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While research on customer gratitude is gaining momentum, there is an absence of a clear conceptualization and operationalization of the construct. This paper aims to provide a grounded theory definition of customer gratitude, develops and validates a gratitude scale to fully capture the comprehensive definition and assesses the scale in a nomological network with antecedents and consequences.

This qualitative study and four quantitative studies examine customer gratitude within service encounters.

Results from all five studies support a three-dimensional definition of customer gratitude that includes affective, behavioral and cognitive dimensions. The quantitative findings show that the three-dimensional gratitude scale offers strong predictive ability of loyalty and relationship continuity and that gratitude maintains its effect on these relational outcomes after assessing other mediating mechanisms (e.g. value).

This research offers an expanded conceptual definition and scale of customer gratitude that conforms to theory and the extant literature. The scale maintains construct validity which is supported in a nomological context of theoretically based antecedents and consequences.

This work advances the emerging gratitude literature by clearly delineating the construct’s domain, measurement and impact on relational outcomes.

For centuries, gratitude has represented an integral component of social relationships, yet it remains relatively overlooked by marketing scholars in the study of commercial relationships. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how gratitude helps to build, maintain and transform commercial relationships and to suggest noteworthy areas of investigation for those researchers seeking to help companies understand the role of gratitude in relationship marketing.

Gratitude's role in relational exchange is explored by a review of relevant literature and two qualitative studies. Questions developed from the literature and exploratory interviews are then investigated in a main study through in-depth interviews with buyers and sellers of goods and services in both B2B and B2C contexts, leading to a grounded theoretical foundation. Generalizations and directions for future research are presented.

Gratitude is a fundamental component of buyer-seller relationships and is critical for advancing relationship marketing theory and practice. Gratitude's changing role as relationship stages advance is described.

The research is of an exploratory nature. Confirmation of the generalizations by other studies is suggested. This research is largely consistent with that from a markets-as-networks perspective and moves relationship marketing research toward a more extended view.

Gratitude should be included along with other relational mediators in discussions and investigations of relationship success, and practiced by those that seek to build, develop and enhance their buyer-seller relationships.

This paper provides a much needed exploration of a new and important topic in relationship marketing and a call for gratitude to be studied and implemented in a variety of relational exchange contexts. Specifically, it is the first to address the importance of gratitude to both buyers and sellers in B2B and B2C goods and services markets. It also is the first to document the changing role of gratitude through relationship stages.

Managers are increasingly faced with situations that call for creative ways to engage consumers and employees. With online and offline options available for creative problem solving, consumers are constantly engaging with brands to provide different solutions to everyday problems. There are numerous contextual factors that influence creative output, external primes (distal vs proximal) being one of them. This research attempts to find the boundary conditions such as cognitive load, expectations of performance feedback and optimism that interact with environmental primes to influence quality and quantity of creativity. Doing so would help managers create conditions that can enhance creative output.

Three experiments were conducted; the first tests the interactive effect of primes and cognitive load, and the second involves the enhancing effect of expectation of performance feedback. Given that cognitive load depresses creativity and expectation of performance feedback enhances creativity, the third study finds whether optimism enhances the effects of distal primes under high cognitive load condition.

Study 1 demonstrates that the boundary factor of cognitive load moderates the relative difference between proximal and distal primes: cognitive load depresses the enhancing effects of distal primes. Study 2 demonstrates that expectation of performance feedback can enhance the effectiveness of distal primes to a greater extent than proximal primes. Study 3 suggests that highly optimistic individuals can overcome the depressing effects of cognitive load when exposed to distal primes and expectation of performance feedback.

The research demonstrates the environmental conditions that influence creative output in problem solving.

This research attempts to highlight the importance of contextual factors in influencing creativity. In the process, this research highlights the interactive forces that deter or enhance creativity so that managers can provide optimal conditions that enhance creative output for their employees and consumers.