• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.235-245
• /
• 2019

This research focuses on the relationships among customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty. Although customer delight is one facet of an affective evaluation that can be predicted from customer satisfaction as cognitive component of the evaluation, there is no empirical examination on the casual relationship among customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty. This study aims at addressing this gap in the service literature. The research questions are (1) How is customer satisfaction related to customer delight? and (2) Does customer delight matter in the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty? Data from a survey of consumers across upscale restaurant and retail bank in Korea were obtained. Our results show that customer satisfaction contributes positively to customer delight, and that customer delight plays a significant role in the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. This chained relationship from customer satisfaction to customer delight to customer loyalty suggests that achieving customer delight represents one of the underlying pathways through which basic or core requirements expected by customers are satisfied. Our finding suggests that service firms need to monitor and manage their levels of customer delight as a performance metric, and delighting customers may be an important strategy to build competitive advantage through customer loyalty.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.19 no.8
• /
• pp.1574-1586
• /
• 2016

The aims of this research is to build Customer Delight index contents model for measuring the influential factors - Customer Delight and identify the relationship among Customer Delight, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. Customer Delight hypothesis model was proposed by Catering Service Industry of Starbucks and validate the final questionnaire; 7 point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) are used to analyze the reliability. And path analysis was used to evaluating the final hypothesis model. The results of this research was that the customer Self-involvement can lead to high awakening level and it also bring positive emotion to the customer. Awakening Level and positive emotion were the key factors for the Customer Delight. Instead of customer expectation, Customer Delight is based on customer awakening level and positive emotion which is different from Customer Satisfaction model. It is clearly to see the discrepancies between Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.301-313
• /
• 2013

Though customer delight is becoming one of the most important marketing key words, research in a retail setting is limited. With the dramatic growth of online retail shopping, this study explored customer delight experiences in online shopping malls by identifying the delight elements and analyzing the elements by online purchase steps. A total of 124 delight experiences collected from an unstructured questionnaire were content-analyzed. Delight elements in online shopping were categorized into service, product, price, delivery, package, and shopping mall operation in that order. Service related elements including free gifts and letters, recovery efforts for service failure, kind employees, and easy return were most frequently observed. Delights were experienced at the product receiving point, the prior-to-purchase point, the order-to-delivery point, and the post-purchase point in that order. The results revealed that customer delights in online shopping were experienced in various purchase steps by various marketing elements. Based on the results the study provided research propositions exploring the effects of expectation vs surprise, monetary vs non-monetary/emotional benefits/rewards, and core marketing elements vs augmented services on delight experiences.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.71-85
• /
• 2024

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the impact of product and service quality on customer surprise and delight, revisit intention, and SNS word-of-mouth (WOM) intention in the context of franchise restaurants in Korea, focusing on Chinese tourists' experiences. This analysis provides strategic insights into improving customer experiences and driving positive behavioral outcomes within the franchise foodservice sector. Research Design and Methodology: Data were collected from 395 Chinese tourists who visited Korean franchise restaurants using a self-administered questionnaire approach and analyzed with SmartPLS 4.0. Reliability, convergent and discriminant validity were assessed using measurement model. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation model. Results: This study verified that customer's service experience affects customer surprise and delight, which in turn is an important factor in increasing revisit intention and SNS WOM and supports the SOR framework that explains these relationships. In other words, this study presented a model that expands the traditional service quality → customer satisfaction → behavioral intention framework by including surprise and delight. The study also revealed that both product quality and service quality positively influence customer delight. Furthermore, customer surprise and delight significantly influence revisit intention and SNS WOM. The findings suggest that enhancing product and service quality can lead to higher levels of customer surprise and delight and greater likelihood of revisits and positive online feedback.

