The Relationship between Sensory Marketing and Customer Delight (An Applied Study on Private Universities at Dakahlia and Damietta Governorates)

Customer delight in AI-driven services

Despite substantial growth in Pakistan's restaurant sector, the psychological mechanisms linking service quality to customer retention remain inadequately understood. This research examines customer delight as a mediating variable between service quality and revisit intention among restaurant patrons in Peshawar. Survey data from 395 customers were analyzed using established measurement instruments and Baron and Kenny's mediation framework. Results demonstrate that service quality significantly influences customer delight (β = .457), which subsequently predicts revisit intention (β = .739). When customer delight enters the model, service quality's direct effect on revisit intention becomes negligible, confirming full mediation. These findings indicate that service quality improvements generate return patronage primarily through emotional pathways rather than cognitive evaluation. The study reveals geographic limitations, as data collection focused solely on Peshawar restaurants. Restaurant operators should recognize that meeting basic service standards alone cannot sustain competitive advantage; creating emotionally engaging experiences proves essential for customer retention. Theoretically, this research clarifies that in emerging market contexts, affective responses to service encounters outweigh rational quality assessments in shaping behavioral loyalty. The emotional mediation pathway identified here challenges conventional direct quality-loyalty models prevalent in hospitality literature.

The hospitality sector increasingly depends on strategic management to deliver memorable guest experiences, improve operational productivity, and maintain a strong competitive edge. This research investigates the foundational aspects of successful hotel administration by analyzing how innovation, workforce development, sustainability practices, and service excellence influence both institutional outcomes and customer loyalty. Utilizing a qualitative approach, the study gathered data through in-depth interviews with administrators, service personnel, and clientele from selected boutique and business hotels. The thematic interpretation identified five major factors shaping organizational success: adaptive leadership, digital transformation, employee engagement, service personalization, and health-oriented safety protocols. Results demonstrate that technology-enabled efficiency, empowered employees, and emotionally intelligent service models significantly strengthen guest satisfaction and long-term retention. Moreover, eco-conscious initiatives and transparent ethical standards emerged as central to shaping modern consumer expectations and trust. The research underscores the necessity of cohesive managerial systems that merge internal efficiency with evolving guest preferences. Ultimately, this study enriches the body of hospitality management literature by presenting evidence-based recommendations for hotel executives seeking to foster sustainable growth, optimize operations, and cultivate meaningful guest relationships in a continuously changing service landscape.

Growing consumer interest in natural wellness products, particularly essential oils, highlights the need to understand key quality product attributes affecting consumer satisfaction. In the digital era, customer reviews in marketplaces have become the main source of consumer-driven insights for improving production and service processes. However, conventional approaches often fail to systematically extract actionable insights from these unstructured data sources. This study proposes an integrated machine learning framework for three market on essential oils and their derivatives. This framework transforms thousands of online customer reviews into a structured analysis of satisfaction dimensions. The approach uniquely contributes by employing regression model combined with Explainable AI (SHAP) and KANO Classification to systematically applied based on SHAP insights to develop a marketing strategy based on three market segments for essential oil products and their derivatives. Eleven critical satisfaction dimensions were extracted, including aroma, price, packaging, delivery, and others. These segment-specific insights imply that producers should prioritize reliable pricing and delivery for low-tier markets, ensure strict price fairness and value consistency for mid-tier consumers, and, for high-tier segments, focus on integrating diffuser compatibility as a basic requirement while leveraging bonuses as emotional value-adds to enhance customer delight. Theoretically, this research introduces a scalable, Explainable AI-based approach for applying the Kano model to unstructured textual data, overcoming limitations of traditional survey methods. Despite its strengths, this study is limited by the absence of validation for the Kano categorization through survey-based procedures. Future work will address this limitation by conducting perception-based surveys or interviews to validate and refine the inferred categorizations. Nonetheless, this research contributes a methodology and provides actionable strategies for essential oil producers to align product improvements with consumer expectations in digital commerce environments.

