Customer delight: Foundations, findings, and managerial insight

Abstract

Many business practitioners have addressed the importance of delighting the customer as an extension of providing basic satisfaction. Yet the concept of customer delight has not been given a clear behavioral foundation, and the antecedents and consequences of customer delight, when manifest in specific service contexts, have not been empirically explored. This paper attempts to provide a first step toward establishing a behavioral basis for customer delight, empirically testing its hypothesised antecedents and consequences, and exploring the resulting implications. Based on data from two service fields, structural equation results support the proposition that unexpected high levels of satisfaction or performance initiate an arousal ⇒ pleasure (positive affect) ⇒ delight sequence. Mixed support is found for the hypothesis that delight is a combined result of pleasure and arousal. Satisfaction, acting in parallel with delight, was strongly related to pleasure and disconfirmation and had a clear effect on behavioral intention; the effect of delight on intention, however, appears to be moderated by the service context. Managerial implications include the consideration of whether delight is a reasonable and meaningful consumer expression in particular service contexts, the necessity of focusing on surprising levels of satisfaction or performance when attempting to produce delighting consumption experiences, and potentially separate strategies for inducing satisfaction and delight.