Customer-to-customer interaction quality, promotion emotion, prevention emotion and attitudinal loyalty in mass services

Purpose The current study aims to explore the relationships between three kinds of customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction quality and brand loyalty via customer promotion and prevention emotions. Design/methodology/approach In order to test the model, we gathered self-administered data through an online survey. The relationships were examined using structural equation modelling (SEM). Findings The findings show that the influence of customer-to-customer interaction quality on promotion/prevention emotion varies: friend-interaction quality evokes both promotion emotion (high-arousal feelings) and prevention emotion (low-arousal feelings), whereas neighbouring customer-interaction quality elicits promotion emotion, and audience-interaction quality elicits prevention emotion. Moreover, the findings show that enhancing both promotion and prevention emotions is crucial to improve customer attitudinal loyalty in mass service settings, and the strength of the link from promotion emotion to attitudinal loyalty is stronger than that from prevention emotion. Practical implications The authors suggest that marketers should focus on facilitating effective friend- and neighbouring customer-interaction to enhance promotion emotion. Originality/value The paper contributes to a stream of research on customer-to-customer interaction by exploring the relative influences of three kinds of customer-to-customer interaction quality on customer attitudinal loyalty via post-consumption emotions.