Investigating the Effect of Customers' Negative Emotions and Relationship Quality on the Willingness to Repurchase with an Emphasis on the Role of Customer Forgiveness

EXTENDED ABSTRACT
 
Introduction
Nowadays, tourism services are provided through the internet. Since customers are very important for online travel agencies and they guarantee profit for these agencies, managers of these businesses should use their power to improve the quality of tourism services in order to increase the perceived value, satisfaction and trust of customers and cause them to return and buy again. One of the important ways to satisfy customers is to improve the quality of tourists' relationship with travel agencies' websites. Therefore, if the quality of services provided by online travel agencies does not meet the demands and expectations of customers, the level of customer satisfaction will decrease and the negative feelings of customers towards the performance of travel agencies will increase, and the quality of communication between customers and travel agencies and the intention to repurchase services from them under is affected. But the point is that not all customers who suffer when receiving quality services seek revenge or retaliatory behavior. In this situation, customers may adopt non-aggressive behavior such as forgiveness. Studies show that if the feeling of forgiveness is strengthened in tourists, they will partially forget their negative experiences and even prefer to replace such experiences with pleasant memories and feelings. Stimulating customer forgiveness can strengthen the willingness to receive services again.
Another solution to satisfy customers is to improve the quality of tourists' relationship with the accommodation centers. Since tourists make a part of the purchase and search process based on trusting the online travel agency, they expect to see what they expected after visiting the place. Otherwise, failure to fulfill the customer expectations leads to dissatisfaction and negative feelings in customers. These feelings cause different behaviors such as negative word-of-mouth advertising and customers turning away from repurchasing tourism services.
Methodology
The current research is applied in terms of orientation and descriptive in nature. The statistical population includes all customers of the Alibaba tourism website in Mashhad. The researcher managed to collect 392 statistical samples using the available non-probability sampling method. The collection tool in the current research is the standard research questionnaire.
Discussion and Results
The first hypothesis test indicated that the negative feelings of customers have a significant effect on the quality of the relationship between customers and Alibaba Travel Agency. People usually expect to experience a pleasant feeling when traveling, one of these positive feelings is when things go according to their expectations and plans. It must be accepted that a large part of tourists are not interested in the challenges of travel. So any event that troubles tourists and if their expectations are not fulfilled, it will reduce the quality of the relationship between customers and the travel agency. The results of the second hypothesis test confirmed that the negative emotions of clients have a significant effect on the quality of the relationship between clients and hotel. Therefore, if a person doesn't receive suitable facilities in the reserved hotel, he considers this a kind of injustice and feels that the accommodation centers and the agency have provided him with incorrect information. The results of the third hypothesis test showed that the quality of the relationship between customers and accommodation centers has a significant effect on the quality of the relationship between customers and the agency. If tourists establish a proper relationship with accommodation centers, this positive point is strongly transferred to the relationship between the client and the agency. The results of the fourth hypothesis test indicate that if the quality of the agency's relationship with customers improves, it has a significant effect on customers' willingness to buy again. What is very important in the discussion of providing tourism services, especially online, is trust. Since tourists prefer the conditions to be in line with their expectations, the level of trust in a travel agency can greatly increase their confidence in receiving services. For this reason, if tourists find the services of an agency to be fair and attractive, and the agency can gain the trust of users in general, then tourists prefer to repeat their positive experience many times. Finally, customer forgiveness has a moderating role in the effect of relationship quality on repurchase intention.
Conclusion
The results show that if a company intends to be successful in the tourism sector, it cannot be indifferent to the issue of providing online services. The future of the market, at least in the tourism service reservation sector, goes through intermediary companies. This will undoubtedly increase the competition in this field, and companies will be more successful that can have more loyal customers, and loyalty is one of the consequences of the quality of the proper communication of customers with the online travel agency and accommodation centers and policies that strengthen customer forgiveness.