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Wine and accessories bought partly or fully out of a perceived need to repay services received at a winery are defined here as gratuity purchasing. The purpose of the research is to identify factors that predict gratuity purchasing at wineries. Specifically, the study seeks to investigate the role of gratitude and obligation, along with other consumer characteristics, in purchasing.

Winery visitors were sampled from six Texas wineries. A total of 357 questionnaires were analyzed. Hierarchical multiple regression, correlation and factor analyses were employed.

Gratitude and obligation were found to be strong predictors of purchasing at wineries. Visitors who feel grateful to personnel and/or obliged to buy wine are likely to spend more money at wineries. Involvement and knowledge also appear to be related to purchasing.

Since gratitude and obligation appear to be strong predictors of buying decisions, winery managers need to find ways to enhance visitor feelings of appreciation. Although developing a sense of obligation may have an impact on sales, obligation may also create feelings of not wishing to return. It is important for managers to consider the extent to which they would like to have people feeling obligated or guilty about making a purchase.

The research offers new insights into an understudied area of consumer behavior – the role of reciprocity in purchasing behavior. An innovative feature of this study is the development of a new instrument to measure gratitude and obligation.

Technology has become all-pervasive and one of the essential requirements of life. The blessings of science and technology are countless, and today, it is almost impossible to imagine life without applications of technology. And at the same time, positive psychologists have advocated practicing gratitude for the betterment of personal and professional growth and development. But ironically, the area of gratitude toward technology remains unexplored. The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference in gratitude for the technological and non-technological aspects of life.

The first study compared gratitude for three parameters – sense of abundance, social appreciation and appreciation for others. The second study was based on the “counting blessing” exercise, in which respondents were asked to write five things for which they feel grateful in life. The Friedman test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to compare the ranked data. In the third study, respondents were distributed into two groups. Both groups were given a puzzle to solve; first, group members were informed that they would interact with other human beings, and the second group was informed that they would interact with bots.

All three studies concluded that respondents are relatively less grateful for the contributions of technologies.

This is probably the first study that investigated gratefulness for technology.

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.

The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the different psychological impacts of two initial verbal recovery strategies (gratitude vs empathetic apology) on the consumers' loyalty after a service failure. The proposed theoretical model also appraises the mediating role of two emotional responses (consumer forgiveness, consumer anger) and consumer self-esteem and the moderating role of self-oriented perfectionism.

Two studies (i.e. an experimental design and a field study) are considered for this investigation to assess the effectiveness of gratitude expression versus empathetic apology on post-recovery loyalty and test the effects of mediators and the moderator applied between the verbal recovery strategies and post-recovery loyalty.

The results of Study 1 revealed the supremacy of gratitude to empathetic apology in maintaining consumers' loyalty after service failure recovery. The better impact of gratitude expressed in increasing post-recovery loyalty is mediated through the elevation of consumers' forgiveness, the reduction of consumers' anger and consumers' self-esteem. The findings of Study 2 indicated that gratitude increases more post-recovery loyalty through individuals with a high level of self-oriented perfectionism.

Future research could examine other service failure situations, different types of service recovery, mediators or moderators, which contribute to the service marketing literature.

After a service failure, using gratitude expressions to consumers often makes them feel better and more valuable.

This work increases service providers' knowledge in using proper expressions after a service failure to help elevate consumers' positive reactions resulting in maintaining their loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between gratitude and workplace friendship with affective well-being (AWB) at work amongst millennial employees. Specifically, it details the mediating effect of workplace friendship in explaining the linkages between gratitude and AWB at work.

This study used a sample of 272 millennial workers in this study. A survey invitation was sent out to all of the respondents through email. A 20-item job-related AWB (Van Katwyk et al., 2000) scale was used to measure AWB. Workplace friendship was measured using six-items of the workplace friendship scale (Nielsen et al., 2000) and gratitude was measured using McCullough et al.’s (2002) six-item gratitude questionnaire (GQ-6).

The study found that gratitude and workplace friendship enhanced workplace AWB among millennial workers. Workplace friendship functioned as a mediator, which delivered the effect from gratitude towards workplace AWB. Gratitude was found to positively predict workplace friendship and subsequently workplace friendship positively predicted workplace AWB.

Nurturing positive feelings at work through excellent psychosocial resources and healthy work friendships would improve millennial workers well-being. Henceforth, encouraging millennial employees to cultivate workplace friendships, can help the manager to enhance millennial employees’ feeling of belongingness, and thus, promote better AWB.

Investment on employee’s human capital and values can be valuable resources to increase millennial employees’ performance at work. Millennial workers are a unique generation that put emphasis on the subjective experience. Hence, capitalising on their subjective experience can be one of the keys to better increase their well-being and performance at work.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how small-town residents’ perceptions of a minor league sport team’s socially responsible initiatives (SRI) influence several psychological responses to SRI, including feelings of gratitude, subjective well-being, place attachment and community pride.

A cross-sectional, survey-based research design was employed to empirically assess the effects of SRI on positive psychological responses in the context of a minor league sport team located in a rural community. The data set used in this study included a convenience sample of 307 small-town residents.

Residents of the rural community did perceive and feel grateful for their minor league sport team’s SRI. Grateful residents experienced higher levels of subjective well-being (happiness, pleasure and satisfaction) as well as enhanced community pride and attachment due to the local sport team’s altruistic and prosocial behaviors.

