Would you forgive me? From perceived justice and complaint handling to customer forgiveness and brand credibility-symmetrical and asymmetrical perspectives

•Examines the relationships among complaint handling, perceived justice, customer forgiveness, and brand credibility.•Study uses two distinct datasets i.e., airlines and hotels.•Multi-group analysis compares the model across low and high service failures.•Study uncovers symmetrical and asymmetrical associations among variables in the model.