Customer Emotions Research Articles

The Impact of Service Recovery on Repurchase Intentions: A Moderated Mediation Model

The purpose of this paper is to fill an important gap in literature by exploring the moderating role of customer emotions and the mediation of perceived fairness on service recovery effecting repurchase intentions. Based on the data of 200 valid questionnaires collected from oversees Pakistani in China, this paper used SPSS v.21.0 for data processing and analysis in which the reliability test was conducted and the hypothesis testing of direct and indirect effect was done on SPSS extension called Process v.2.3 developed by Hayes (2013). Results reveal that all variables of the study significantly correlate with each other, the service recovery has a significant impact on repurchase intentions. Results also disclose that perceived fairness mediates the effect of service recovery on repurchase intentions while moderation of customer emotions supporting the existence of moderated mediation. The findings of this study are particularly valuable for managers, it allows them to enhance the understanding on the aspect of service recovery that leads to repurchase and will help management to make an effective retention/repurchase strategies in service recovery situations.

The effect of consumer emotions on outcome behaviors following service failure

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role of emotions that consumers experience following service failures and to assess the effects of each of these emotions on important behavioral outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis paper extends the work of Wetzer et al. (2007) and draws upon the existing literature to test a series of research hypotheses tying emotions to four important behavioral outcomes primarily using stepwise regression.FindingsWhen a service failure occurs, customers experience any of a variety of negative emotions. The effect on behavioral outcomes depends on the specific emotion experienced by the consumer. The current research, which benefits by using retrospective experience sampling, finds that frustration is the predominant emotion experienced by customers following service failure, but that anger, regret and frustration affect behavioral outcomes. Uncertainty also plays a role.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should investigate the antecedents of propensity for emotions and predisposition toward industries, as well as the consequences of word-of-mouth (WOM) praise and WOM activity. Additionally, emotions could be examined by service stage. Several other moderators could be investigated, including severity, complaining behavior, repeat occurrence, service importance, remedies and forgiveness, product vs process failures, tenure, gender and age.Practical implicationsThe current research emphasizes the importance of understanding which emotion is being experienced by a customer following service failure to identify the behavioral outcomes that will be most impacted. The specific managerial implications depend upon the specific emotional response experienced by the customer and are discussed separately for anger, regret and frustration. Service personnel must be trained to recognize and address specific customer emotions rather than to provide a canned or generalized response.Originality/valueTo date, there has been little, if any, systematic research into the effects of multiple discrete negative emotions on multiple desirable behavioral outcomes. The current study examines six discrete emotions. Predominant emotions are differentiated from emotional intensity. The behavioral outcomes of reconciliation and reduced share-of-wallet are added to the traditional outcomes of repatronage intentions and negative WOM. While existing research tends to rely on a scenario approach, this study uses the retrospective experience sampling method. The authors distinguish between mixed emotions and multiple emotions. The relative effects of disappointment and regret are examined for each of the four outcomes. Finally, importance-performance map analysis was applied to the findings to prioritize managerial attention. Numerous managerial and research implications are identified.

Customer engagement, non-transactional behaviors and experience in services

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight the central role of bank customers’ engagement as a mediating variable between customer experience and two non-transactional customer behaviors (advocacy and attitudinal loyalty).Design/methodology/approachTo test the hypothesis, a model was designed with two antecedents of bank customer engagement (satisfaction and customer emotions), and two non-transactional behaviors (attitudinal loyalty and customer advocacy). The model was tested on a sample of 1,790 customers of two Spanish banks.FindingsResults confirm bank customer engagement as the mediating variable between customer experience outcomes and non-transactional behaviors.Practical implicationsBanks should design physical spaces with an atmosphere that will have a positive impact on their customers, and pay particular attention to interactions with contact personnel and other customers present at that moment of truth. The new concept of the branch now being introduced looks to the future, transforming it into a place to attend to and advise customers, and designed to encourage and facilitate a more personal and enduring relationship. This transformation includes longer opening hours and a concept that appears to draw from the store model. Its design is more accessible, more agile, more welcoming and more digital, conceived to attract the customer’s attention from the first moment.Originality/valueThe contribution of this research is related to the analysis from a theoretical and empirical perspective of the mediating impact of customer engagement between customer experience outcomes (satisfaction and emotions during the service) and non-transactional behaviors (advocacy and attitudinal loyalty).