This study’s findings shed light on a critical function and benefit of a minor league sport team in rural communities. Emotionally valued prosocial efforts enhance the well-being of residents in rural communities. Thus, a reasonable course of action for local community leaders and public-sector organizations is to invest in and create partnership opportunities with their local minor league sport teams. Such efforts can turn sport teams into leverageable assets that can help promote healthy and sustainable communities for current residents as well as future generations.

A contribution of this study is the integration of the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions to better understand how gratitude mediates the relationship between SRI and beneficial community-focused outcomes such as pride, attachment and well-being.

Relationship marketing is about developing, maintaining and sustaining mutually beneficial customer–organisation relationships as measured by economic gains. Yet, a purely economic focus does not fully offer a psychological explanation of relationship marketing outcomes. In this regard, this paper has considered gratitude as a significant component of personal relationships, which offers insights into a customer–organisation relationships. Accordingly, this study aims to examine gratitude as a mechanism to predict relationship marketing outcomes, such as overall satisfaction, trust and commitment.

Data were collected from 1,093 millennial consumers across three university campuses.

Results indicate that gratitude is a mediating mechanism that can explain the relationship between young consumers’ perceptions of relationship marketing investments and overall satisfaction, trust and commitment. Perceived benevolence strengthens the relationship between perceived relationship marketing investments and customer gratitude.

The gratitude model contributes an alternative understanding of how young consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s marketing investments are important in achieving a high degree of relationship marketing outcomes. This paper further incorporates the moderating roles of customer cynicism and perceptions of benevolence, key individual and relational characteristics, that influence the level of gratitude individuals to experience in response to the investments made by organisations.

This paper aims to present a model linking price promotions to checkout donations. It is argued that price promotions evoke two perceptions/emotions, namely, feelings of gratitude and perceived sacrifice of purchase, which consequently, influence the likelihood to donate. Feelings of gratitude dominate when the discount is high, while feelings of sacrifice dominate when the discount is low. Compared to no-discount situations, high discounts enhance consumers’ intention to donate while low discounts reduce this intention.

A total of four studies using shopping scenarios are conducted. Study 1 examines the main effect and the mediating factors. Study 2 replicates the findings in different product categories and at different unit-price levels. Studies 3 and 4 test the moderating effects of customer effort and discount framing.

Findings of the four studies provide support for the proposed model. Compared to no-discount situations, high discounts enhance consumers’ intention to donate, while low discounts reduce this intention. The effects are mediated by feelings of gratitude and sacrifice and moderated by effort obtaining the discount and format of the discount.

Theoretically, this research advances the understanding of consumers’ interpretations of price promotions. All studies are conducted in an online context.

This research informs retailers and charity institutions on the best timing for soliciting checkout donations and indicates specific tactics to enhance consumers’ donations.

This is the first study linking price discounts to the growing phenomenon of checkout donations. The research is different from cause marketing where the donation is included in the price of a specific product. The work also differs from studies examining the spillover effect where additional purchases benefit the consumers instead of a cause.

The purpose of this paper is to show how purchasing behavior is approached as a customer‐perceived need to reciprocate for services received. The study seeks to examine involvement, knowledge, and identity as predictors of reciprocal consumer behavior. Two components of reciprocity – gratitude and obligation – are expected to mediate the relationships. The effect is expected to be different for men and women.

Wine was chosen as a product category to test the relationships in the models. Data collection was conducted via distribution of surveys to tasting room visitors at six wineries. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The impact of knowledge, identity, and involvement were important findings from the research. The differences between males and females with regard to their feelings of gratitude and obligation and the impact on purchasing are pronounced. Obligation to make a purchase had a stronger effect on the purchasing behavior of women. In contrast, gratitude (feeling appreciation and thankfulness to personnel) was a stronger reason for men to make a purchase.

Knowledge about different ways in which men and women reciprocate could be useful for researchers and practitioners. Free samples provided to potential buyers, tours of industrial factories where products are also sold, and a variety of service situations are all possible contexts where gratitude and obligation may occur. Purchases are likely to be the result at least in part because of these feelings.

The major contribution of this research is to highlight the role of gender in reciprocity research and to demonstrate the application of this effect in consumer behavior.

From Adam Smith onwards, gratitude has been held as invaluable to societal functioning in view of its role in helping individuals maintain their reciprocal obligations to one another. The purpose of the current research is to use current conceptions of gratitude derived from work in social psychology to test whether simple descriptions of hypothetical organisations could systematically differ in the extent to which they elicit gratitude, and subsequently, whether gratitude would mediate behavioural intentions towards these organisations.

In two studies, participants read vignettes describing hypothetical organisations that systematically differed in the extent to which the services they provided were costly to the organisation, of high value and provided out of a genuine desire to help. Perceptions of these dimensions, feelings of gratitude and behavioural intentions towards each organisation were subsequently measured.

The appraisal group manipulation significantly affected consumers’ behavioural intentions towards these businesses, and the majority of these relationships were mediated by feelings of gratitude towards the organisations.

These data indicate that gratitude not only mediates customer responses to relationship marketing investments, but may also be integral in marketing communications’ role in converting non-customers to customers. They also indicate that marketing communications should stress that an organisations services are of high value, of cost to the organisation and provided out of a genuine desire to help.

This paper shows for the first time that the same cognitive appraisals that underpin feelings of interpersonal gratitude mediate responses to global evaluations of organisations. This considerably broadens the situations under which gratitude had previously been considered to operate and argues for the inclusion of gratitude in understanding how marketing communications and relationship management are used to influence consumer responses.