Sandra Gountas
1and John Y. Gountas
21Department of Marketing, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; 2Bowater School, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
There is a lack of research on the role of emotions in consumers’ product evaluation. Much of the services evaluation literature focuses on the tangible and intangible aspects of the services and their effects on con- sumer satisfaction. However, these effects are contingent upon a wide range of factors, including the dura- tion of the service, the individual’s personality, natural preferences and their emotional states prior to, during and after the service encounter. The leisure airline industry provides an ideal setting to study the effects of the aforementioned factors. This chapter reports the findings of a study that currently comprises more than 1400 cases and focuses on the influence of emotions on service evaluation. The findings indi- cate that leisure airline passengers’ emotions prior to and during the flight are related to the service provi- sion, and that emotions are related to the passengers’ overall satisfaction rating for the services received.
Introduction:
Emotions and Services Satisfaction Many authors have noted that more research is needed into the effects of emotions and/or mood state on consumer behaviour (Gardner, 1985; Dube and Morgan, 1998, Fournier and Mick, 1999; Holbrook and Gardner, 2000; Howard and Gengler, 2001).
In her paper on mood states and consumer behaviour, Gardner (1985, p. 281) remarked,
‘Individuals often try to anticipate each oth- ers’ moods prior to interactions and to read each others moods during encounters.’ This is something that most people instinctively
understand from their personal interactions.
However, this dynamic is not always consid- ered in service encounters research. Gardner (1985) goes on to point out that mood-state knowledge may be salient to understanding consumer behaviour. Service encounters are complex and evoke a range of emotional responses as well as cognitive evaluation (Derbaix and Pham, 1991; Rust et al., 1995;
Price et al., 1999).
Clearly, it would be useful if a service provider understands the level of impact that a particular mood state has on the consumers’
service evaluations. In the case of an airline, it would be useful to understand the influence
© CAB International 2004. Consumer Psychology of Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure,
Volume 3 (G.I. Crouch, R.R. Perdue, H.J.P. Timmermans and M. Uysal) 21
of positive or negative emotions on the con- sumer, and to develop strategies to anticipate and respond to mood states as part of the nor- mal service process and in service recovery.
The consumption of many services is often connected with leisure or discretionary income. In this case, the consumption act may be more highly charged with affective conno- tation than in the consumption of non-discre- tionary products. Price et al.(1999) described the service encounter provided by flight atten- dants (airlines) as a low-affect, social/public distance extended duration service. However, leisure airline services are high-affect service encounters. This is due to the proportionally high level of discretionary income expendi- ture, the frequently lengthy anticipation of the service experience and the individual’s expectation of the product benefits.
Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974) work on environmental psychology identified three variables that describe affective response to environments. These are pleasure, arousal and dominance (PAD). Pleasure is described and measured by expressions such as happy, pleased and satisfied. Arousal is described by the extent to which the consumer is stimu- lated, e.g. fear, curiosity, etc. Dominance is concerned with the individual’s feeling of control over the situation being experienced.
As an example, air travel is likely to be a situa- tion over which a consumer feels very little or no control, and which may evoke a range of emotions and mood state responses.
Clearly, in the case of a leisure flight (also known as a charter flight in some regions) consumers could easily be happy but a little fearful (of flying), while feeling moderately aware of their lack of control over the situa- tion. On the other hand, consumers may have experienced a long delay before depar- ture, leaving them displeased, anxious and acutely aware of their lack of control over the situation. The different combinations and intensities of emotions may affect both the consumer’s behaviour during product con- sumption and his or her overall satisfaction.
The duration of leisure or charter flights may range from less than an hour to 23 h from one side of the world to the other. The air travel experience includes the actual flight, as well as check-in at the airport, wait-
ing in the airport to board the aircraft, etc.
This allows time for changes in mood state/emotions to develop. Holbrook and Gardner (2000) distinguished between mood and emotion by referring to mood as con- stantly evolving general affective states felt by individuals and to emotion as specific affec- tive responses prompted by particular con- sumption experiences. This method differentiates between a milder, more diffuse- feeling state (mood) that may influence and/or reflect what is happening around the consumer and a more intense, object-specific- feeling state (emotion) that responds to par- ticular consumption activities. This would seem to suggest that one (mood) might be a precursor to the other (emotion).
