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The purpose of this paper is to investigate if customer delight is possible when the service encounter result may not be successful. Such a scenario is increasingly likely with the experiential, sticky and unpredictable nature of many competitively based experiential encounters where one side wins and the other loses.

Across four studies using both field and panel data, this research provides a framework to evaluate how firms can still create customer delight even if the result of the encounter is unpredictable or possibly negative. Further, the authors combine qualitative data, structural equation modeling and experimental design to test the models across four competitively based experiential contexts.

Findings indicate that firms can create delight through a variety of antecedent variables, including employee expertise, servicescape, social congruence and atmosphere. Neither importance of winning nor expectations for a win significantly alter the relationships of these antecedents in creating delight. Further, evidence from this research indicates that both feelings of nostalgia and geographic self-identity enhance delight’s effect on behavioral intentions, while geographic self-identity also enhances delight’s effect on customers’ evangelizing to others.

This research extends the field’s understanding of the customer delight construct, sticky vs smooth encounters, as well as providing guidance to both practitioners and academics on new possibilities in the delight realm.

This research provides insights for practitioners on how to maximize customer emotions aside from surprisingly disconfirming customer expectations, as well as leaning into different tactics to influence the customer that are not outcome based.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to evaluate customer delight in competitively based experiential encounters where the encounter result is unpredictable and possibly negative.

The purpose of this paper is to combine the evolving fields of customer delight and positive psychology to investigate a broader conceptualization of customer delight. Furthermore, to investigate antecedent variables that impact this broader conceptualization.

This research employed structural equation modeling in a hedonic context.

Key findings indicate that aside from joy and surprise, gratitude also has a positive impact on customer delight. Furthermore, psychological sense of brand community (PSBC) and transcendent customer experiences (TCE) were shown to positively impact the proximal antecedents of customer delight.

Extending the domain of customer delight beyond joy and surprise contributes to the theoretical discussion on what customer delight represents to the service firm. Further, this research identifies new theoretical relationships between PSBC/TCE and customer delight.

By offering the broader conceptualization of customer delight, this research contributes to the discussion of whether delight is possible or even profitable. Namely, by moving past joy/surprise, this research suggests that managing gratitude can be a strategic lever that the modern service firm can utilize.

This is the first research to evaluate gratitude as an antecedent to customer delight. Further, by combining positive psychology and delight research this research identifies new predictors of positive customer experiences.

With increasing competition in the marketplace, there is a greater push for exceeding customer expectations and delivering customer delight to ensure firm’s success. The main reason for this push is the beneficial outcomes for the firm. More recently, hidden benefits have been identified (i.e. elevated customer emotions can positively impact other customers and employees in the service environment). Adding to this developing literature, the current research develops a model that links antecedents and outcomes to employee perceptions of customer delight.

Both field and panel data, as well as multiple statistical methods, were utilized to test the hypothesized relationships. The field data were collected from employees of a national specialty retailer.

Service climate and interpersonal influence have a positive impact on customer delight and employee perceptions of customer delight. In turn, employee perceptions of customer delight positively impact harmonious passion and job dedication. In addition, accountability for pleasing customers is a significant moderator of the relationship between employee perceptions of customer delight and harmonious passion, but not between employee perceptions of customer delight and job dedication.

This research contributes to the ongoing debate on the viability of customer delight as a service standard by investigating the under-studied perspective of the frontline employee.

This research contributes to the debate on the value of customer delight as a service standard by investigating the under-studied perspective of the frontline employee. A key takeaway for practitioners is how to create and manage the delight spirals that can occur when customers are delighted.

This is the first study that evaluates antecedents and outcomes of employee-perceived customer delight in a single model. This is also the first study to measure the impact of employee perceptions of customer delight with field data.

The unprecedented dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced firms to re-envision the customer experience and find new ways to ensure positive service encounters. This context has underscored the reality that drivers of customer delight in a “traditional” context are not the same in a crisis context. While research has tended to identify hedonic need fulfillment as key to customer well-being and, ultimately, to invoking customer delight, the majority of studies were conducted in inherently positive contexts, which may limit generalizability to more challenging contexts. Through the combined lens of transformative service research (TSR) and psychological theory on hedonic and eudaimonic human needs, we evaluate the extent to which need fulfillment is the root of customer well-being and that meeting well-being needs ultimately promotes delight. We argue that in crisis contexts, the salience of needs shifts from hedonic to eudaimonic and the extent to which service experiences fulfill eudaimonic needs determines the experience and meaning of delight.

Utilizing the critical incident technique, this research surveyed 240 respondents who were asked to explain in detail a time they experienced customer delight during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed their responses according to whether these incidents reflected the salience of hedonic versus eudaimonic need fulfillment.

The results support the notion that the salience of eudaimonic needs become more pronounced during times of crisis and that service providers are more likely to elicit perceptions of delight when they leverage meeting eudaimonic needs over the hedonic needs that are typically emphasized in traditional service encounters.

We discuss the implications of these findings for integrating the TSR and customer delight literatures to better understand how service experiences that meet salient needs produce customer well-being and delight. Ultimately, we find customer delight can benefit well-being across individual, collective and societal levels.

Historically, firms have dedicated an abundance of resources in the pursuit of customer satisfaction and its corresponding favorable consequences. However, research indicates that customer satisfaction may not necessarily result in the outcomes pursued. This paper aims to focus on the concept of customer delight and explore antecedents and consequences of interest to the service firm. More specifically, the proposed model explores the linkages of employee effort, employee expertise and the firm’s tangibles to customer surprise and joy which in turn lead to customer delight and per cent of budget spent.

