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Emotional and affective responses are experienced during service use that determine customer behavior; and for this reason, bank services require an better understanding of the emotions customers feel in service experiences. This research aims to examine whether different customer segments exist in the bank services industry, based on the emotions they experience when using the service.

The factors were examined through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Then, two-step clustering analysis was developed for customer segmentation on data from 451 bank service customers. Finally, an Anova test was conducted to confirm the differences among the obtained customer segments.

Our findings show that the emotion-based segmentation is meaningful in terms of behavioral outcomes in bank services. Further, research findings indicate that bank service customers cannot be perceived as a homogenous group, since four customer clusters emerge from our research namely “angry complainers”, “pragmatic uninvolved”, “emotionally attached customers” and “happy satisfied customers”.

Our findings show that the emotion-based segmentation is meaningful in terms of behavioral outcomes in bank services. Further, research findings indicate that bank service customers cannot be perceived as a homogenous group, since four customer clusters emerge from our research namely “angry complainers”, “pragmatic uninvolved”, “emotionally attached customers” and “happy satisfied customers”, being the “angry complainers” the most challenging customer group.

The study is the first one to specifically segment bank customers based on the emotions they experience when using the service.

Purpose: To outline recent developments in digital service delivery in order to encourage researchers to pursue collaborations with computer science, operations research, and data science colleagues and to show how such collaborations can expand the scope of research on emotion in service delivery.

Design/methodology/approach: Uses archived resources available at http://LivePerson.com to extract data based in genuine service conversations between agents and customers. We refer to these as “digital traces” and analyze them using computational science models.

Findings: Although we do not test significance or causality, the data presented in this chapter provide a unique lens into the dynamics of emotions in service; results that are not obtainable using traditional research methods.

Research limitations/implications: This is a descriptive study where findings unravel new dynamics that should be followed up with more research, both research using traditional experimental methods, and digital traces research that allows inferences of causality.

Practical implications: The digital data and newly developed tools for sentiment analyses allow exploration of emotions in large samples of genuine customer service interactions. The research provides objective, unobtrusive views of customer emotions that draw directly from customer expressions, with no self-report intervention and biases.

Originality/value: This is the first objective and detailed depiction of the actual emotional encounters that customers express, and the first to analyze in detail the nature and content of customer service work.

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences.

This study aims to examine the relationship among nonverbal customer-to-customer interactions (CCIs), positive and negative emotions, customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions.

The conceptual model that was developed using the stimulus-organism-response theoretical framework was tested using a sample of 583 consumers.

The results show that kinesics and paralanguage positively affect customers’ positive emotions while proxemics, paralanguage and physical appearance negatively influence their negative emotions. Further, both positive and negative emotions are found to have significant impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions.

Theoretically, this study not only contributes to the existing servicescape and customer experience literature but also expands nonverbal interaction research in the hospitality management field. However, results may have limited generalizability to other service settings and other cultural contexts.

This study is one of the first to investigate the impact of nonverbal CCIs on service experiences.

Despite recognition of the importance of emotions and emotion regulation in service encounters, emotion regulation has been generally studied from an employee perspective. This study investigated customer emotion regulation behaviours (CEREBs) in face-to-face service encounters; arguing for a more nuanced approach through an emotion regulation matrix representing the playing up and downplaying of positive or negative emotions. Motivational factors and service-related situational conditions that influence the likelihood of emotion regulation were also examined.

Four focus groups and the critical incident technique method were used to obtain data from people who had interacted with service employees within the previous six months.

There was support for emotion regulation in the four facets of the emotion regulation matrix. Five CEREB dimensions, including verbal behaviours and facial expressions, were evident. Motivational factors and situational conditions that impacted on customer emotion regulation in service encounters were also identified.

The findings were based on two qualitative methods. A quantitative approach should be used to further validate the suggested framework.

Most research on emotion regulation has focused on employees. We examined the phenomenon from a customer viewpoint and in a service encounter context. As customers are not bound by employment rules and conventions, a wider range of emotion regulation behaviours were found. The study used the four-faceted emotion regulation matrix to investigate this, developing a conceptual framework that provides a foundation for future research.

The 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).

A 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.

Loyalty 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).

The 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.

The current study holds its unique contribution by including emotions in the service-oriented settings.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to determine the role of emotions in customer evaluation of service failures; and second, to examine how customers’ emotion regulation impacts customer satisfaction and behavioural responses (e.g. repurchase intentions and negative word-of-mouth).

