Actions speak louder than words: The adaptive use of behavioral repair strategies on trust recovery

Abstract

While trust is the cornerstone of marketing exchange relationships, even the best salespeople can damage a buyer's trust. Drawing on the relational selling literature, we hypothesize how a salesperson's repair strategies (words and actions) shape a buyer's perceptions of fairness after the buyer's trust has been damaged. We contend that behavioral repair strategies will be more effective than verbal repair strategies in increasing relational fairness, providing a reliable signal of whether the salesperson can be trusted again. We also argue that the efficacy of various behavioral repair strategies depends on the buyer's perceptions of the salesperson's level of culpability for damaging the buyer's trust. These behavioral repair strategies have positive relational implications for how the buyer perceives both the salesperson and the selling firm. A field survey results with 204 professional buyers and an experiment with 308 professional buyers provide evidence for our theory-based assertions.