Gratitude, delight, or guilt: The role of consumers' emotions in predicting postconsumption behaviors

Abstract

This study investigates the relationships among appraisals (goal congruence/incongruence and agency), consumption emotions (gratitude, happiness, guilt, anger, pride, and sadness), and postconsumption behaviors (positive and negative word of mouth, repurchase intention, and complaint behavior). The findings demonstrate that these emotions predict different specific types of post-consumption behaviors and that they are elicited by appraisals specified in the psychology literature. In particular, gratitude but not happiness, predicts repurchase intention and positive word of mouth. By contrast, guilt inhibits complaint behaviors and negative word of mouth. The implications of these findings for marketing practice are discussed. not clear under what conditions consumer dissatisfaction produces complaints rather than switching brands or negative word of mouth (Nyer, 1997). In addition, satisfaction may not be sufficient for determining positive postconsumption behaviors. For example, satisfaction may fail to prevent switching behavior if, as sometimes happens, one is satisfied with brand A but brand B is perceived to be even better. Most studies have been preoccupied primarily with predicting the different consequences of customer dissatisfaction. Relatively little work has been done, however, to understand under what conditions satisfaction/dissatisfaction determines different behaviors (Bougie, Pieters, & Zeelenberg, 2003;Nyer, 1997).Knowing why customers select a specific postconsumption behavior is important for marketers. In fact, rather than seeking redress, some dissatisfied consumers choose to not repurchase or to engage in negative word of mouth. Exit and negative word of mouth are particularly dangerous responses because they are "invisible" (Richins, 1987), and therefore the firm loses the opportunity to remedy the problem and retain customers (Hirschmann, 1970;Lapidus & Pinkerton, 1995): in this way, the firm loses sales and profits. It is important for manufacturers and service providers to understand why some dissatisfied customers "exit" or engage in negative word of mouth behavior, whereas others give the firm a chance to remedy the problem. Moreover, negative word of mouth damages the firm's reputation and, in this way a firm loses potential new customers. By contrast, Fornell and Wernerfelt (1987) maintain that customer loyalty can be increased by encouraging dissatisfied consumers to complain. Marketers need a theory that explains why customers are likely to select one postpurchase behavior or another, and the purpose of this study is thus to develop and test a theory to predict some of the aforementioned postconsumption behaviors.Actually, it might be expected that satisfaction by itself will not differentiate between different postconsumption behaviors. It seems that there are variables that interfere or interact with the relationship between customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction (CS/D) and postpurchase behaviors and are capable of producing different positive and negative actions.According to th...

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