The Case Study of Customer Delight Index Contents Model through Cater ing Service Industry

Abstract

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.

1. Research Background and Purpose

1.1 Research Background

As [1] demonstrated, a basic conclusion of academic research and enterprise practice: Customer Loyalty refers to the decisive factors of enterprise competitiveness and the significant source of enterprise interest for long time as well as the significant property of the enterprise. Customer Satisfaction has become a typical business goal. However, as [4,8] demonstrated, Customer Satisfaction cannot lead to Customer Loyalty and it breaks the whole economic success chain.(As show in Fig. 1)

Fig. 1.Cause-Effect-Chain of Customer Satisfaction.

Some literature researches show that Customer Delight is more effective than Customer Satisfaction to drive Customer Loyalty, customer retention, positive word-of-mouth and recommendation intention. Just as show in Fig. 2, a delighted customer may become a loyal customer, try to recommend the service of the enterprise to others and willing to pay high price for the recommended service.

Fig. 2.Distribution of Customer Loyalty.

Thus, the real way to increase Customer Loyalty and improve customer intention refers to not only Customer Satisfaction, but also Customer Delight. Milliken is adamant that the real secret of quality is that it is a means as much as an end: the most likely route, as Jeanes says, 'to achieve improved results, deliver total Customer Satisfaction or even better, Customer Delight, thus ensuring not just survival, but sustainable profitable growth'. In a published statement[2], Perez said, ‘Guided by the insights of diverse customers and employees, Kodak is transforming itself to serve new markets. Through diversity of thought and innovation, we will continue to deliver breakthrough products that delight customers. And our journey of diversity and inclusion-while never complete—will help us better serve those who have come to trust Kodak.’

1.2 Research Purpose

The purpose 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.

 

2. Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical study

2.1.1 Customer Delight

The construct of Customer Delight originates in the research of psychology on emotion. With the basis of emotion intensity, similarity and bipolarity, Plutchik suggested 8 kinds of basic emotions, including fear, anger, pleasure, sorrow, disgust, acceptance, expectation and surprise. Delight refers to the composite emotion that consists of pleasure and surprise. Customer Delight refers the composite emotion that consists of the two basic emotions of pleasure and awaken.

2.1.2 Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction

Delight as extreme satisfaction that Customer Satisfaction is customer’s perception of the degree to which the customer’s requirements have been fulfilled and also delight is a positive emotion that customers' experience in response to having their expectations exceeded to an unexpected and surprising degree. Customer Delight refers to the extreme level of Customer Satisfaction. In the early stage, enterprise practitioner argues that Customer Satisfaction is the basis of Customer Delight, but as the inadequate condition. As show in figure 3, the view of enterprise practitioner reaches the support from many scholars, such as Jones and Sasser argued that only extremely satisfied customers demonstrate loyal behavior. Kumar and Iyer also argued that Customer Delight as the indicator of satisfaction. Meanwhile, they argued that the interactive behavior (employee attitude, employee assistance and interpretation provided) and service characteristics (For instance cleaning service, the exact time to complete the service process and the stated time to complete the service process) from the service provider can classify the factors lead to Customer Satisfaction and Customer Delight, thus service features lead to Customer Satisfaction and the interactive behavior from the service provider could lead to Customer Delight. Ngobo also argues that Customer Delight refers to 100% of Customer Satisfaction and has obviously influence on Customer Loyalty. Anderson and Vikas also supported on this point of view as demonstrated in [3]. From this point of view, Customer Satisfaction is the basis of Customer Delight and Customer Delight is the extension of Customer Satisfaction that which lead to Customer Loyalty as well.

Fig. 3.Level of Customer Satisfaction.

2.1.3 Effect Factors of Customer Delight

(1) Awakening level and positive emotion. Flourier & Kastenholz (2011)[6] finds that awakening and positive emotion refer to the key factors that cause Customer Delight. In other words, Customer Delight is actually based on customer awakening level and positive emotion instead of customer expectation, which is different from the Customer Satisfaction model.

(2) Esteem Require. Based on the perspective of require to investigate the influential factors of Customer Delight, Schneide & Bowen (1999)[13], Tores & Kline (2006, 2013)[16] and Tores et al. (2014) argued that customer's Esteem Require needed to be fulfil in order to win Customer Delight. However, it does not proved by the empirical test.

(3) Customer self-involvement. Early in 1948, Barnard had noticed that customers would make a contribution to the service provider. As the pioneers who make research on customer self-involvement, Lovelock & Young (1979)[7] are the earliest researchers to submit that improve productivity through customer self-involvement in the service. With the rise of self-service technologies and e-commerce, the amount of customer participation in service emerging and transferring process rapidly increasing. Customer have become the active players now instead of passive audience in the past (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000). Song & Adams (1993)[14] proposed that the level of participation from the customer in the service provided could be classify the evaluation standard of the market. In the perspective of customer, customer self-involvement creates the unique consumption experience for themselves. Customers self－involvement in the service could deliver an emotional involvement; it is much more easily for customers to be delighted in the friendly interaction between customers and the staffs. In addition, the research shows that customers who finish part of their tasks will be more easily to be delighted.

