The Contribution of Emotion to Consumer Satisfaction in the Service Setting

Although the disconfirmation of expectations model continues to exert a major influence in research and managerial practice, many studies have shown that disconfirmation does not offer a complete explanation of the variance in customer satisfaction. Customer responses to service encounters can not be fully accounted for without adding an affective dimension as well. This research investigates the contributions of emotion and disconfirmation to the explanation of customer satisfaction. A significant contribution of the study (N=359) is that a 2x2 experimental design is used to manipulate and control expectations and performance so that the influence of emotion and disconfirmation can be studied on a cell by cell basis using regression analysis. Findings indicate that in situations where perceived performance is high, emotion contributes more to the explanation of customer satisfaction than does disconfirmation. Izard’s DESII scale is then factor analyzed to investigate which emotions are statistically significant in various types of service encounters. Managerial implications are offered.