Promoting work engagement in the hotel sector: review and analysis

PurposeUsing the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical framework, the purpose of this study is to identify antecedents of work engagement in the hotel sector through an integrative literature review of existing empirical studies.Design/methodology/approachA total of 38 quantitative studies published between 2001 and 2017 were reviewed, and a summary of the antecedents of work engagement was compiled based on the JD-R model.FindingsSupport from the organization, supervisors and coworkers were the most frequently discussed predictors of work engagement. Compared with previous studies in other sectors, the findings show unique antecedents of work engagement in the hotel sector, such as internal branding, organizational justice and organizational features (e.g., organizational size/history/level) as job resources; behavioral intentions and polychronicity as personal resources; and customer emotions and sexual harassment as job demands.Practical implicationsThis study is relevant considering the discourse in the hotel sector on delegating human resource responsibilities to frontline managers. Hotel managers should establish and maintain a work environment where coworkers and supervisors provide support as the environment is found to be a key factor that promotes work engagement.Originality/valueThe significance of the study is that it provides an overview of studies on work engagement in the hotel sector and insights on how hotel service practices affect employees and work engagement by highlighting the antecedents of work engagement from previous empirical studies.

Consumers acceptance of artificially intelligent (AI) device use in service delivery

This study develops and empirically tests a theoretical model of artificially intelligent (AI) device use acceptance (AIDUA) that aims to explain customers’ willingness to accept AI device use in service encounters. The proposed model incorporates three acceptance generation stages (primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, and outcome stage) and six antecedents (social influence, hedonic motivation, anthropomorphism, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and emotion). Utilizing data collected from potential customers, the proposed AIDUA model is tested. Findings suggest that customers go through a three-step acceptance generation process in determining whether to accept the use of AI devices during their service interactions. Findings indicate that social influence and hedonic motivation are positively related to performance expectancy while anthropomorphism is positively related to effort expectancy. Both performance and effort expectancy are significant antecedents of customer emotions, which determines customers’ acceptance of AI device use in service encounters. This study provides a conceptual AI device acceptance framework that can be used by other researchers to better investigate AI related topics in the service context.

Mechanism Connecting Environmental Friendliness to Service Loyalty: The Role of Positive Customer Emotions and Satisfaction

This research explores the mechanisms linking consumers’ perceptions of the environmental friendliness of service to customer loyalty. It investigates positive emotions evoked by perceptions of environmental friendliness and then links these emotions to customer satisfaction and loyalty as outcome variables. The data for testing a set of hypotheses was collected from a sample of over 150 consumers for three service industries, each. The results suggest that positive emotions in the form of “warm glow” feelings and sense of belonging are encouraged by environmental friendliness. The positive emotions have direct impacts on satisfaction, but show mixed impacts on loyalty.

Toward a theoretical framework of service experience: perspectives from customer expectation and customer emotion

Satisfactory service experience not only enables customers to have wonderful memories but also attracts more customers. Managing service experience clues for influencing customers’ rational and emotional perceptions of services is critical to creating satisfactory service experience. To our knowledge, no recognised theories or propositions interpret the existing phenomenon of service experience. This study aims to propose a theoretical framework to aggrandise the foundation of service experience by considering customer expectation and emotion. The purposes of this study are to clarify the relationships among customer expectation, emotion and service experience, and to explore and develop a theoretical framework of service experience. This study uses a multi-method to evaluate the theoretical framework of service experience by analysing a B2B case study. The analysis results from interviews and questionnaires provide solid evidences to support the proposed theoretical framework of service experience.

