related to customer perceived value.H6: Procedural justice is positively related to customer perceived value.H7: Interactional justice is positively related to customer perceived value.H8: Customer perceived value is positively related to behavioral intentions.

Customer justice perception, trust and behavioral intentions:
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2010) defines trust as "assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something." Despite this seemingly simple nature of the definition, trust is perhaps one of the most highly challenging terms whose concepts are hardly agreed upon by researchers within diverse academic disciplines (Hong and Cho, 2011).Fukuyama (1995) defines trust as "the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of members of that community".A number of authors suggest that the construct of trust is an important element of long term buyer-seller relationships in a business environment (Wirtz and Mattila, 2004).Aurier and Siadou-Martin (2007) and Royter and Wetzels (1999) investigate the direct relationship between the dimensions of justice and trust.These researchers found a significant relationship between of justice and trust.The effect of trust on behavioral intentions has been mentioned by a number of researchers.Trust is essential in building strong consumer-brand relationships (Urban et al., 2000;Fournier, 1998) and it is positively related to brand loyalty (Taylor et al., 2004;Lau and Lee, 1999).Trust reflects cumulative effects over time on loyalty in high-involvement; high-service product markets (Chiou and Droge, 2006).Also, Gounaris (2005) showed that Trust have a positive relationship with behavioral intentions.This forms the basis for our next hypotheses: H9: Distributive justice is positively related to trust.H10: Procedural justice is positively related to trust.H11: Interactional justice is positively related to trust.H12: Trust is positively related to behavioral intentions.

Customer justice perception, affect and behavioral intentions:
Affect is defined as feeling states that are subjectively perceived by consumers during consumption or service encounters (Gardner, 1985).Affect represents a construct that is known to act in general marketing models such as studied herein and represents "an umbrella for a set of more specific mental processes including emotions, moods and (possibly) attitudes" (Bagozzi et al., 1999).Kim et al. (1998) present results suggesting that affect can effect on consumer attitudes even in the absence of product beliefs.Affect is known to influence information processing, mediate responses to persuasive appeals, measure the effects of marketing stimuli, enact goaldirecting behaviors and serve as ends and measures of consumer welfare.However, these authors further assert that an area neglected by marketers is the role of affect in marketing exchanges and relationships (Taylor et al., 2004).The two dimensions of affect are positive affect and negative affect (Watson et al., 1988).
Positive affect denotes pleasurable engagement, whereas negative affect is associated with such feelings as anger, contempt, disgust, guilt and nervousness (Watson et al., 1988).Positive affect and negative affect are not merely opposite poles of the same affective dimension, but two independent and distinct dimensions (Huang, 2001;Bagozzi et al., 1999;Watson et al., 1988).Several researchers investigated the impact of justice on affect.A recent justice study also applied a discrete emotions approach, suggesting that perceived price unfairness is associated with feelings of disappointment or anger (Xia et al., 2004).Similarly, in social justice research, the effects of procedural justice on discrete emotional responses were investigated using happiness-related emotions (happiness, joy and pride) and sadness-related emotions (disappointment, anger and frustration) (Namkung and Jang, 2010;Krehbiel and Cropanzano, 2000).Also, several researchers have also investigated the impact of affect on customer satisfaction, loyalty, complaint behavior, information processing, reactions to advertising and decision making (Bigne et al., 2008;Ladhari, 2007;Huang, 2001;Bagozzi et al., 1999;Knowles et al., 1993).These researchers found a significant relationship between of affect and behavioral intentions.Based on these arguments, we test the following hypotheses: H13: Distributive justice is positively related to affect.H14: Procedural justice is positively related to affect.H15: Interactional justice is positively related to affect.H16: Affect is positively related to behavioral intentions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Research model: Based on the preceding literature, the research model for this study, shown in Fig. 1 which investigates of the effect of dimensions of justice on satisfaction, value, trust, affect and behavioral intentions

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Measurement items: Self-administered questionnaires were used for the entire survey.All the scale items were adopted from the relevant literature.However, we modified the wording of specific items to reflect the focus of this Study.The constructs were measured by means of 5-point Likert scales.Distributive justice was assessed with three items from Blodgett et al. (1997) and Yi and Gong (2008).These items measured the degree of perceived justice with respect to the outcome of the interaction with company.Procedural justice was measured with three items adapted from Maxham III and Netemeyer (2002), Voorhees and Brady (2005) and Yi and Gong (2008).These items measured the degree of perceived justice concerning the policy and procedures of the firm.Interactional justice was measured using three items from Chory-Assad and Paulsel ( 2004) and Yi and Gong (2008).These items measured the degree of respect of seller-buyer communication and how well the seller understands buyer needs and wants.Value was measured using the three-item five-point Likert scale (Lasser et al., 1995;Taylor et al., 2004).Trust was measured using two items 5-point likert.Trust was operationalized by adapting Doney and Cannon (1997) measure and Caceres and Paparoidamis (2007).Satisfaction was measured using four items five-point likert (Ladhari, 2007;Oliver, 1997).Affect was measured using the three-item five-point Likert scale (Chaudhuri and Hollbrook, 2001).Behavioral intention was measured using the four item five-point Likert scale (Sheng et al., 2011).