Background: Understanding the role of customer satisfaction and/or delight and trust as central drivers of behavioural responses becomes increasingly important in a complex business environment. From a relationship marketing theory perspective, satisfaction and/or delight, trust and perceived value serve as critical differentiators that strengthen customers’ future behavioural intentions in competitive service contexts. Aim: Guided by the relationship marketing theory, this study explores how service quality and customer orientation influence satisfaction and/or delight, trust and behavioural intentions in the South African cellular industry while recognising the moderating role of perceived value. Setting: This study examines South Africa’s cellular industry, characterised by high mobile penetration, steep data costs, and intense competition. In this emerging market, customer satisfaction, delight, trust, and perceived value are theorised as central determinants of behavioural intentions and loyalty. Method:

Purpose The competitive environment has forced many retailers to search for better ways of delivering in-store customer experiences. A key opportunity that has gone largely unstudied in retailing is targeting the customer’s anticipatory imagination during the encounter. Thus, the purpose of this research is to evaluate factors that can be strategically managed to positively impact the anticipatory imagination of the customer, which is then connected to customer delight and, ultimately, purchase-related outcomes. Finally, whether the purchase is for oneself, or a gift is evaluated as a moderator. Design/methodology/approach This study uses exit interviews, experiments and structural equation modeling with panel and company data. Findings The influence of verbal clarity and visual appeal on anticipatory imagination and the resulting impact on customer delight has a profound impact on customer sales. Results show that a difference of one point in customer delight evaluations results in a 35% increase in the transaction dollar amount. Research limitations/implications The results provide new and novel insights for practitioners on engaging customers to create delightful retail experiences. Furthermore, this research expands the theoretical understanding of how anticipatory imagination functions in the in-store shopping experience. Practical implications This research provides actionable targets to help retailers deliver customer experiences that drive profitability for the brick-and-mortar store. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to study anticipatory imagination and the resulting changes in customer’s attitudes and behaviors in an in-store shopping experience.

The study aims to examine the influence of word of mouth (WOM) and customer relationship management (CRM) on customer loyalty at PT Garuda Sertifikasi Indonesia, with customer delight serving as a mediating variable. This research is motivated by the increasing competition among certification service providers, which requires companies to implement effective strategies to retain and satisfy their customers. The target population in this study encompasses the entire client base of PT Garuda Sertifikasi Indonesia, totaling 429 individuals. The sampling technique used was Hair’s formula, resulting in 70 respondents. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and documentation. A path analysis technique was used to analyze the data to determine direct and indirect effects between variables. The findings indicate that both WOM and CRM positively influence customer loyalty. Effective word-of-mouth strategies help build the company’s reputation and trust, while CRM ensures consistent communication, better service, and long-term customer engagement. The research also found that WOM and CRM positively affect customer delight. Customers who experience exceptional service and personalized attention tend to be more satisfied and emotionally connected to the brand. Furthermore, customer delight was proven to have a significant positive impact on customer loyalty. It also acts as a mediating variable, strengthening the effect of WOM and CRM on loyalty. This means that delighted customers are more likely to remain loyal and advocate for the company. The results of this study emphasize the importance of maintaining strong relationships and exceeding customer expectations in order to build sustainable loyalty. This research contributes valuable insights for service-based companies in enhancing marketing and customer retention strategies.

ABSTRACT This study critically examines the asymmetric impacts of surplus food app features on customer satisfaction through Impact Range Performance Analysis (IRPA) and Importance-Asymmetry Analysis (IAA). App features are systematically classified into frustrators, dissatisfiers, hybrids, satisfiers, and delighters, encompassing transactional, experiential, and social attributes. Analysis of structured survey data from app users reveals that essential transactional features, such as ease of use and timely notifications, predominantly mitigate dissatisfaction when absent but exhibit limited capacity to enhance satisfaction when present. Conversely, hybrid attributes like real-time updates and sustainability consciousness significantly influence both satisfaction and dissatisfaction, emphasizing their pivotal role in user retention strategies. Value-added experiential and social features, including surprise discounts and social proof distinctively enhance customer delight but are non-essential for preventing dissatisfaction, as their absence minimally impacts user perceptions. By capturing these distinctions, the research informs strategic optimization of surplus food platforms, advancing their effectiveness in promoting sustainable consumption.

Purpose With novel application of situated cognition theory (SCT) in interactive marketing and customer behavior, this study is conducted to investigate the effect of augmented reality (AR) marketing on customer delight in the soft drinks market through customer experiences, brand love and customer engagement. Design/methodology/approach Stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory, SCT and flow theory were analyzed in parallel for the first time. Data were processed using PLS–SEM through Smart PLS4 after being gathered from 594 valid responses from young customers from 18 to 30 years old. Findings The findings show that interactivity and spatiality exert a positive effect on both entertainment and aesthetic experiences while emotionality only positively impacts entertainment experiences. Moreover, customer experiences, brand love, customer engagement and customer delight are positively impacted by AR marketing through entertainment and aesthetic experiences. Originality/value This study is the first to pioneer to apply SCT in AR marketing, to integrate SOR, SCT and flow theory simultaneously which would upgrade the significance of SOR. This study is one of the few research works investigating AR marketing and customer delight which is a tenuous variable as well.