The impact of customer equity drivers on loyalty intentions among Chinese banking customers

PurposeThe implementation of customer equity drivers (CED) as a crucial marketing tactic to surge customer loyalty intentions has received a considerable importance in the literature. However, most of the research done in the past has mainly centralized around western societies. To make it even more interesting is the fact that the significance of customer emotions has been ignored by the previous studies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper to explore the impacts of CED on loyalty intentions along with exploring the moderating role of customer emotions (positive emotions and negative emotions).Design/methodology/approachA sample of 661 Chinese banking customers was collected by making the use of store-intercept survey design. The gathered data were then utilized to empirically validate the proposed model by making the use of hierarchical moderated regression.FindingsLoyalty intentions were found to be driven by emotions of Chinese banking customers. Consequently, in order to better forecast the loyalty intentions of the customers, the emotional aspect is vital and therefore should be incorporated along with other cognitive aspects (value equity, brand equity and relationship equity).Practical implicationsThe managers of the banks should make every effort to make the visit of their customers as pleasant as possible as the emotional responses of customers have a significant impact on the formation of loyalty intentions.Originality/valueThe current study holds its unique contribution by including emotions in the service-oriented settings.

Emotion Cycles in Services: Emotional Contagion and Emotional Labor Effects

Service organizations encourage employees to express positive emotions in service encounters, in the hope that customers “catch” these emotions and react positively. Yet customer and employee emotions could be mutually influential. To understand emotional exchanges in service encounters and their influences on customer outcomes, the current study models the interplay of emotional contagion and emotional labor, as well as their influence on customer satisfaction. Employees might catch customers’ emotions and transmit those emotions back to customers through emotional contagion, and employee emotional labor likely influences this cycle by modifying the extent to which emotional contagion occurs. Data from 268 customer-employee dyads, gathered from a large chain of foot massage parlors, confirm the existence of an emotion cycle. Deep acting, as one type of emotional labor used by employees, hinders the transmission of negative emotions to customers, whereas surface acting facilitates it. Both customer emotions and employee emotional labor thus have critical influences on service encounters. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the potential influence of customer preservice emotions and the presence of an emotion cycle during service delivery.

Analysis of Customer Emotion from Video based Feedback of a Product

Due to the high levels of competition in a global market, companies have put more effort on building strong customer relationships and increasing customer satisfaction levels. Now-a-days due to technological improvements in information and communication technologies gives a highly anticipated key contributor to improve the customer experience and satisfaction in service episodes is through the application of video analytics, such as to evaluate the customer’s emotions over the complete service cycle. Currently, emotion recognition from video could be a difficult analysis space. One of the foremost effective solutions to deal with this challenge is to utilize each audio and visual part as two sources contained within the video knowledge to form an overall assessment of the emotion. The combined use of audio and visual knowledge sources presents further challenges, such as determining the optimal data fusion technique prior to classification. In this paper, we propose an audio–visual emotion recognition system to detect the universal six emotions (happy, angry, sad, disgust, surprise, and fear) from video data. The detected customer emotions are then mapped and translated to provide client satisfaction scores. The projected client satisfaction video analytics system will operate over video conferencing or video chat. The effectiveness of our proposal is verified through numerical results.

The Intel Realsense Depth-Camera Performance for Real-Time Customer Satisfaction Analysis using Facial Expression Detection

Customer satisfaction evaluation is an important process in business development. Unfortunately, doing it manually by using survey or by phone will take up the time and resources that can actually be reallocated. In this research, we are going to make an automated customer satisfaction analysis tool by using Intel RealSense. The depth sensor and its emotion recognition API is enable real-time 3-D customer emotion recognition monitoring accurately. Emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise that is expressed by the customer is logged. Then, the captured emotions are processed and analyzed by the computer. Finally, the summarized survey presents an interactive data in form of charts that can show the customer service’s performance. As a result, the data that is produced can be used to improve the performance of the customer service representative. In this research, experiments show that while Intel RealSense can capture customer’s emotions well most of the time, there are still some cases in which it couldn’t present the accurate result due to the limitation in the API. Therefore, further testing need to be done that also takes several factors e.g. head accessories, glasses into account to increase the credibility of the output from the program.

The Impact of Click and Collect’s Service Quality on Customer Emotion and Purchase Decision: A Case Study of Mobile World in Vietnam

The Impact of Click and Collect’s Service Quality on Customer Emotion and Purchase Decision: A Case Study of Mobile World in Vietnam

The coming democratisation of emotions analytics

The ability to understand emotion from human communication is essential for marketers and data analysts, particularly in a world of growing non-verbal communication, such as reviews, complaints, surveys social media and chatbots. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) text analytics, a lot of information typically missed in sentiment analysis can now be analysed and early warning of issues flagged much earlier. This paper looks at how AI text analytics will succeed sentiment analysis and how it can identify additional customer emotion and intent by using concepts rather than simple keywords in its analysis. The paper also looks at how the most successful AI text analytics feature human-in-the-loop technology that optimises the combination of automation and human involvement. This makes the need for data scientists to run day-to-day models obsolete as the human input can come from the business user instead. The paper presents examples of how AI text analytics and emotions analytics can be applied, and argues that AI text analytics can reduce reliance on data scientists, provide early warnings of issues and analyse a much deeper level of sentiment and customer intent with higher levels of accuracy.

