Happiness as a predictor of service quality and commitment for utilitarian and hedonic services

Abstract

In services research, little attention has been devoted to long-term intrinsic personality traits. Long-term personality traits predict short-term affective states and thus understanding them is important from a service standpoint. Further, identifying long-term personality traits facilitates the targeting of customers who are predisposed to evaluate services in a positive manner. This study focuses on one long-term affective trait, happiness, and examines its impact on service evaluation and commitment, as it has been shown that the level of happiness affects whether people perceive life events, both great and small, in a positive or negative manner. Three studies were conducted to research the issue. The first study shows that customers who are happier evaluate service quality in utilitarian services in a more positive manner than do customers who are less happy. The second study shows that for hedonic services, involvement serves as an antecedent to perceived service quality; happier customers are also more involved in hedonic services, and thus perceive service quality in a more positive manner. Study 3 examines the link between happiness and commitment and shows that customers who are happier are also more prone to be committed to hedonic services. These results contribute to the marketing literature Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 28(9): 934-957 (September 2011) View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar

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“…In this context, the restaurant industry has an appeal to all the five senses of the customers (Su, 2011) and has been previously classified by researchers as a hedonic service (Stafford, Stafford and Day, 2002). Likewise, banks are found to be high on utilitarian value (Hellén and Sääksjärvi, 2011). Thereby, our pre-test services selection was in agreement with existing thoughts.…”

Contextualizing customer organizational citizenship behaviors: The changing nature of value cocreation and customer satisfaction across service settings

“…As mentioned earlier, utilitarian services are associated with usefulness and functional benefits. Many studies demonstrate that utilitarian services often include health/medical care, retail banking, auto repair, copying/printing services, and public libraries (Hellén & Sääksjärvi, 2011;Ng, Russell-Bennett, & Dagger, 2007;Rychalski & Hudson, 2017). By contrast, hedonic services are related to arousal, fantasy fulfillment, and escapism, including a theme park, hotel/resort, movie theater, restaurant, and clothing store settings (Babin & Darden, 1995;Jiang & Lu Wang, 2006;Ng et al, 2007).…”

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