Changes in consumption patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analyzing the revenge spending motivations of different emotional groups

People tend to alleviate their negative emotions by shopping. Considering the change of shopping behavior during COVID-19 outbreak, negative emotions are the key contributors to this change. In this light, this study aims to investigate how negative emotions caused by COVID-19 affect shopping behaviors. This study classified consumer groups based on their perceived negative emotions (i.e., anxiety, fear, depression, anger, and boredom). By clustering analysis, four groups (i.e., group of anxiety, depression, anger, and indifference) were derived. Then, this study examined how each of the emotional groups differently affect the shopping-related motivations (i.e., mood alleviation, shopping enjoyment, socialization seeking, and self-control seeking) and shopping behaviors (i.e., shopping for high-priced goods and buying of bulk goods). Results revealed all emotional groups affect socialization seeking and influence high-priced shopping intentions. However, depression and indifference are positively associated with socialization seeking and influence bulk shopping intentions. In addition, other emotions except for anxiety affect mood alleviation and influence high-priced shopping intentions. Finally, anger is associated with self-control seeking and affects bulk shopping intentions. This study enables practitioners and researchers to better understand how people control negative emotions by shopping in pandemic situations such as the current COVID-19 crisis.     

Does it really hurt? Making sense of varieties of anger

While research has shown that consumer anger causes a range of negative consequences, the conceptualization and measurement of this emotion remain inconsistent. Some studies link anger to consumer revenge motivated by a desire to hurt the company, while others associate anger with a desire to cooperate with the company. This inconsistency is caused by the fact that anger is a broad label used to refer to almost any brand failure. We argue that, rather than considering anger as a single construct, scholars should distinguish between a supportive facet of anger, which comprises feelings of annoyance, frustration and other mild negative feelings, and a vindictive facet of anger, which comprises feelings of intense anger, rage, and outrage. These two facets of anger reconcile divergent arguments presented in past research. Research benefits from moving beyond the generic label of anger to consider supportive and vindictive facets of anger that influence consumers' reactions under different circumstances. Only vindictive anger prompts consumers to take revenge and punish the company for unfair treatment. Supportive anger triggers instead a desire to solve the problem by cooperating with the company. This study presents important managerial implications for assessing and managing feelings of anger following brand failures.     

Affective responses to service failure: Anger, regret, and retaliatory versus conciliatory responses

After a service failure, consumers make appraisals or assessments about the characteristics of this failure. These appraisals, in turn, affect how a consumer responds emotionally and behaviorally. Using an appraisal-tendency framework, we predict that two negatively valenced emotions (anger and regret) underlie or mediate the effects of consumers’ appraisals about service failure on post-purchase behaviors. Consistent with the predictions, in a laboratory study, we find that anger plays a powerful role in explaining retaliatory behaviors, and that both anger and regret account for the effect of appraisals on conciliatory behaviors. We extend the same appraisal-tendency framework to predict how changes in emotions underlie the effects of recovery efforts on post-purchase behaviors. Again consistent with predictions, in the laboratory study and in a web-based study, we find that recovery efforts that reduce anger decrease retaliatory behaviors. However, both studies provide less clear-cut evidence about the emotional mediators between recovery efforts and conciliatory behaviors. Because conciliatory behaviors are important behaviors for businesses to promote, future research should explore what other emotions explain recovery effort effects on conciliatory behaviors.     

It takes two to interact – Service orientation,negative emotions and customer phubbing in retail service work

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between frontline employees' service orientation, negative emotions and handling strategies during situations of customer incivility involving phubbing. In such situations, the logic and the practical implications of service orientation are challenged. Drawing on a survey of 2,940 employees in the Swedish retail sector, the paper shows that service orientation impacts upon how situations involving difficult customers are handled, and that this impact is mediated by employees’ negative emotional reactions. The paper contributes to retail management by pointing to the limitations of solely relying on service orientation and similar ideals in situations of customer incivility.     