When using the example of leisure air travel, it is probably also useful to consider the issue of emotional contagion or emo- tional infection. Travelling in an aircraft with other people in close proximity is likely to fos- ter some spreading of positive or negative emotions. Howard and Gengler (2001) exam- ined the relationships between ‘receivers’ and
‘senders’ of a happy emotion. This notion may be considered in terms of the relation- ships between the service provider and con- sumers, as well as the relationships between the consumers themselves. Furthermore, Neumann and Strack (2000) have high- lighted the differences between expectations for mood versus emotional contagion.
There has been much written about the impact of expectation and anticipation on leisure travellers (Shiv and Huber, 2000).
Emotional contagion may be induced by oth- ers known to, or with, the consumer at the time of consumption or by total strangers in a densely populated environment such as an aircraft. Arnould and Price (1993) consid- ered that affective interactions were useful in fully understanding satisfaction with a service experience. These interactions may be between service provider and consumer, pos- sibly also including the interactions with other consumers.
Holbrook and Gardner (2000, p. 166) ask,
‘If moods are output variables that character- ize important affective consequences of con- sumer behaviour, how do these moods change in response to the progression of con-
sumption experiences? If the consumer begins in a particular mood, what accounts for alterations in this mood? By what process do moods develop over time?’ The most important question is ‘How do these moods, emotions, and processes affect the con- sumer’s level of satisfaction?’.
Plutchik (1980) and Russell (1978) con- nected satisfaction and emotional state, with satisfaction being more specific in connota- tion than dissatisfaction. This suggests that dissatisfaction and its antecedents are more complex than the factors that result in satis- faction. Plutchik’s scale of emotions is mea- sured using the following triads of objectives (Shethet al., 1999):
Fear: threatened, frightened, intimidated Anger: hostile, annoyed, irritated Joy: happy, cheerful, and delighted Sadness: gloomy, sad, and depressed Acceptance: helped, accepted, and trusting Disgust: disgusted, offended, unpleasant Anticipation: alert, attentive, curious Surprise: puzzled, confused, startled
Izzard (1977) developed the Differential Emotional Scale (DES II) which consists of ten emotions which incorporate Plutchik’s eight primary emotions of Fear, Anger, Joy, Sadness, Acceptance, Disgust, Anticipation and Surprise but also include Contempt, Guilt and Shame as discrete emotions. What is interesting is that neither researcher identi- fied the opposite emotion to Disgust, which is Dignity: self-respect, pride and self-assurance.
Many consumers are concerned about being valued and respected by being acknowledged and appreciated as valued customers.
Havlena and Holbrook’s (1986) study, comparing Mehrabian and Russell’s and Plutchik’s scales, used 20 individuals to pro- duce descriptions of their consumption expe- riences in a number of contexts including church, athletics, entertainment, dining, hob- bies, fashion and security. A total of 149 ‘real descriptions’ were produced and analysed by two groups of ten judges drawn from MBA students at a major American university, con- cluding that Mehrabian and Russell’s frame- work is more robust than Plutchik’s. However, as pointed out by Hair et al.(1995), the use of student samples limit the generalization of this conclusion.
The following propositions were devel- oped from the literature review:
P1 Positive and negative emotions are related, respectively to positive and neg- ative service evaluation.
P2 Emotional states are antecedents of lev- els of reported satisfaction.
P3 Emotional contagion influences other customers’ emotional states during extended-duration service.
Methodology
The first stage of this study included secondary research on published material and an inter- nal database from previous customer satisfac- tion questionnaires from a major leisure airline in the UK. The second stage involved primary qualitative research using focus groups from two major market segments in the south and north of England. Two sets of focus groups were conducted with past customers from the leisure airline’s database. The selec- tion of all the participants was via stratified random probability methods. The first set of eight focus groups took place during June 2000 in London and Manchester, UK. Each focus group comprised between eight and ten participants. The second round of the qualita- tive research comprised four focus groups with eight to ten participants in each group, and took place during February 2001 in London and Manchester. The participants were selected from the airline’s database of past pas- sengers and represented the airline’s ‘typical’
passengers in gender, age, party composition, occupation (social group) and service experi- enced in the range of all flight sectors and ser- vice levels. A semi-structured research guide was used to examine/identify the affective, tangible and temporal aspects of the service encounter and the evaluation criteria applied by past consumers.
Qualitative research findings from the focus groups’ discussions
Most of the participants in the 12 focus groups (n=110) mentioned similar issues about, and criteria for, service evaluation.
