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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.

When a failure occurs with a self-service technology (SST), do customers want to give back the “self” in self-service? The authors explore employee’s role in a self-service failure and how the presence of other customers can change that role. Specifically, they examine how the self-monitoring of customers behavior during a failure can change recovery preferences.

Data were collected from customers of a movie self-service ticket kiosk and a grocery self-checkout. Three experiments were conducted.

Results from these studies find that customers want employees to fully take over a transaction after a failure if it takes place in isolation. If other patrons are present or waiting in line, then customers prefer the employee to simply correct the problem and let them complete the transaction. Finally, the servicescape along with the presence of other customers in a self-service area can induce self-monitoring behaviors and alter optimal recovery strategies.

These findings have implications on the appropriate amount of recovery assistance customers need in a self-service experience.

This research reveals the social and functional complexities associated with executing a satisfactory SST failure recovery, particularly with respect to determining the extent to which the employee or customer should control the attempt.

This is the first study to examine the employee’s role in a self-service failure. While other studies have examined customers’ intentions in a self-service failure, authors examine how a service provider can assist in the recovery of a self-service failure.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential differences between types of self-service technology. Specifically, the paper explores how the dynamics of public and private self-service technology influence customers' decision to use the technology.

Existing customers of private and public self-service technology were surveyed from the same industry. Using structural equation modeling, the authors examine how relevant self-service constructs influence evaluations and attitudes of customers across both settings.

The analysis reveals that customers' control and convenience perceptions differ across public and private self-service technology. Additionally, customers placed a heavier emphasis on the hedonic or utilitarian evaluation of a service experience based on the type of self-service technology.

For managers of self-service applications, understanding the unique differences of public and private self-service technology can aid in the implementation and adoption of the technology. By properly understanding the differences of the self-service types, managers can provide a beneficial experience to the customer.

By identifying and describing two distinct categories of SSTs, this study allows managers and researchers to better understand how and why individuals choose to utilize individual self-service technologies. Through understanding the unique dynamics of a public and a private SST experience, retailers can determine the appropriate strategy for customer adoption based on the utilitarian or hedonic functions of the technology.

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.

The stand‐out works this year are a number of comprehensive general discographies. Before reviewing them in detail in Part Two, I would like to single out three of them here for special attention.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.