Exploring antecedents of customer delight in a hospitality setting: Employee empathy and adaptive behavior

Abstract

The concept of customer delight (CD) has gained considerable attention from researchers since Oliver, Rust, and Varki (1997) offered the foundational literature over two decades ago. It is crucial to understand the antecedents of CD. The extant CD literature primarily focuses on three main antecedents of customer delight.: [1] customer-related (e.g., joy, fun, hedonic), [2] employee-related (e.g., engagement, expertise, problem resolution), and [3] contextual-related (e.g., non-employee service quality, novelty) (Barnes & Krallman, 2019). The interpersonal role of the employee is particularly vital to lead CD in the hospitality industry because of psychological benefits influencing customers’ attitudes and behaviors (Mattila & Enz, 2002). For example, empathic employees are more likely to better understand customer needs and feelings, and employees’ adaptive behavior can provide better personalized service. Yet, to date, little research has examined employee empathy (EE) and employee’s adaptive behavior (EAB) as antecedents of CD. Thus, the primary goal of this study is to deepen the knowledge of antecedents of CD. The purposes of this study are two-fold: (1) to examine the impact of EE and EAB on CD and (2) to identify how CD influences customer willingness to return (CWR). The data were collected via a web-based survey of hotel guests in the United States. The proposed CD model was tested using standard partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant relationship between EE and CD and between EAB and CD. Result. Findings also show that CD influences CWR. As one of few empirical studies investigating the relationships among EE, EAB, CD, and CWR, findings from our research can provide a better understanding of CD within the hospitality literature. The results can also provide insights for practitioners to implement the concept of CD into their customer engagement strategies.