Stefan Hattula

Customer response to interactional service experience: The role of interaction environment

The purpose of this paper is to examine causal attribution in interactional service experiences. The paper investigates how triggers in the environment of a customer-employee interaction influence customer behavioral response to employees’ negative and positive affect. Additionally, it studies the role of sympathy and authenticity as underlying mechanisms of this relationship.,Two scenario-based experimental designs (N1=162; N2=138) were used. Videotaped scenarios served as stimulus material for the manipulation of two focal variables: the employee’s emotional display as either negative or positive and the availability of an emotion trigger in the interaction environment to convey the attribution dimension of cause uncontrollability. The emotion trigger’s visibility was varied in the two studies. Customer response was captured by buying intentions.,Customer responses are more favorable for both positive and negative interactional experiences when customers have access to information on cause uncontrollability (i.e. notice triggers in the interaction environment). Analyses reveal that these effects stem from feelings of sympathy for negative experiences and authenticity for positive experiences.,This research supports the relevance of causal attribution research on interactional service experiences, which have high-profit impact. Moreover, the findings underline the importance of the experience of fact in service interactions and thereby provide a more nuanced view on the discussion of whether service providers should use impression management strategies to engender customer satisfaction even when this behavior is “faked.”

Over, out, but present: recalling former sponsorships

Purpose This research aims at developing and testing a conceptual model that shows the antecedents of the recall of a former sponsorship. Design/methodology/approach Primary (n=1,146) and secondary data from German professional soccer build the empirical base for this research. Multilevel logistic regression is used for data analysis. Findings Results show that retroactive interferences in the form of replacement sponsors for the same object reduce the recall of a former sponsorship, while the mere passage of time does not have a significant main effect. To counteract such forgetting, the empirical analysis shows that sponsor managers can influence recall of a former sponsorship positively after sponsorship termination by switching to a lower-level sponsorship for the same object or by engaging in subsequent sponsorships with other congruent objects in the same context. Research limitations/implications The focus on one type of sponsorship (sport sponsorship) in one country (Germany) is the main limitatio...

Signaling Quality Across Different Stages of the Organizational Life Cycle

Sport clubs are increasingly shifting from non-profit organizations to business companies, making professional sports one of the most important and top-selling industries (Chadwick 2009). Like other business companies, sports clubs battle for customers and aim at gaining their commitment (Decrop and Derbaix 2010). With respect to antecedents of commitment, researchers have examined, for example, sports clubs’ competitive performance. However, the future performance of sports clubs is very uncertain (Sainam, Balasubramanian and Bayus 2010) and characterized by “product-quality” information asymmetry between clubs and fans (Chen, Ganesan and Liu 2009). Therefore, customers in such markets look for signals of the club’s future performance.