物业服务质量对顾客价值及顾客忠诚的影响:居住档次的调节作用

在竞争日益加剧的市场环境中如何提供高质量的服务,提升顾客感知价值以及顾客忠诚度是企业获取竞争优势的关键所在.本文以物业服务行业为研究背景,建构服务质量各维度对顾客价值和顾客忠诚的影响机制模型,并检验居住档次对该模型的调节效应.研究结果表明:与其他行业的服务质量维度构成不同,物业服务质量由实体环境、专业保障、服务效率和人文关怀四个维度构成;实体环境对顾客忠诚产生正向显著影响,而专业保障、服务效率、人文关怀三个服务维度虽然对顾客忠诚没有显著的直接影响,但均通过顾客价值对其产生间接影响;顾客价值是解释服务质量影响顾客忠诚的重要中介变量;居住档次部分调节了实体环境、专业保障、服务效率和人文关怀对顾客价值及顾客忠诚的影响.     

Express yourself: Facial expression of happiness,anger, fear,and sadness in funding pitches

We build upon theory from evolutionary psychology and emotional expression, including basic emotion theory and the dual threshold model of anger in organizations, to extend knowledge about the influence of facial expressions of emotion in entrepreneurial fundraising. First, we conduct a qualitative analysis to understand the objects of entrepreneurs' facial expressions of four basic emotions in their pitches: happiness, anger, fear, and sadness. This provides a base for our theorizing that the frequency of entrepreneurs' facial expression of each of these emotions exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with funding. We also argue that the frequency of changes in entrepreneurs' facial expressions is positively related to funding. We test our predictions with a sample of 489 funding pitches using computer-aided facial expression analysis. Results support inverted U-shaped relationships of the frequency of facial expression of happiness, anger, and fear with funding, but show a negative relationship of sadness with funding. Results further support that the frequency of change in entrepreneurs' facial expressions promotes funding.     

Emotional prototypes,emotional memory usages,and customer satisfaction

In this study, we investigated the positive and negative emotion concepts in the prototype perspective and then tested them on customer satisfaction. By studying 612 customers in luxury restaurants, we found that two levels of customer emotions (i.e. positive and negative emotions) as a super-ordinate level, 4 positive emotions (i.e. contentment, happiness, love, and pride) and 5 negative emotions (i.e. anger, fear, sadness, shame, and disgust) as a basic level, and 49 specific emotions as a subordinate level are significantly related to customer satisfaction. We also examined the moderating role of emotional memory (EM) usage in the relationship between consumers’ emotions and their satisfaction. We found that product (food and beverage)-related EM strengthens and service-related EM usage weakens the relationship between customers’ negative emotions and their satisfaction. Interestingly, we found that positive and negative emotions are significantly related to customer satisfaction regardless of experience and store-related EM usage.     

Customer's angry voice: Targeting employees or the organization?

Poor service encounters have the potential to leave customers feeling angry at the frontline service employee who serves them, angry at the organization, or angry at both parties. The 25 in-depth interviews (Study 1) and experimental work (Study 2) demonstrate how distributive (outcome fairness), procedural (response time) and interactional (treatment received) justice dimensions differentially affect where the customer targets her or his anger, either at the frontline employee or at the organization as a whole. Further investigation reveals sins-of-omission (when the service provider failed to act) and interactional justice mediate the effect of response time on anger at the employee. Interactional justice also partially mediates the effect of outcome fairness on anger at the organization whereas sins-of-omission do not.     

Competitiveness vis-à-vis service quality as drivers of customer loyalty mediated by perceptions of regulation and stability in steady and volatile markets

The purpose of this research is to investigate predictors of customer loyalty in order to identify alternatives to customer satisfaction with service quality, which has been traditionally accepted as the primary predictor of customer loyalty, particularly for services. A stratified sample of bank customers was surveyed to collect information on customer perceptions and behaviors in relation to satisfaction with service quality, competitiveness, risk, regulation, stability and loyalty. Partial least squares path modelling (PLSPM) was applied to develop loyalty models for a steady market (Australia) and a volatile market (Greece). This study's empirical findings support theoretical arguments for the inclusion of customer perceptions of competitiveness in loyalty modelling. Perceptions of regulation and stability intervene in the relationship between drivers of loyalty and loyalty itself. For bankers, the study emphasizes the need to move away from customer satisfaction with service quality to explain customer loyalty, towards focusing efforts on achieving relative superiority in competitiveness, namely competitive productivity and products. Profiling customers based on their perceptions of a bank's competitiveness can provide additional explanatory power beyond traditional satisfaction based loyalty models. Services marketing has focused on the service components, and there is no doubt about its crucial role. But given this focus, other factors, such as the actual product component, have been somewhat overlooked in services research. The study makes a unique contribution to understanding and modelling customer loyalty by demonstrating the importance of the inclusion of customer perceptions of other factors as appropriate to market conditions.     