The findings are grouped in Table 3.1. The Influence of Consumers’ Emotions on Satisfaction 23
emotions and mood states of the passengers appeared to be very important in their eval- uation of the overall service, as did the tem- poral aspects. Longer flights, take-off delays and waiting at the check-in desk seemed to trigger mood responses that affected overall satisfaction.
Travelling companions and other passen- gers also seem to influence the individual’s mood, emotions and attitude towards the flight attendants and their service provision.
The focus groups indicated interactions between service levels received, duration and other people’s moods and behaviours may result in mood or emotional changes. In com- bination with the literature review, the focus group findings led to the development of the field research propositions.
The survey instrument
As with Liljander and Strandvik’s study (1997), the SERVQUAL dimensions of Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy and Tangibles have been used, in the construction of the new questionnaire.
The items within these dimensions partly
express concerns repeatedly raised during the focus group conducted by the researcher.
However, these dimensions do not address fully the other aspects of the seven categories identified by the focus group research. In order to ameliorate the deficit, the question- naire was developed to measure service qual- ity, expectations, the existence and impact of emotions during service consumption, indi- vidual personality traits and other psychologi- cal factors derived from perceptions of past and present service experiences, the service provider’s image and personal space needs.
Plutchik’s (1980) emotions scale was used to measure the impact of emotions and changes in emotions over a period of time.
This scale was chosen because of the similar- ity of expression used by Plutchik with that of the focus group participants. The adjectives frightened, irritated, happy, sad, trusting, offended, curious and confused, from Plutchik’s scale, were used frequently by the focus participants to express their emotions or mood state and were thus deemed appropriate for use in the quantitative survey. Furthermore, unlike Mehrabian and Russell’s scale (Havlena and Holbrook, 1986), Plutchik’s scale includes Anticipation or Expectancy, which has been Table 3.1. Service criteria.
Hygiene factors Service/empathy Psychological factors
Aircraft Personalization Perception of airline
Cabin appearance Assurance Previous experience
Crew appearance Responsiveness Expectations
Food Service level Confidence
Entertainment Personality types
In-flight magazine Tolerance
Children’s amenities Crowding
On-board shopping Emotions/mood state
In-flight magazine Customer’s personal
characteristics Situation specifics Temporal factors
Age Party composition Check-in duration
Gender Flight sector Flight delays
Marital status Purpose of travel Flight duration
Income Other passengers In- or out-bound flight
Occupation Service delays
Nationality Changes to expected service
Physical size Weather conditions
considered an important influence on a leisure traveller’s or tourist’s evaluation of a service (Tribe and Snaith, 1998; Weiermair and Fuchs, 1999).
Although Izzard’s (1977) DES II has been found to be robust for measuring emotions during consumption, the focus group partici- pants did not refer to these emotions (Contempt, Guilt and Shame); as such, their inclusion was considered inappropriate for this particular setting.
The structure of the airline flight satisfaction questionnaire
The questionnaire consisted of five main sections:
● The first section had 28 positively worded items concerned with the participants’
perception of the airline, empathy with the crew, general attitudes towards flying as a form of travel and feelings of confi- dence in the product.
● The second section was concerned with the participants’ expectations and the fac- tors that may have contributed towards those expectations.
● The third section was designed to measure the differences in emotions before and during the flight, and identify the causes of change. A question on overall satisfac- tion was included.
● The fourth section consisted of personal- ity-type orientation statements.
● The fifth section was concerned with the demographic profile of the participants.
Item measurement scales
Parasuraman (1995) examined service quality as a function of the expectation–performance gap. SERVQUAL was subsequently designed to measure the difference between expectation and performance. There is debate about the usefulness and validity of this method (Carman, 1990; Cronin and Taylor, 1992;
Peter et al., 1993 etc.). Cronin and Taylor (1992) asserted that their performance-based scale (SERVPERF) was more efficient than the difference-based scale (SERVQUAL). For the
purpose of this research, a compromise between measuring performance only and measuring the difference between expecta- tions and perceived service was deemed appropriate. The reasons for this decision are:
● Exploring how expectations are formed and whether they affect perceived service quality and satisfaction is undeniably use- ful to the service provider.
● The research hypotheses require a mix- ture of performance assessment and gap analysis to be confirmed or disconfirmed.
● The practical aspects of the empirical research for data collection lend them- selves more easily to a mix of performance and gap analysis.
The items are scored using a ten-point Likert scale with anchors of strongly disagree and strongly agree. The ten-point scale was chosen for its ease of use and because ten- point scales have previously been shown to have a high predictive and convergent validity (Parasuraman, 1995). The ten-point scale allows the participants to express their evalua- tion with a greater degree of differentiation.
