Restoring justice: An examination in the marketing context

Justice is a universal concept that touches all areas of life, including commercial exchanges. Humans, unlike other species, have a sense of morality (Cropanzano et al., 2011). Justice is typically defined as a moral property of some event or action (e.g., Bagger et al., 2006). Simply put, something is fair when a person believes it to be fair. In other words, perceived fairness lies in the eyes of the beholder and consequently the same event can be perceived as fair or unfair depending on the individual. In this chapter we use the terms fairness and justice interchangeably. The goal of the present chapter is to review marketing and consumer behavior literature related to justice and to provide some avenues for future research. The chapter is organized as follows: first we discuss the dimensions of the fairness construct. We then discuss fairness in the context of service recovery efforts. Third, we discuss the social impact of justice in terms of relationship norms and third-party justice. We then explore different pricing strategies and their impact on perceived fairness. We end with a discussion on the role of culture in shaping consumers’ fairness perceptions.