A scenario-based survey was used to elicit responses in a hospitality setting. Structural equation modelling and hierarchical regression analysis were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results show that both positive and negative emotions mediate the relationship between perceived injustice and customer satisfaction. The emotion regulation of customers through suppression and reappraisal influences the effects of satisfaction on both negative word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions.

This study advances service managers’ understanding of customer experience during service failure by demonstrating how emotion regulation influences customer response behaviours. With a better understanding of customers’ emotion regulation strategies, managers and frontline employees can more effectively develop and execute recovery strategies which adapt to customer emotions while eliciting more satisfying outcomes.

This research is one of the first to examine the moderating role of customers’ emotion regulation strategies in determining their behavioural responses. Conducted in the hospitality services context, this study provides support for relationships among perceived injustice, customer emotions, emotion regulation, customer satisfaction, negative word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions.

In consideration of the lack of research regarding airline lounge customers’ behavior, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among brand personality, self-congruity, functional congruity, positive emotion, customer satisfaction and revisit intentions in airline lounges.

On the basis of theoretical associations among study constructs, a conceptual model was proposed and tested using the data collected from airline lounge patrons through an online survey.

The empirical results showed that brand personality was positively related to self-congruity. Self-congruity was significantly associated with positive emotions and functional congruity. In addition, functional congruity was significantly associated with positive emotions. This result also indicated that positive emotion significantly influenced customer satisfaction. The mediation tests showed that both self-congruity and functional congruity significantly affected customer satisfaction through positive emotion. Customer satisfaction was a significant predictor of revisit intentions within the context of airline lounges.

Overall, these results help airline lounge operators understand lounge travelers who become more demanding with regard to brand personality, self-congruity and functional congruity.

This research was the first to test the effectiveness of image congruity theory in the domain of airline lounges. Our findings contribute to the body of knowledge on customer behaviors in airline lounges and image congruity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant contribution of emotions along with other conventional loyalty drivers on the loyalty intentions.

The influence of three conventional loyalty drivers, i.e., value equity, brand equity, relationship equity on loyalty intentions was investigated by further exploring the moderating effects of negative and positive emotions. A sample of 834 Pakistani consumers in the supermarkets and banking industries was studied employing store-intercept survey design.

Consumer behavior is driven by emotions in both the supermarkets and banking context. Thus, in order to better predict customer loyalty intentions, the emotional component is crucial and should be included along with other cognitive components.

Since customers’ emotional responses throughout service delivery are strongly linked to loyalty, therefore supermarkets and bank service managers need to make sure that the customers experience with their services as pleasurable as possible and for this purpose, customer service employees need to be trained in order to better understand the customers’ emotional responses during the course of service delivery process.

The present study complements the existing literature regarding the role of emotions in service settings and offers a new point of view for the linkage among emotions, customer equity drivers and customer loyalty intentions.

There is considerable research examining the consequences and contingency factors of customer participation in the service encounter. In comparison, there is disproportionately less research examining the antecedents of customer participation. This paper aims to propose and test an appraisal-emotive framework of the effects of front-line employees’ in-role and extra-role behaviours on customer participation.

A survey on 583 customers of retail banks in China has been conducted to test the framework. Structural equation modelling and dominance analysis have been used for hypotheses testing.

Employees’ extra-role behaviour (i.e. organisational citizenship behaviour or OCB) has a stronger effect than their in-role behaviour (i.e. role-prescribed behaviour) in inducing customer participation. These effects are mediated by customer emotions. Specifically, the effect of employees’ in-role behaviour on customer participation was mediated by customers’ positive and negative emotions, whereas the effect of employees’ OCB was mediated by customers’ positive emotions but not by their negative emotions.

The findings reveal that strategic management of employee behaviours can influence customer participation. While organisations often provide training to enhance employees’ in-role behaviour to deliver service performance, they should also recognise and encourage employees’ OCB as a means of increasing customer participation. In particular, employees who display positive emotions tend to evoke positive emotions in customers, which increase customer participation in the service encounter.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few studies in marketing to examine the differential effects of employees’ in-role and extra-role behaviours on customer participation. Importantly, the findings show that employees’ OCB is not only more effective than employees’ in-role behaviour in influencing customer participation but also these two behaviours have varying effects on customer emotions. These findings are new and contribute to the literatures on customer participation, value co-creation and human resource management.