Who’s responsible? Representatives’ autonomy alters customers’ emotion and repurchase intentions toward organizations

PurposeThis paper aims to present and test a model of how the autonomy of an organization’s representative alters the effects of customer experiences on customer emotions and repurchasing intentions toward the organization. Specifically, this paper offers a moderated mediation model whereby representative autonomy alters attributions of organizational responsibility, which moderate the effect of service experience on emotion and emotion mediates the effects of service experiences on repurchasing intentions.Design/methodology/approachStudy 1 is a laboratory experiment (N = 115), where participants engaged in a multi-round product purchasing task through an online representative of a company. Study 2 is a vignette experiment (N = 393), where participants responded to situations of purchasing either a car, furniture, haircut or vacation package from a representative of a company. In both studies, manipulated representative autonomy information was either low or high and manipulated customer experience was either positive or negative. Measures included responsibility, emotion toward the organization and repurchase intention.FindingsStructural equation models support the proposed model. In the presence of information about representative autonomy, the link between customer experience and repurchasing intent is amplified and mediated by emotion toward the organization.Research limitations/implicationsBecause of the experimental approach, the findings may not be generalizable, but the experimental method allows for a controlled test of the process, ordering and relationship among variables.Originality/valueUnderstanding how representatives’ autonomy ultimately alters repurchasing and how this process involves responsibility attributions contributes to both practice and theory.

The influence of service failures on customer emotions amongst banking customers in Gauteng

The influence of service failures on customer emotions amongst banking customers in Gauteng

Electronic word-of-mouth in the mobile service sector: the role of service quality and customer emotional response

It is essential for mobile service providers to deliver high quality services that could attain customer's positive emotions, as this will encourage them to spread positive eWOM. This study aimed to investigate the effects of service quality on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) via customer emotional responses as mediators in the mobile industry. We developed a research framework based on stimuli-organism-response (SOR) theory that helps to analyse the aspects of service quality affecting customer behavioural intention. A total of 582 surveys are analysed using structural equation modelling. There are three main findings; first, this study indicated that service quality tangibility and empathy are not associated with customer pleasure. We further found that there is a positive relationship between customer pleasure from service quality and intention to engage in online reviewing. Third, across genders, there is a significant difference in the relationship between service quality and eWOM intention via the mediation of emotional response.

The impact of retailscape elements, customer mood and customer pleasure on customer re-patronage intentions

There is considerable signal from empirical studies that many factors influence consumer behaviors in service setting. The conceptual paper review retailscape elements as antecedents of customer pleasure and customer re-patronage with moderating of customer mood between retailscape elements and customer pleasure. The conceptual framework was developed after review of past literature. In this study different aspects of retailscape elements were discussed and its impact on customer pleasure and customer re-patronage intentions. Similar past literature in the same context are stressing the importance of retailscape elements and its influence on customer's pleasure and customer re-patronage intentions. The literature supports the moderating role of customer mood between retailscape elements and customer pleasure. Furthermore, retailscape elements plays an important role in influencing customer emotions which could either positively or negatively, determine customer intention to return to the service setting. Moreover, our conceptual paper specifically demonstrate customer mood could be a significant behavior predictor between the retailscape elements and customer pleasure. Meanwhile, customer pleasure could have a significant impact on the customer re-patronage intentions. Birtner (1992), Stimulus, Organism and Response (SOR) theory was used to underlie the conceptual framework. In addition, come implications of this conceptual model for theory and practice are discussed.