The hospitality industry as part of the tourism sector is an important element in supporting the tourist experience. However, service failure still occurs frequently and is a challenge for the hotel. This study aims to examine and analyze the service failure classification at star hotel in Badung Regency and the perception of service recovery toward tourist satisfaction, customer delight, and tourist loyalty at star hotels in Badung Regency, Bali. The research was conducted with a quantitative and qualitative approach (mixed methods), and used justice theory, loyalty theory, and Customer Satisfaction concept as a conceptual background. The results show that effective service recovery—through the dimensions of procedural, interactional, and distributive justice—has a significant impact on customer satisfaction and customer delight, which in turn has an impact on increasing tourist loyalty. This study also identifies the dominant types of service failures and formulates a service recovery model that is relevant to the characteristics of tourists and service dynamics in star hotels in Badung. This research provides theoretical contributions to the development of the service recovery concept in the context of star hotel hospitality, as well as practical benefits for hotel management in improving customer complaint handling standards to create sustainable loyalty.

Although sustainable tourism and hospitality have been the focus of numerous studies, empirical investigations connecting sustainable consumption practices to the consumers’ psychological reactions are noticeably lacking. The present study investigates how consumers’ psychological reactions are affected by sustainable tourism and hospitality consumption values, drawing on the theory of consumption values and social identity theory. A survey involving 918 sustainable tourism and hospitality consumers was conducted. Utilizing structural equation modeling, this research found that all value dimensions except quality and price value favorably influenced attitude toward sustainable consumption. The study demonstrated that attitude positively impacts customers’ psychological responses, apart from their sense of belonging, while green satisfaction enhances customer delight. The study also found that a collectivist cultural orientation and religiosity partially moderated the postulated relationships through multi-group analysis. This research shows how customers evaluate value in a sustainable tourism and hospitality context and its effect on customers’ psychological responses. It also provides valuable insights for businesses looking to improve green satisfaction and customers’ well-being through sustainable practices and values.

This study explores the potential of virtual influencers as a viable alternative to mitigate risks associated with information sources in advertising. The characteristics of virtual influencers were categorized into five dimensions: attractiveness, expertise, authenticity, interactivity, and anthropomorphism. The study empirically examined how these characteristics influence consumer behaviors, specifically impulse buying, relationship quality, and customer delight. A survey was conducted over a period of approximately 10 days, targeting consumers who had previously encountered advertisements featuring virtual influencers on social media. After removing outliers, 330 valid responses were used for the final analysis. The hypotheses were tested using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM), and the key findings are as follows: First, among the characteristics of virtual influencers, attractiveness, authenticity, and interactivity had significant effects on impulse buying. Second, attractiveness, authenticity, interactivity, and anthropomorphism were found to significantly influence relationship quality. Third, both impulse buying and relationship quality had significant effects on customer delight. This study makes a theoretical contribution by empirically verifying the differentiated effects of each virtual influencer characteristic on consumer behavior. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest that marketing strategies involving virtual influencers should focus on enhancing external attractiveness, creating authentic content, and fostering active interactions with followers to increase purchase conversion. Furthermore, to build long-term customer relationships, it is important to strengthen anthropomorphic elements in virtual influencers.

Although brand evangelism has recently garnered increasing attention across various settings, its antecedents remain underexplored, particularly within the hotel industry in developing countries. Additionally, few studies examined how emotional brand bonding (e.g., delight, love, and attachment) influences brand evangelism in the hospitality sector. Consequently, this study integrates the stimulus-organism-response framework with attachment theory to explore the nexus between service quality, emotional brand-related factors, and brand evangelism, while considering the moderating role of surprise. Furthermore, it examines the mediating effects of customer delight, brand love, and attachment. Using PLS-SEM, 367 responses from hotel guests on Djerba Island (Tunisia) were analysed. The findings reveal that service quality positively influences customer delight, which drives brand love and attachment; however, it does not affect brand evangelism. The mediating roles of customer delight, brand love, and brand attachment in transforming service quality into evangelism behaviours demonstrate the emotional pathways that underlie these relationships. The moderating role of surprise is emphasised, showcasing its ability to amplify the effect of service quality on customer delight. This research provides novel insights for hospitality scholars and practitioners aiming to create exceptional customer experiences, providing practical strategies to boost customer evangelism in highly competitive hospitality markets.

The study aims to analyze the key determinants influencing customer satisfaction with digital banking service quality in District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs), specifically within the Tiruchirappalli district. A total of 506 DCCB customers from the region were surveyed. To gain comprehensive insights into the relationship between digital banking services and customer satisfaction, various statistical tools such as descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and multiple regression analysis were employed using SPSS software. The empirical findings indicate that customer satisfaction with digital banking services in the DCCB sector is significantly high.