The mediating effect of satisfaction on consumers' switching intention

Most previous research on consumers' switching intention has focused on individual variables that have immediate effects on consumers' intentions or behaviors, rather than analyzing it as a complex phenomenon. This article provides evidence that some service provider behaviors precipitate relationship dissolution, whereas other behaviors create a predisposition to switch. This different effect is observed through the mediating effect of customer satisfaction. While poor service quality and low firm commitment undermine consumer satisfaction and have only an indirect effect on switching intentions, price unfairness and anger incidents have a strong effect on switching, both directly and indirectly through satisfaction. Implications are discussed for customer relationship management. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Influence of salesperson characteristics and customer emotion on retail dyadic relationships

Retail salespeople often serve as a critical nexus between retailers and their customers. Salespeople can provide information and service that assist customers during the purchase process. Through buye–seller interaction, salespeople conceivably will influence how customers feel when shopping; in essence, salespersons are likely to have an impact on customers' emotions. Prior research has found that customer emotions have beneficial effects for both the store and the salesperson. Although previous work has considered the effect store environment has on customer emotions, no extant research has examined how customer emotions emerge after interacting with salespeople or what the outcomes of those emotions are. Consequently, this paper examines potential precursors of customers' emotions that arise during interaction with retail sales personnel, as well as consequences of those emotions. A conceptual framework is developed, propositions are posited, and retail management and research implications are presented.     

Keeping anger in check: The role of personal and organizational characteristics on behavioral outcomes

ABSTRACT

The food and beverage sector of the hospitality industry is known for being an emotionally labor-intensive environment. The events that transpire over the course of a shift lead to various emotions, which ultimately dictate the behaviors of the employees working in this industry. Of particular interest to this study was the interplay between environmental antecedents (power and distributive justice) and their influence on a negative emotion (anger) and a positive emotion (affective organizational commitment). Additionally, this study sought to understand how anger and affective organizational commitment influenced positive (organizational citizenship behavior) and negative (counterproductive work behavior) workplace behaviors using the lens of the affective events theory. The results of this study revealed that anger had the strongest effect on counterproductive work behavior and that all of the relationships were significant except from anger to affective organizational commitment and affective organizational commitment to counterproductive work behavior.     

Reaching the boiling point: Consumers' negative affective reactions to firm-attributed service failures

While anger is the dominant affective reaction following service failure, little research focused on its potentially damaging effects. Our study examines the impact of anger and related negative affective states on evaluations and behavior following firm-attributed service failure. Gender's moderating role in shaping these consequences is also studied. Scenarios involving failures in a bank and a retail store are used. Overall, angry customers are less satisfied, give lower service evaluations, have higher perceptions of injustice, and give weaker ratings of corporate image. Angry customers also less likely spread positive word of mouth and more likely complain, exhibit negative repurchase intentions, and engage in third-party action. Related negative states differentially impact cognitive evaluations and post-purchase behavior with anger (rage) being the most important predictor in a bank (retail) setting. As the intensity of the negative affective state increases, customers more likely engage in effortful consequences. Gender of the customer and the service employee play minimal roles influencing evaluative and behavioral outcomes.     

Anger punishes,compassion forgives: How discrete emotions mitigate double standards in consumer ethical judgment

Prior research has identified that consumers may judge similar unethical behaviors differently depending on the actor in such behaviors; a phenomenon called double standards. While some studies have examined why consumer double standards may occur, it is less clear how to mitigate their occurrence. The present study examines the role of different, discrete emotions – anger and compassion – in mitigating double standards using two experimental studies, involving a total of 562 participants from Indonesia. The results indicate the existence of double standards, in that consumers were harsher in their judgment of unethical conduct by prosperous (vs. non-prosperous) companies. More importantly, the findings establish that anger and compassion can diminish double standards in consumer ethical judgments. Furthermore, these emotion effects are explained by two distinct mechanisms. Specifically, anger reduces repurchase likelihood when mediated by perceived justice, while compassion mediated by forgiveness increases repurchase likelihood. The research limitations and implications are also discussed.     