Research on the Impact of Online Service Remedy on Customer Interactive Behavior in Virtual Brand Community

With the popularization and development of the internet, people’s shopping, travel and other lifestyles have undergone tremendous changes. At the same time, the mode of maintaining customer relationship and creating enterprise and customer value has also changed. More and more enterprises transfer the channel of maintaining customer relationship and value creation from offline to online through virtual brand community, which not only breaks the limi-tation of time and space, but also provides better service for customers and improves customer loyalty. It is of great significance to realize value creation between enterprises and customers. Virtual brand community can not only help enterprises better understand the needs of customers, but also guide customers to participate in community interaction and better realize value creation. However, due to the virtuality and uncertainty of the Internet, the possibility of enterprises failing online services is greatly increased. If enterpris-es can’t take timely remedial measures to alleviate customers’ complaints and dissatisfaction, the negative emotions of customers will spread faster, have stronger targeting, and have wider impact. Therefore, the community will be reduced by influencing the customer interaction in the virtual brand commu-nity, thereby affecting the value sharing between enterprises and customers. Therefore, based on the regulatory focus theory, the impact of online service recovery on customer interaction behavior in virtual brand community is of great significance to realize value creation between enterprises and customers.

The role of employee emotional competence in service recovery encounters

PurposeEmployees’ emotional competencies (EEC) are skills, based on emotional intelligence, used to perceive, understand and regulate customer emotions during a service encounter. In the context of service recovery, these skills are especially important and allow employees to influence consumers’ attitude and behaviours. The purpose of this study is to assess the direct and indirect impacts of EEC in post-recovery satisfaction, trust, word-of-mouth and repurchase intention, considering the moderating role of service (level of employee-customer contact) types.Design/methodology/approachA total of 355 customers who experienced a service failure and subsequent recovery were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. EEC was specified as a formative construct, determined by its perceiving, understanding and regulating dimensions. To measure EEC and its impact on selected outcomes, PLS-SEM was used. A multi-group analysis was performed to analyse the moderating role of service type.FindingsResults confirm EEC as a formative construct, with a positive direct impact on post-recovery satisfaction, particularly in high-contact customized services. Findings also reveal the mediating role of satisfaction on selected outcomes, and the significant direct impact of EEC on trust, even when controlling for satisfaction.Originality/valueEEC remains unexplored in the service recovery literature, and most research fails to understand how EEC role may vary given contextual differences. This study adopts a consumer perspective of EEC in the emotionally charged situation of service recovery, considering the moderating role of service type. The authors further contribute to both literature streams while examining the impact of EEC on post-recovery evaluations. Companies should consider these findings in the recruitment and training of front-line employees to develop better service recovery strategies.

외식업 직원의 비언어적 커뮤니케이션이 고객감정, 고객만족, 고객신뢰 그리고 재방문의도에 미치는 영향

Purpose - Non-verbal Communication with customers in restaurant business can play an important role because it affects customer behavior and attitudes as a means to develop and maintain long-term relationships with customers. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of non-verbal communication with customers and the effect of the influence on customer satisfaction, trust, and revisit intention. Research design, data, methodology - In order to verify the research models and hypotheses of this study, questions were prepared for each variable and data were collected through questionnaires. The questionnaire survey was conducted from March 27, 2018 to April 17, 2018, for those who agreed with the citizens of the Jeju area who visited the restaurant recently. 50 out of 100 were conducted by internet survey and 50 were surveyed. Thus, a total of 100 responses were used using structural equation modeling with Smartpls 3.0. Results - The results of the study are as follows. First, non-verbal communication has a significant impact on customer emotion. Second customer emotion have a significant impact on customer trust and satisfaction. Third, Customer satisfaction had positive a significant effect on revisit intention. Fourth, Customer trust had positive a significant effect on revisit intention. Conclusions - The implications of this study are following as: The food service company should continuously provide non-verbal communication training to employees so that they can respond to customers with the right attitude and bright smile. In particular, in the case of restaurant franchises, customer response manuals should be created and distributed to the franchisees, and a regular training program for the franchisees should be implemented to provide the same service to the customer. Second, CEOs should have to worry about what kind of experience he or she has left since leaving the store. It is also necessary to constantly look at what customers experience in their stores or in their brands, and what emotions they form through their experiences. Third, the more satisfied or trusted customers are formed through the service of the employee, the more loyal the restaurant business will be, and the more likely it is to make continuous revisit and positive word-of-mouth activities..