As described by the gift-giving literature, gift-giving experiences can realign the giver-recipient relationship. In the context of service recovery encounters that means that service recovery experiences are able to realign the buyer-seller relationship. Previous research has primarily concentrated on examining service recovery experiences and their impact on outcomes such as satisfaction, repatronage intentions and word-of-mouth. Addressing this research gap, this thesis investigates service

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... ecovery experiences and how they reformulate the buyer-seller relationship by incorporating aspects that contribute to relational outcomes (i.e. experiential themes) and emotions elicited by the service recovery encounter. Particularly, four relational outcomes of buyer-seller relationships are identified namely strengthening, weakening, breakup of the relationship and a neutral or unchanged relationship outcome. For each relational outcome five to six experiential themes are discovered that contribute to the relational outcomes. Expressed in levels of emotions, the strengthening of the buyer-seller relationship can be connected with high levels of positive emotions and low to moderate levels of negative emotions. A neutral or unchanged relationship outcome can be linked to moderate levels of positive and low to moderate levels of negative emotions. The weakening and breakup of the relationship can be associated with low to moderate levels of positive and moderate to high levels of negative emotions. Overall, it can be said that service recovery experiences affect and realign the buyer-seller relationship by including experiential themes as well as emotions experienced in the process of reformulation. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.