HaeEun Helen Chun

Reversing the Green Backlash in Services: Credible Competitors Help Large Companies Go Green

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to first demonstrate a “green backlash” effect whereby evaluations of a large service organization decrease after the organization announces a new green practice and second, explore how the presence of green competitors might moderate this effect.Design/methodology/approach – The approach includes one exploratory in‐depth interview study and three follow‐up experiments.Findings – The results indicate that consumers percieve large companies to be lacking in credibility and that when a large service organization announces the adoption of a green practice, evaluations of that firm may actually decrease, i.e. a green backlash. Additionally, it is observed that the opposite is true when consumers are aware of a credibly green competitor. In these circumstances, large players are significantly worse off if they do not also adopt green practices. Initially it was hypothesized that the large company would need to imitate the credibly green competitor. However, the results...

Savoring an Upcoming Experience Affects Ongoing and Remembered Consumption Enjoyment

Five studies, using diverse methodologies, distinct consumption experiences, and different manipulations, demonstrate the novel finding that savoring an upcoming consumption experience heightens enjoyment of the experience both as it unfolds in real time (ongoing enjoyment) and when it is remembered (remembered enjoyment). This theory predicts that the process of savoring an upcoming experience creates affective memory traces that are reactivated and integrated into the actual and remembered consumption experience. Consistent with this theorizing, factors that interfere with consumers’ motivation, ability, or opportunity to form or retrieve affective memory traces of savoring an upcoming experience limit the effect of savoring on ongoing and remembered consumption enjoyment. Affective expectations, moods, imagery, and mindsets do not explain the observed findings.

The Warm Glow of Restaurant Checkout Charity

Checkout charity is a phenomenon whereby frontline employees (or self-service technologies) solicit charitable donations from customers during the payment process. Despite its growing ubiquity, little is known about this salient aspect of the service experience. The present research examines checkout charity in the context of fast-food restaurants and finds that, when customers donate, they experience a “warm glow” that mediates a relationship between donating and store repatronage. Study 1 utilizes three scenario-based experiments to explore the phenomenon across different charities and different participant populations using both self-selection and random assignment designs. Study 2 replicates with a field study. Study 3 examines national store–level sales data from a fast-food chain and finds that checkout fund-raising, as a percentage of sales, predicts store revenue—a finding consistent with results of Studies 1 and 2. Managers often infer, quite correctly, that many consumers do not like being asked to donate. Paradoxically, our results suggest this ostensibly negative experience can increase service repatronage. For academics, these results add to a growing body of literature refuting the notion that small prosocial acts affect behavior by altering an individual’s self-concept.

Replicating and Extending Our Understanding of How Managers Can Adjust the “Warm Glow Thermostat”

This article presents four studies that replicate and extend a recent article examining how guest participation in voluntary green programs (e.g., towel reuse) increases service satisfaction by evoking a “warm glow” response. Importantly for managers, we not only replicate across new hospitality and service contexts but also conceptualize alternative incentive paradigms, and test alternative mediators. In particular, we reconceptualize the “self-benefiting” versus “other-benefiting” incentive structure presented by Giebelhausen, Chun, Cronin, and Hult to consider “virtue,” “vice,” and “cash” incentives (i.e., three different types of self-benefiting incentives). The results provide managers with a better understanding of how they should promote and reward sustainable guest behavior. In addition to managerial implications, the present research also contributes to the academic literature on a growing phenomenon that has important implications for both business and society at large.