The purpose of this research paper is to understand the extent to which customer service can be used as an effective tool to retain customers by creating customer delight. According to various studies, customers’ expectations to be proactively met and monitored in such a way that they feel valued. Customers distinguish through different brands according to their memorable experiences. This study helps customer service support team & marketing executive to realise that new ideas & overwhelming customer experiences work well with customers and customer delight can also lead to customer loyalty and attract new customers. This also provides an understanding of how much customer delight is important to draw the customer’s attention which in turn enhances brand loyalty, increase the repurchase intention of customers and simultaneously help growth in company’s revenue. Companies need to redefine their strategy from time to time and equip their customer service team to resolve customers’ query in a timely manner and even proactively anticipating their need and expectations. However, it is challenging depending upon the target customers. The research paper highlights the impact which customer service support team on customer satisfaction and delight and also focuses on how customer service team delight plays a vital role in today’s competitive market and suggests measures that the companies can use to delight their customers. When customer service which is the face of the product/ service provides something “unexpected and memorable experience “to the customer, it creates a positive and emotional impact in the minds of the customer regarding the product or service. This differentiates a company from its competitors and helps in company’s growth. Companies and their customer service team need to take extra mile to retain them in the long run by creating a delightful customer & consumer. This is where a strong and proactive customer service team comes into picture which can turn a customer’s bad experience to a memorable experience.

As stated by Rust and Oliver, new customer acquisition for a business and maintaining the current customers is the prime task for all marketers & researchers (Rust & Oliver, 2000). In other words, the purchase decision of the customer becomes very important from the perspective of the marketer. Once the customer has purchased from a brand it becomes the company’s look out to maintain the customer satisfied and happy. A happy customer probably can buy the same brand again and again, thus being loyal to the brand. This all depends upon the happiness level of the customer and whether he/ she sees any other alternative competitor as a potential buy. If the company succeeds in keeping the customer happy, then it will result in repeated purchase of the brand by the customer. Thus, the customer satisfaction is transformed into customer loyalty which in turn is been an outcome of customer in delight. There are various developed models pertaining to the concept of Customer Delight.

Purpose: This research explores the efforts of Emirates Airline in addressing a challenge to create personalized in fight amenities through an open artificial intelligence (AI) innovation. It is the central aim to investigate how AI can be strategically leveraged to raise the passenger experience in line with the airline’s long term business goals. Methodology: The way a study is framed is within a theoretical framework pertaining to Porter’s (1990) Competitive Strategies framework and Schilling’s (2005) Innovation Funnel model. These frameworks are utilized to examine the correspondence between AI-based offers and Emirates’ pronounced goal, customer inclinations, along with its working adaptability. Findings: Based on our implementation of the AI personal service package, it was revealed that there were three major advantages. The first was that it substantially increased the customer satisfaction because of its services they offer that is caters to individual preferences. Secondly, the service delivery system improvement increased the operational performance of the airline by reducing inefficiency. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The research based on the findings recommends that airlines would increasingly adopt use of AI based personalization as a core part of their innovation strategy. With each new AI capability, the aviation sector has to realize AI as ’stuff to do better operations’, but also ’fuel to extend markets and to build customer delight’..

Perception of Accessibility and Tourist Participation Behavior: Mediating Role of Customer Delight

Despite the widely acknowledged relationships between customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty, there is a gap in the current literature of how they manifest in an emerging market context. This study seeks to redress this by examining customer delight arousal and delight pleasure as post-consumption experiences predicted by customer satisfaction and seeks to validate empirically the nexus between these factors and customer loyalty to mobile service providers in an emerging African economy. Using data obtained from self-administered surveys with 500 customers of South African mobile service providers, this study employs the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique to validate the measurement model and examine the theorised relationships between the constructs. The findings suggest that satisfaction has multiple associations with customer delight arousal, delight pleasure, and loyalty. The results pinpoint that customer arousal is positively related to customer delight pleasure. In fact, the results emphasise that delight arousal and delight pleasure are heightened levels of satisfaction and that satisfaction and customer delight are associated with customer loyalty. Furthermore, the findings show that customers’ delight pleasure and delight arousal are complementary mediators in the satisfaction-customer association. This study addresses a gap in current literature by presenting and validating an alternative model that investigates the interplay of customer satisfaction, delight arousal, and delight pleasure in predicting customer loyalty in a technology service context in an emerging African country.