• Management & Information Systems Review
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.231-251
• /
• 2012

Customer delight is critical to firm's success in today's competitive environment. This importance has led marketing scholars and practitioners to recommend that firms improve their customers' delight because it is a key to customer loyalty. However, researchers and practitioners have also begun to express concern on the process that underlies customers' delight-loyalty relationship. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this question: 'Does it really matter that firms delight to their customers to achieve greater customer loyalty?' The results from one experiment using a scenario method and the data collected by questionnaire real that delighted customers(offered an unexpected gift) were significantly more warmth, joy and loyalty than satisfied respondents(offered a free gift). The warmth dimension of delight influenced positively on loyalty in satisfied customer group. In delighted customer group, both warmth and joy influenced positively on loyalty.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.16 no.8
• /
• pp.5-13
• /
• 2018

Purpose - Customer Delight is an important issue for firms and academia since delighted consumers reveal higher repurchase intentions than merely satisfied consumers and become loyal consumers. This research investigates customer delight, especially focusing on the role of surprise and attribute importance via experiment. Research design, data, and methodology - An experiment consisting of experiment, reference, and control group was performed with virtual online bookstore. For the analysis, one-way ANOVA and post-hoc analysis (LSD) were performed. Results - The experiment group that was delighted with surprise revealed the highest repurchase intention and recommendation intention among the other groups (H1 supported). Then each group was divided into attribute importance high and attribute importance low. For the group that was delighted in important attribute revealed higher repurchase and recommendation intention than the group that was delight in less important attribute (H2 supported). Conclusions - This research contributes academically for investigating the research area of customer delight and focusing on the role of surprise and attribute importance. For practical implications, this research provides information about customer delight and its several moderating variables that it is important to delight customers with surprising experience and focusing on an important attribute that consumers perceive not on a less important attribute.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.109-123
• /
• 2019

Recently, As the desire of consumer gets complexed and demanding, business environment is they are rapidly changing to customer-oriented ones. In order to survive in an age of fierce competition with competitor encompassing changing and customer's needs of consumer company emphasizes market orientation to have a sustainability. It is necessary not only satisfy consumer but also to provide customer delight. We want to see if customer's loyalty can be increased by experiencing C/S and C/D. First, customer's loyalty influences repurchase intention after experiencing customer's satisfaction and customer's delight. Second, customer's satisfaction is influenced by customer's satisfaction level. Especially Joy is one of the most important factor affecting customers delight. Third, customer's loyalty is one of the most important factor affecting customer's satisfaction. Finally, through this study, it was found tha customer's satisfaction and customer's satisfaction improve the repurchase relationship which is crucial from customer's loyalty.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.81-95
• /
• 2019

The concept of customer satisfaction is very important issue in the service firms. All service firms should delight theirs customers? Which service contexts creating customer delight results in better positive performance? This study is to examine the moderating effect of service type on the customer delight-behavioral intention relationship. Data from consumers across two distinct service contexts (retail banks and upscale restaurants) were obtained. Using the multiple moderating regression analysis, the proposed hypotheses in this study were tested. The results reveal that customer delight had a greater positive impact on both revisit and referral intention in the hedonic service than the utilitarian service. This study suggests specific service contexts where customer delight strategies generate better desirable results. The customer delight strategy is able to be applied in both hedonic and utilitarian services, but it is more effective to lead customer loyalty in the hedonic service than utilitarian services. Service firms need a strategic approach to customer satisfaction strategies. This study provide strategic implications for service firms to efficiently manage and allocate resources, and can help them in making decisions about establishing and implementing customer satisfaction strategies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
• /
• v.40 no.5
• /
• pp.867-878
• /
• 2016

This study examined the effects on customer delight, satisfaction, and repurchase intention for two reward types by online shopping malls, a hand-written letter and a free gift. Two scenarios to manipulate the rewards provided by online shopping malls were developed. Study 1 revealed that the effects of a hand-written letter on delight and satisfaction were higher than those of a free gift; in addition, delight was more important than satisfaction for repurchase intention. Study 2 examined product quality that is the core function of online purchases by developing 4 scenarios that considered product quality and rewards. The result showed that high product quality caused delight and satisfaction while rewards did not. When product quality was considered, satisfaction influenced repurchase intention more than delight. The study implies that the core function of product quality is more important than rewards for customer delight, satisfaction, and repurchase in online shopping malls.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.51-66
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of brand experience on brand engagement and customer delight on sports brands belonging to experiential products. In addition, we examined how brand engagement influences consumers' perceptions, emotions, and behavioral responses to brands. As a result, it was confirmed that the brand experience has a positive influence on the brand engagement, customer delight, and brand satisfaction. In particular, it has been confirmed that brand engagement has a positive influence on brand loyalty, so that customers with high brand engagement tend to establish a long-term relationship with the brand. In addition, brand satisfaction has a positive effect on customer delight. Therefore, it is necessary for the brand manager to utilize the brand experience elements and brand engagement to enhance the value of the long-term relationship between the customers and the brand.