Consumer advocacy: Examining the feeling and doing following a failed service encounter

Dissatisfactory service experiences and consumer complaints following such experiences are everyday occurrences. Prior research has not only examined the emotions experienced because of failed service encounters but also has explored the resultant behaviours towards the service provider and the service. However, prior research does not distinguish between negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) motivated by marketplace-helping behaviour such as consumer advocacy and NWOM as venting triggered by emotions such as anger and frustration. The current study examines the direct relationship between regret and disappointment and consumer advocacy. Unlike past studies, the current study explores two types of customer dissatisfaction: agent based and outcome based. Study 1 uses a vignette methodology, and Study 2 uses experience sampling in which respondents provide personal episodes of failed service encounters. In contrast with a previous proposition, we find that regret has a significant negative relationship with consumer advocacy. Disappointment based on external events demonstrates a significant positive relationship, whereas disappointment caused by another person has a weaker relationship with consumer advocacy.     

When do AI chatbots lead to higher customer satisfaction than human frontline employees in online shopping assistance? Considering product attribute type

The increasing adoption of AI chatbots in online shopping assistance, as a complement or substitute for human frontline employees (HFLEs), leads to the question whether HFLEs perform better than AI service robots and why. From the perspective of product attribute type (experiential/functional) and focusing on customer satisfaction, this study explores how the impact of service agent on customer satisfaction varies along with product attribute type. A scenario-based experiment was designed and completed by 567 participants. Although HFLEs lead to higher customer satisfaction when the product attribute is experiential, AI chatbots perform better than HFLEs when the product attribute is functional. We make use of perceived information quality, perceived waiting time, and positive emotions, three determinants of customer satisfaction, to explain the variation of the role of different service agent types. The findings offer useful implications for companies when selecting service agent types in online shopping assistance.     

Hospice Informal Caregivers' Perception of a Good Death Experience: A SERVQUAL Analysis

ABSTRACT

This research study explores hospice informal caregivers' perceptions of service quality and a good death experience during end-of-life care. It demonstrates how service dimensions of the SERVQUAL analysis affect overall customer satisfaction. This study addresses contrast and dissonance theory as relative to marginal gaps in actual service performance and the effect on overall customer satisfaction. The research indicated that while reliability was the core of the service outcome, peripheral variables (e.g., assurance, empathy, responsiveness, and tangibility) integrated emotions and feelings into the hospice service process that equated to a positive disconfirmation of expectations and a good death experience.     

Retail customers' self-awareness: The deindividuation effects of others

The presence of others often affects retail shopping behavior. Other customers tend to increase one's self-awareness and cause negative self-conscious emotions. This research's findings suggest fellow customers also mitigate focal customers' evaluative concerns. Deindividuation theory, which posits that other customers create anonymity and reduce self-awareness, helps explain this phenomenon. A laboratory experiment and a quasi-experimental field study in a retail setting support the notion that the presence of other customers creates a deindividuation effect on a focal customer during unwanted social evaluation from salespeople. Results show a small group of other customers resulted in lower levels of emotional discomfort and behavioral inhibition than either an empty store or a larger group size, suggesting a U shape relationship.     

消费情感对顾客服务经历评价的作用机理研究

日常管理实践可以注意到,顾客在消费过程中的情感状态会影响他们在服务完成后对服务的评价水平.但是这一管理事实在学术研究上长期未能引起足够的重视:以往关于服务质量和顾客满意度的研究本质上几乎都是基于认知的,情感的作用被忽视或低估.以商业银行服务为背景,本研究以问卷调查为实证工具,同时考察认知和情感因素在顾客服务后评价形成过程中的作用.研究结果显示,顾客消费情感与顾客认知显著相关,并且与顾客认知共同显著影响着整体服务质量评价和顾客满意.同时,顾客的情感状态可以划分为积极情感与消极情感,二者对顾客的服务经历评价也表现出了不同的影响作用.文章最后给出了该领域进一步研究的方向.     

The impact of emotions on service quality,satisfaction, and positive word-of-mouth intentions over time

Abstract

This article examines the impact of emotions on customer satisfaction, service quality, and positive word-of-mouth intention formation process over time. In the study, a confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-dimensional model of emotions that then served as predictors in a series of multiple regressions. The findings indicate that two emotion dimensions had a consistent direct impact on all dependent variables in both time periods. However, the interaction effect between time periods and emotions revealed that different emotion dimensions influence satisfaction and word-of-mouth intentions at different stages of the service encounter. The theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed in detail.