Sample population and data collection procedure:
In this research, business-to-business context was selected to empirically test the conceptual model and the hypothesized relationships.The research population in this study consisted of members of purchase committees in Alborz city that have recently purchased material from Pars Azmoon brand.Stratified random sampling was used; however, the method of selecting respondents was systematic random sampling.The source for our sampling frame involved medical libratory list from Alborz medical university for recently purchased.According to the information received, the total number of purchasing committee's members is 359 persons.Therefore, population size was 359 and the sample size was determined according to Krejcie and Morgan (1970) table to be at least 190.Data collected from 225 member's of purchasing committee.A total of 198 usable questionnaires were retained.

Demographic characteristics:
The demographic characteristics of the sample were shown in Table 1.
Data analysis procedures: Partial Least Squares (PLS) was employed to estimate the models.PLS is a second generation Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique developed by Wold (1982)?It works well with structural equation models that contain latent variables and a series of cause-and-effect relationships (Gustafsson and Johnson, 2004).(Aspara and Tikkanen, 2011;Ngo and O'Cass, 2009;Guenzi et al., 2008;Wittmann et al., 2009).
According to Barclay et al. (1995), a PLS path model must be analyzed and interpreted in two stages: • The assessment of the reliability and validity of the measurement model • The assessment of the structural model The AVE coefficients assess the amount of variance that the construct captures from its indicators relative to the amount due to measurement error.Discriminant validity indicates the extent to which a given construct is different from other latent variables (Sánchez and Roldán, 2005).To assess discriminant validity, AVE should be greater than the variance shared between the latent construct and other latent constructs in the model (i.e. the squared correlation between two constructs).All latent variables satisfy this condition.For this reason, we maintain the discriminant validity of the latent constructs of the models.All the measurement model results are acceptable and suggest that it is appropriate to proceed with the assessment of the structural model.Reliability test was used to assess the consistency of the result measurements.The coefficient alpha is the most popular measure of reliability for a multi-item scale.Also, we used Composite Reliability to assessing of reliability test.In our study, all the measurement scales demonstrate adequate internal consistency.Values were all above 0.70 as suggested by Nunnally (1978) and therefore indicated internal consistent (Table 2 and 3).
In our study, all hypothesized relationships are statistically significant.Table 4 present the estimates and t values for path coefficients for the base and revised models.Also, Fig. 2  value, satisfaction and behavioral intentions in a B2B setting.Although most previous research focused on the service failure context, this research attempted to understand the impact of customer justice perception on satisfaction, trust, affect, value and intent within the B2B setting.Because the importance of satisfaction, value and affect is well established through numerous prior studies, managers clearly need to understand the importance of managing justice perception among customers.Customer justice perception is a multifaceted construct, encompassing three dimensions: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice (Yi and Gong, 2008;Homburg and Fürst, 2005).
In this current study, all of the hypotheses were supported and support previous studies findings.As hypothesized, dimensions of justice have significant direct positive relationship with satisfaction.This result supports the findings of Liao (2007), Maxham III and Netemeyer (2002), Szymanski and Henard (2001), Tax et al. (1998) and Blodgett et al. (1997).But, this result doesn't support the finding of Aurier and Siadou-Martin (2007).Similar to the finding of the Zabkar et al. (2010), Ladhari (2007) and Bigne et al. (2005), satisfaction has a significant direct positive relationship with behavioral intention.The relationships between of justice components with perceived value were positive and significant.This result supports the findings of Aurier and Siadou-Martin (2007).Also, the relationship value with behavioral intention was significant.This result supports the findings of Chen and Chen (2010), Chen (2008) and Choi et al. (2004).Similar to the finding of the Nikbin et al. (2010) and Aurier and Siadou-Martin (2007) as hypothesized; the components of perceived justice demonstrate have significant direct positive relationship with trust.Trust is strongly linked to behavioral intention in this study.Also, in our study, as expected, the components of perceived justice demonstrate impacts on the affect.This result supports the findings of Namkung and Jang (2010), Yi and Gong (2008) and Chebat and Slusarczyk (2005).Similar to the finding of the Namkung and Jang (2010) and Bigne et al. (2005), affect has a significant direct positive relationship with behavioral intentions.These results showed that Managers need to emphasize on customer justice perception to improve satisfaction, trust, affect and value.The results of this study revealed that managers need to train employees to serve their customer better, so that customers perceive greater justice.Also, managers should re-examine the justice of existing processes.This is especially important because the results indicate that customer justice perception may influence satisfaction, value, trust and affect.
Although this study provides useful insights, there are several limitations worth addressing.This research only focused on business to business setting and in a specific country the findings cannot be generalized to other setting and different geographical areas.
Additional research using other types of industrials and settings would increase the generalizability of our findings.Second, the data collection for this study relied exclusively on survey information gathered at one point in time.This approach raises concerns regarding the influence of common method variance.Future work should consider a longitudinal design to delineate more clearly the causal relations hypothesized in our framework.

Fig. 2 :
Fig. 2: Research model in estimation situation Fig. 3: Research model in T-value situation

Table 2 :
Average variance extraction, composite reliability, R square and Cronbach's alpha of the constructs