Data were collected from a grocery store. The hypothesized relationships were tested using structural equation modeling.

Results from this study yield new insights into the dual pathways leading to customer delight through joy and surprise. That is, joy and tangibles lead to both joy and surprise, whereas expertise leads to joy alone. Both joy and surprise are completely mediated through delight to per cent of budget spent. Interestingly, higher frequency customers experience a stronger relationship from joy to delight.

The findings have implications for the ongoing debate on the viability of customer delight and extending the theoretical understanding of why customer delight represents such a powerful force in the service environment.

By providing specific variables that impact both joy and surprise, management can develop tactics to develop delight initiatives.

This is the first study proposing multiple paths to customer delight. Further, this is the first study to link needs based and disconfirmation into a single model.

Deciding on the appropriate level of service is one of the paramount decisions a firm must make. Making this decision more complicated is the debate regarding the viability of aiming for the highest level of service or customer delight. One avenue of research missing from the literature is the impact of providing delight to one customer while in the presence of others. In response the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the emotional and cognitive reactions of the observing customer.

Structural equation modeling was utilized to evaluate a sample of 272 respondents. Additional moderation analysis was conducted on the impact of perceived deservingness.

Findings indicate that the observing customer experiences the dual effects of joy and jealousy which both impact perceptions of unfairness and subsequent behaviors of complaining and repurchase. The perceived deservingness of the customer experiencing the delight is shown to reduce the impact of jealousy on unfairness.

The main limitations include cross-sectional data and the fact that the data were retrospective.

This research suggests that firms should embrace the positive contagion that occurs between the delighted customer and observer while attempting to minimize the impact of jealousy.

This is the first research to quantitatively evaluate the impact of a customer viewing another customer receiving delight.

This paper aims to study the effects of widespread stress and uncertainty that is characteristic of organizational crises on service employees and to explore the extent to which organizations may proactively use supervisors’ positive humor and discretionary organizational support that goes above and beyond service employee expectations to mitigate the pandemic’s negative impact on work engagement.

Cross-sequential survey-based data was collected from 172 service employees during the height of the pandemic to assess service employees’ perceptions of both their supervisors’ use of positive humor and their employers’ discretionary organizational support in response to the emotion-laden stress and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. PROCESS analysis was used to test the hypotheses and to conduct supplementary analyses.

Results suggest employee perceptions of supervisors’ use of positive humor positively impact dimensions of work engagement at Time 1. This engagement then positively impacts extra-role behavior, innovativeness and pride at Time 2. The impact from supervisor humor to the outcomes is fully mediated through work engagement. From a moderation perspective, discretionary organizational support was shown as a substitute for creating work engagement at low levels of supervisor humor suggesting that the two “resource builders” can act as substitutes in creating engagement.

This paper provides unique insights into both the valuable role of positive workplace humor for service workers’ work engagement during times of widespread crisis and the moderating role discretionary organizational support plays when perceptions of humor are relatively low. Moreover, the supplemental examination of the multidimensional work engagement construct as a mediator between humor and the service outcomes of extra-role behavior, innovativeness and organizational pride provides unique insights into how a crisis context may deferentially affect the experience and implications of engagement for other service worker outcomes. Understanding the proactive, ameliorative role in service effectiveness played by supervisor humor and discretionary organizational support during crises is an emerging question for service research.

The purpose of the current research is to evaluate how customer contact level and customer service-based role conflict influence the relationship between customer emotions and work engagement, while simultaneously evaluating psychological capital as an outcome of work engagement. Customer service research highlights the impact of employee attitudes and behaviors on customer satisfaction. More recently, this relationship has been examined in reverse, evaluating how customer emotions influence the employee. Unfortunately, previous research has not evaluated variables that inhibit the impact of customer emotions on the employee.

Data were collected from frontline employees across high and low customer contact service contexts. The hypothesized relationships were tested using structural equation modeling.

This research provides empirical evidence that employee-perceived customer delight impacts employee work engagement. However, through a process of feedback, customer service-based role conflict impacts the relationship between customer emotions and employee emotions. Finally, the conceptual model illustrates how engaged employees can create their own personal resources vis-à-vis the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.

This research identifies both antecedent and outcomes variables associated with work engagement, as well as identified mediating factors.

Results suggest that the quality and level of contact that frontline employees have with customers impact their work engagement. Furthermore, engaged frontline employees have the ability to create their own personal resources.

This research makes contributions to the understanding of the impact of positive customer emotions on frontline employees.

Frontline employees (FLEs) represent a major source of value creation for the modern firm. As such, firms are constantly evaluating different attributes of potential and current employees in the hopes of attracting, retaining, and rewarding key employees. Recently, the construct of work engagement has garnered interest as an important indicator of employee performance. However, much is unknown about this construct with regards to antecedents, outcomes and measurement. Thus, the purpose of the current research is to contribute to the developing literature on work engagement.

Data were collected from FLEs across high and low customer contact service contexts. The hypothesized relationships in the model were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

This research provides empirical evidence that service climate, job satisfaction and affective commitment influence work engagement. Employee's work engagement subsequently impacts constructs such as career commitment and adaptability. Furthermore, the authors conceptualize work engagement as a multidimensional higher order construct that exhibits a superior fit compared to a simple first order conceptualization.

This research provides guidance on how to measure work engagement as well as identifying both antecedent and outcomes variables associated with the construct.

Results suggest that the service firm has some impact on the level of work engagement FLEs exhibit. Furthermore, this research highlights the importance of the link between positive emotions and FLE performance.

By utilizing the contemporary broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this research makes contributions in the developing understanding of the impact of positive emotions on FLEs.