Data Collection Method
The sample was from the same UK leisure air- line’s customer base used for the exploratory focus groups. In total, 5000 questionnaires were distributed on a range of short- and long-haul leisure or charter flights to different destinations mostly departing from the UK during the months of October, November and December 2001. The sampling method used was a probability, stratified random method drawing from all the flights available from all the UK regional airports and including all flight sectors for short- and long-haul destina- tions. This method allows full representation of all geographic and demographic character- istics of the UK leisure flight market.
Of the 5000 questionnaires distributed during the outbound flights by the desig- nated crew members, 1773 were returned, a return rate of 35%. However, 346 of these questionnaires were deemed unusable either because of missing values or due to the respondent being under 16 years of age. After Influence of Consumers’ Emotions on Satisfaction 25
the data cleaning process, there were 1427 usable questionnaires, i.e. 28% of the number distributed.
Generally, the quality of responses was very comprehensive. However, a small num- ber of respondents had left a few questions unanswered. For example, according to the respondents’ comments, a missing explana- tion/response was often due to the lack of personal experience; therefore, no com- ment/answer was provided. More specifically, for question 6, ‘Air 2000 staff members have the power to solve problems’ – if the respon- dent had not encountered any problems, they felt unable to answer the question. Similarly, for question 29, ‘My expectations of the air- line’s service are influenced by:…’, the respondents sometimes rated only the options that applied to them, leaving the oth- ers blank. This is not considered a problem as the options can easily be isolated for the pur- pose of analysis; alternatively, it is possible to infer a value from the values on other vari- ables (Sapsford and Jupp, 1996).
It is reasonable to assume that if respon- dents gave a value of 10 to their expectations being influenced by brochures, a value of eight to TV programmes and no value to the other options, that the other options were not perceived to be a significant influence on their expectations of the airline’s service, which should not bias the conclusions in any way. Similarly, this situation applies to ques- tions 30a/d, ‘This flight, today has met my expectations of…,’; question 32a/h; ‘Just before I got on this flight, I felt:…’; question 33a/h, ‘I now feel (at this moment):…’; ques- tion 34a/h, ‘My feelings have changed because of:…’; and the personality items in questions 37 and 38. It is assumed that, in many cases, the respondents elected to answer only the items that are important to them, due to the consistency of their response pattern.
Research Findings
In order to identify the salient patterns related to the emotional issues and service satisfaction, the pre- and during flight emo- tions were factor analysed. Oblique factor
rotation was used, as it is more flexible than orthogonal methods. The oblique method, Equimax, is more realistic because it deter- mines the factors according to the underpin- ning theoretical constructs, assuming inter-correlations between the factors, which is appropriate for this case. The factors pro- duced using Equimax should allow meaning- ful interpretation (Hair et al., 1995).
Four factors emerged and were grouped by negative and positive emotional states (Table 3.2). Factor 1 relates to the Displeasure and Confusion emotions and produced lower values for the pre-flight and higher for during the flight service experi- ences. For example, the factor 1 loading scores for the question ‘displeasure/offended before the flight’ is 0.66, as opposed to the feelings of ‘displeasure/offended’ during the flight, which is higher, 0.80. Likewise, the statement ‘Before the flight I felt irritated’
with a factor loading of 0.53 and during the flight experience the score for ‘I now feel irri- tated’ is higher at 0.69.
In factor 2, regarding Sadness and Fear, the values of the statements just before the flight tend to be higher than the values expressed during the flight service experi- ence. For example, the statement ‘Just before I got on this flight I felt sad’ produced a fac- tor loading score of 0.73, as opposed to the statement of ‘I now feel sad’ with a lower score of 0.60.
Factor 3, questions related to Happiness and Trust, followed a similar pattern to factor 1. The pre-flight factor loading score is higher at 0.83 for ‘Before I got on this flight I felt happy’, as opposed to the lower score of 0.72, for ‘I now feel happy.’
Factor 4, dealing with the issues of Curiosity, produced identical factor loading scores of 0.83, for the emotions/feelings of curiosity before and during the flight.
The correlations of the four factors related to the emotional states and overall satisfac- tion produced some interesting findings.
Table 3.3 indicates that the strongest correla- tion with overall satisfaction is with the posi- tive emotions of felt happiness and trust. The highest negative correlation is with the nega- tive emotions of displeasure/offended, irri- tated and puzzled/confused.