Anna S. Mattila

Congruency of scent and music as a driver of in-store evaluations and behavior

Abstract Retailers have long understood the importance of store environment in enhancing the shopping experience, and past research has examined the main effects of many pleasant ambient stimuli such as music and scent. To further our theoretical understanding, we extend the notion of Gestalt to consumers’ perceptions of retail environments and demonstrated that consumers perceive Servicescapes holistically. Specifically, we suggest that the arousing quality of ambient stimuli is one dimension along which holistic evaluations occur, and that pleasant ambient stimuli are perceived more positively when their arousing qualities match rather than mismatch. We manipulated scent and music in a 3 (no music, pleasant low arousal and high arousal music) by 3 (no scent, pleasant low and high arousal scents) factorial design in a field setting. Our findings show that when ambient scent and music are congruent with each other in terms of their arousing qualities, consumers rate the environment significantly more positive, exhibit higher levels of approach and impulse buying behaviors, and experience enhanced satisfaction than when these environmental cues were at odds with each other.

The Role of Emotions in Service Encounters

This article advances our understanding of the influence of affect in consumers’ responses to brief, nonpersonal service encounters. This study contributes to the services marketing literature by examining for mundane service transactions the impact of customer-displayed emotion and affect on assessments of the service encounter and the overall experience. Observational and perceptual data from customers were matched with frontline employees in 200 transaction-specific encounters. The results of this study suggest that consumers’ evaluations of the service encounter correlate highly with their displayed emotions during the interaction and postencounter mood states. Finally, the findings indicate that frontline employees’perceptions of the encounter are not aligned with those of their customers. The managerial implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

The Role of Culture in the Service Evaluation Process

This research examined the impact of culture on customer evaluations of complex services. The goal was to underStand the trade-offs that Western and Asian customers are willing to make between personalized service and pleasant physical environment in a context of luxury hotels. Overall, the results from the conjoint analysis suggest that customers with Western cultural backgrounds might be more likely than their Asian counterparts to rely on the tangible cues from the physical environment. Furthermore, the hedonic dimension of the consumption experience might be more important for Western consumers, whose core values include fun and enjoyment, than for Asians, whose value structures tend to reflect duty in life.

The effectiveness of service recovery in a multi‐industry setting

In today’s hyper‐competitive business environment, repeat customers are vital for success. Service failures, however, have the potential to destroy customer loyalty. In this study, we wanted to examine how two situational factors, the service type and magnitude of failure, moderate customer responses to service failures. Results from our experimental study indicate that the cost to mollify customers might vary tremendously for different types of services and for different magnitudes of failure. Effective service recovery (e.g. apology combined with a tangible compensation) had a strong positive influence on recovery satisfaction and loyalty for hair styling services whereas the magnitude of the impact was less pronounced for restaurants and dry‐cleaning services. Consistent with previous research, subjects who perceived the failure to be highly serious had lower perceptions of fairness or justice associated with service recovery than their counterparts who considered the failure to be less severe. In sum, our findings support the notion of context‐specificity of service recovery.

The Moderating Role of Target-Arousal on the Impact of Affect on Satisfaction—An Examination in the Context of Service Experiences

Abstract Recently, an increasing number of studies have focused on the emotional role of satisfaction in the consumption of services. In this study, a new moderating variable called “target-arousal level” was introduced to advance our understanding of the role of pleasure and arousal in the satisfaction evaluation process. The results from our experimental study indicate that the traditional pleasure-arousal interaction effect (e.g., Mehrabian and Russell, 1974 ) might be limited to high target arousal situations. Optimal arousal theories (e.g., Berlyne, 1960 ), on the other hand, might offer a fruitful framework for the satisfaction-arousal link in low target arousal environments.

The role of culture and purchase motivation in service encounter evaluations

This study was developed to shed some light on the role of culture and purchase motivation in influencing consumers’ evaluations of services. More specifically, the goal was to contrast Asian and Western travelers’ perceptions of brief, routine‐type service encounters in a hotel context. The results of this empirical study suggest that culture‐based biases in the evaluation process might depend on the consumers’ purchase‐related goals. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the use of expressed emotions as an indicator of how the customer feels about the service might be restricted to Western customers. Managerial implications of this study relate to the training of customer‐contact employees.

Service Recovery and Fairness Perceptions in Collectivist and Individualist Contexts

As in other social exchanges, cultural norms and values are likely to influence customers’ perceptions of fairness and satisfaction with the service recovery process. This study contrasts the impact of two recovery attributes (compensation and explanation) on customers’ postrecovery perceptions in a cross-cultural context (East-Asia versus United States). The results from this experimental study indicate that compensation seems to drive customers’ fairness perceptions, in particular with American consumers. Offering an explanation for the failure had a positive impact on customer perceptions regardless of the customer’s cultural orientation. Finally, the study’s findings show that perceived fairness is directly linked to postrecovery satisfaction.

The Impact of Relationship Type on Customer Loyalty in a Context of Service Failures

This article examines the impact of relationship type (true service relationship, pseudorelationship, and service encounter) on customers’ behavioral intentions in a context of service failures. Overall, the results from the two scenario-based experiments indicate that building a true service relationship with the customer might be a critical factor in ensuring customer loyalty with a failed recovery attempt. Moreover, the findings suggest that bonding the customer to the company might reduce customer resistance to premium prices.

A re-examination of the generalizability of the Aaker brand personality measurement framework

Conceptual, logical, and empirical arguments suggest there are important boundary conditions for the successful application of Aakers brand personality measurement framework. Researchers are encouraged to utilize the framework in situations in which they are likely to have success (aggregating data across diverse product categories) and to proceed with extreme caution when using it in contexts in which they are likely to encounter difficulties (measuring the personality of individual brands or when aggregating data within a specific product category).

How Affective Commitment Boosts Guest Loyalty (and Promotes Frequent-guest Programs)

Customer loyalty is the key to success in today’s commoditized hotel industry. To that end, many hotel companies offer frequent-guest programs. The reward programs are not enough to induce loyalty, however, in the absence of an emotional bond with the brand. Instead, affective commitment—that emotional bond—is needed to ensure repeat patronage. This study demonstrates the key role of an affective commitment in strengthening loyalty to the brand and in improving customers’ perceptions of their preferred brand’s frequent-guest program.