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Casting employers as customers, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between expectations, perceptions and disconfirmation beliefs with the satisfaction of employers regarding the competencies possessed by fresh engineering graduates hired by such employers in the Indian context.

Using data collected from 284 employers, the authors have hypothesized and examined a partial mediation model in which disconfirmation beliefs mediate the relationships between expectations and perceptions, and employer satisfaction. Furthermore, the authors have tested if this mediated relationship is moderated by the age and sex of respondents representing employers.

Results indicate that employers’ satisfaction can be explained from the framework of the expectancy-disconfirmation theory. Employers’ expectations and perceptions are established to be associated with employers’ satisfaction with new hires, and positive disconfirmation mediates these relationships. Results also indicate that age moderates the effect of predictor variables employers’ expectations and employers’ perception on the mediator disconfirmation. Sex, however, did not moderate any relationship.

The results demonstrate the usefulness of the expectancy-disconfirmation theory for studying employer satisfaction with competencies of recent engineering graduates in India. Findings are relevant to multiple stakeholders including employers hiring engineering graduates, engineers and technical institutions.

Expectancy-disconfirmation theory has been successfully applied to measure customer satisfaction in consumer behaviour research, while satisfaction of employers has been studied in the field of organizational behaviour. The paper stands out in the literature as one of its major implications is to extend the expectancy-disconfirmation theory to predict employers’ satisfaction.

This article proposes a conceptual model that explains dining satisfaction and predicts post‐dining behavioural intentions. The model provides a reference framework for conceptualising and describing the effects of disconfirmation on individuals’ dining and post‐dining experience processes, and within which dining satisfaction research findings can be related, organised, and integrated to form a systematic body of knowledge. The resulting discussion reviews consumer satisfaction research to date and evaluates applications of the approach in customer feedback. The article concludes that disconfirmation theory has sufficient comprehensiveness by suggesting that dining satisfaction is a consequence of disconfirmation and that satisfaction with the dining event does lead to repeat patronage. Subsequent articles (Part 2) will report and explain the research design and analytical methods used in this study, and (Part 3) will report on data analysis and findings of the study.

Continued usage of information systems (ISs) is highly critical to a firm’s sustained success. The expectancy-disconfirmation framework has been effective in explaining continuance. However, our own experiences suggest that we may continue using an IS despite low satisfaction. One of the reasons is that the prediction of future user intent in existing models is predominantly retrospective. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by incorporating forward-looking considerations into the expectancy-disconfirmation model.

A questionnaire survey was conducted for two types of mobile applications: photo-sharing and note-taking, and 593 valid responses were collected. The partial least squares method was employed for structural model analysis for each type of applications.

The well-entrenched expectancy-disconfirmation model was empirically verified. This study further shows that the influence of satisfaction on continuance intention is higher when hope for the future of a mobile application is stronger, and vice versa, after controlling for the impact of past usage behaviour. In addition, hope is found to be induced by appraisals of perceived usefulness and importance of a mobile application.

This study demonstrates that the expectancy-disconfirmation model can be enhanced with considerations of future outcomes. It shows that emotions such as hope are inherent to continuance decisions. Moreover, it goes beyond the valence dimension of emotions and identified specific antecedents of hope based on the appraisal theory.

The purpose of this paper to explore the value creation expectations of salespeople and buyers for initial sales meetings and to investigate how such expectations align.

The authors applied expectancy disconfirmation theory and conducted a qualitative study among 12 B2B service salespeople and 12 buyers. The data includes 46 in-depth interviews collected during 2 separate interview rounds.

The authors discovered that buyers’ and sellers’ expectations differ and that buyers’ expectations are not reasonably satisfied. Buyers expect more business acumen, innovativeness, future orientation, long-term relationships and responsiveness to their specific situation from sellers. As salespeople´s salespeople´s expectations to create value for customers primarily stem from the solutions they sell as well as from their personal skills and behavior, there is need for sellers to focus on the gaps indicated in this study.

The paper introduces expectancy disconfirmation theory to the B2B buyer-seller literature.

Identifying where expectations are being met and where they are being negatively disconfirmed can assist in hiring and training salespeople who are better able to meet, or exceed, buyer expectations.

The authors believe that these findings can benefit sales organizations in how they create value with new customers and how salespeople can align their actions with customers more effectively.

Understanding negative customer engagement is important as it is argued that negative information has a stronger impact on a customer’s brand perception and purchase decision than that of positive information. Hence, this paper aims to propose new determinants of negatively valenced customer engagement, including disengaged and negatively engaged behaviours in a service consumption context and explore under what conditions customers display disengaged or negatively engaged behaviours.

This study incorporates justice theory, expectancy disconfirmation theory and psychology literature to propose determinants of negative customer engagement behaviours.

A conceptual framework is developed that proposes customer perceived justice and negative disconfirmation as determinants of negative customer engagement via the mediator of customer outrage. Moderating variables, include self-esteem, self-efficacy, altruism and vengeance; are also proposed to affect disengaged/negatively engaged behaviours.

This study is the first to specify the underlying reasons of negative customer engagement by establishing the conceptual linkages between negative disconfirmation, justice and negative customer engagement via the mediating role of customer outrage. Further, customer resources are used to understand disengaged/negatively engaged behaviours. In doing so, this study views negative customer engagement from the perspective of a customer’s internal response to the trigger experience, rather than the experience itself. Thus, this study contributes to literature on customer engagement by developing a conceptual framework that illustrates the underlying cognitive and affective responses that drive negative customer engagement behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the motivations behind people's intentions to continue knowledge sharing (continuance intention) in open professional virtual communities.

Data collected from 270 members of a professional virtual community provides partial support for the proposed model. LISREL 8.5 was used to analyse the measurement and structural models.

The results show that playfulness is critical for the community members' satisfaction and continuance intention. However, only positive self‐worth disconfirmation, distributive justice, and interactional justice can influence the satisfaction of the community members.

The data were collected from a single open professional community; the generalisation of the model and findings to other virtual communities requires additional research. The findings imply that justice factors appear to be important in leading to higher satisfaction levels.

Developers of virtual communities should create a more enjoyable online environment and raise the core knowledge contributors' sense of self‐worth.

A theoretical model was constructed in which individual motivation factors, social network factors, and justice theory are integrated with expectancy disconfirmation theory to investigate the motivations behind people's continuance intention.

With the growing online review manipulation and fake reviews in the hospitality industry, it is not uncommon that a consumer encounters disconfirmation when comparing the existing online reviews with his/her own product or service evaluation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of review disconfirmation on customer online review writing behavior.

This study used a mixed-method combining online secondary big data modeling and experimental design.

Review disconfirmation influences customers’ emotional responses embedded in the review; a customer who encounters review disconfirmation tends to exert more reviewing effort, manifested by writing longer reviews; negativity bias exists in disconfirmation effects, in that negative review disconfirmation shows more significant and stronger effects than positive review disconfirmation.

Findings from this study provide important managerial implications for business owners and marketers who attempt to influence online reviews. The study suggests that fictitious online review manipulation might be detrimental to the business.

This research contributes to two literature streams, including research on the social influence of online consumer reviews, and the relationship between disconfirmation and consumers’ post-consumption behavior, by extending the influence of disconfirmation from the offline context to the online context.

The purpose of this study is to integrate expectancy disconfirmation theory (EDT) to explore cognitive beliefs and affect influencing an individual's intention to repurchase in online marketplaces.

The paper used EDT to conduct an empirical study and data were collected from a total of 303 bidders of online auctions. A structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the relationships of the research model.

The findings show that bidders' disconfirmation of online auctions is positively associated with their satisfaction, which in turn is positively associated with their repurchase intentions.

Both bidders' expectation of policy and auctioneers' performance of policy are important determinants of disconfirmation. Auctioneers need to recognize the distinctive roles of information policy in selling and bidding rules. Besides, neither bidders' expectation of sellers' reputation nor their expectation of service quality has a significant relationship with disconfirmation. This finding implies that in a mature e‐commerce environment bidders pay more attention to the sellers' performance than their prior expectation.

This study, which aims to shed light on bidder behavior in online auctions, is the first study that has applied an EDT‐based model to investigate the determinants of repurchase intention in online auctions.

Over the last years, the concept of customer delight has moved into the focus of attention. The necessity of surprise for achieving customer delight and the problem of increased customer expectation (spiral of expectations) have been controversially discussed in the literature. The purpose of the paper is therefore to investigate whether customer delight necessarily requires surprise and whether a misdirected delight strategy can backfire by creating disloyal customers.

This study employs a 2 (after-sales extra value: yes vs no)×2 (knowledge about the extra value: yes vs no) between-subject, scenario-based experiment (n=472) in a hotel environment and partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze the data.

Study results show that surprise is not a necessary prerequisite for achieving customer delight, but its presence strengthens the delight experience for the customer, positively impacting customer loyalty intentions. Conversely, a surprising nonoccurrence of an expected delight measure causes anger, inducing negative word of mouth and reduced repurchase intentions.

To pursue a sustainable customer delight approach, companies should recognize that they do not need to surprise their customers on every occasion, but rather ensure that customers do not fall short of anticipated delightful events.

The current research strives to contribute to the theory and practice by shedding light on two so far not appropriately addressed research areas of customer delight: the necessity of surprise to evoke customer delight and the consequences of absent but expected delight measures.

By extending the expectancy-disconfirmation theory and integrating the elaboration likelihood model, this study aims to explore the reference effects (i.e. disconfirmation and self-identity) and customer engagement that affect customer experience on satisfaction with a museum visit. The study is designed to test a dual-mediator mechanism involving disconfirmation and self-identity. The moderating role of cognitive, affective or behavioral engagements is also examined with the overall purpose to advance the understanding of customer experience in cultural consumption such as museum visits.

A self-administered field survey in two stages was carried out on visitors to the Hong Kong Museum of Art. A total of 465 valid response sets were used for analysis. Hypotheses were tested using confirmatory factor analysis, three-step mediation test, structural equation modeling and moderation regressions.

Disconfirmation and self-identity are found to be dual mediators in the experience–satisfaction relationship. Cognitive engagement reduces the effect of knowledge experience on disconfirmation and self-identity but increases that of the entertainment experience on disconfirmation and self-identity. Affective engagement amplifies the effect of knowledge experience on self-identity but mitigates the importance of entertainment evaluations.

Findings highlight the importance of both perceived knowledge and entertainment experiences in visitors’ evaluation of a cultural experience. Managers are suggested to craft promotional messages with the psychological appeal that connects visitors with museum services. Appropriate engagement tactics for museums can be developed to avoid overloading visitors with information.

Previous studies treat disconfirmation as the dominant reference effect in the formation of customer satisfaction. This study shows both disconfirmation and self-identity as dual reference effects that link the customer experience to satisfaction in the museum context, serving as a pioneer in defining how the influence of experience on reference effects varies depending on how customers are cognitively and affectively engaged in such context.