 

3. Customer Delight Hypothesis

According to the previous research, Esteem Require, customer self-Involvement may lead to positive awakening and positive emotion. Customer positive emotion effect could arise Customer Delight. The higher the positive effect of customer is, the more obvious Customer Delight will be. Customer Delight may extend Customer Satisfaction to a higher level. On the other hand, Customer Satisfaction that causes Customer Delight may lead to Customer Loyalty to a higher level. Hence, it proved the hypothesis of Customer Delight model.

3.1 Esteem Require, Positive emotion and Awakening level

In the service experience, customers assumed that they should treated as first and wish to receive the support, attention and respect from the service staffs; and also argued that it is necessary provided from the service staff and place. With the emergence of Esteem Require, customer psychology will be in defected or unbalanced state that forms psychological tension, calls up psychological energy and makes the psychology be in the ready or stress state; when his respect demands are not satisfied, the psychology will be in the awakening state; once his Esteem Require are satisfied, it will awakening various physiological response of cus tomers (Li Rui, 1999). Specifically speaking, in the service process, if the service staffs sincerely respond to customers' call and opinion, give care and attention to customers, treat he/she in the perspectives of valuable customers and enable customers to have their own freedom instead of forcing customers on individual profit; and besides that, give positive evaluation and appropriate behavior (such as smile service) for customers, in this way, customers will have a feeling of proud and feel that they get attention; and then, it will awakening customers' passion for service consumption and express strongly positive emotion actions. Otherwise, if service staffs disregard, show prejudice and discrimination on customers, their self-esteem will be heavily damaged and have senses of inferiority and weakness; therefore, customer psychology will be strongly stimulated and customers will be unhappy or angry in emotional state. Thus, it can be assumed that if the Esteem Require of customers are weak, it shows that customer Esteem Require are greatly satisfied, show high respect level and it will awakening positive emotion reaction of customers; if the Esteem Require of customers are strong, it shows that customer Esteem Require are not satisfied as well as the low respect level, in this way, it will awakening the passive emotion reaction of customers. Therefore, hypothesis as follows are proposed:

H1 Esteem Require has significant impact on Positive emotion.

H2 Esteem Require has significant impact on Awakening level.

3.2 Customer self-involvement, positive emotion and Awakening Level

Emotion refers to the self affection of customers for their real experience (Van Maanen and Kunda, 1989) and it can be regarded as the index of psychological healthy and comfort and pleasant state (Rafaeli and Sutoon, 1987).[12] Emotional experience refers to the emotional state that people feel and realize subjectively (Strongman, 1987)[15]. Westbrook et al.,(1991)[17] argues that there will be direct influence of emotion on the satisfaction evaluation of the entire service. In the process of customer self-involvement, positive emotion and awakening will bring positive Customer Delight feelings after customers accepting various stimulations of external service environment, such as pleasure, excitement and so on (Yoo, Park and Maclnnis, 1998)[18]. Strongman (1987)[14] defines emotional experience as the emotional state that the individuals feel and realize subjectively. Schmitt argued that experience refers to the separate event that the individuals react to some stimulations, and it is usually caused by the direct investigation or participation of the event no matter the event is real or virtual. In the process of service, customers are willing to interact with staffs or even provide assistance, it shows their active and positive state as well as the acceptance of product or service; thereby, it is easy to cause positive emotion and awakening.

H3 Customer Self－involvement has significant impact on Positive emotion.

H4 Customer Self－involvement has significant impact on Awakening level.

3.3 Positive emotion, Awakening Level and Customer Delight

Positive emotion, awakening emotion and Customer Delight all refer to a kind of emotional states. However, they have different formation mechanisms. Positive emotion refers to the emotion of positive valence that "the emotional state with pleasant feeling emerges for inside and outside stimulation, event satisfies individual demands" (Guo Xiaoyan and Wang Zhenyu, 2007). Positive emotion refers to positive inner experience that related to the satisfaction of demands and pleasant feelings. Different from positive emotion, awakening emotion refers to activated state of body energy that related to the emotional state, and awakening emotion plays the role to stimulate energy and prepare for action (Luo Yuejia and Wu Jianhui, 2005). Physiological awakening refers to a kind of psychological stimulated states and different emotions relate to different physiological reaction modes, such as stimulated, excited and passionate state etc. In the service experience, customers' different emotional reactions on the environmental stimulation are caused by positive emotion and awakening emotion. Ekman (1984) also argues that every emotion does not refer to a single emotional state, it is a emotional group of related emotion. Each emotional group has a common topic and different variation; the common topic refers to the characteristics that all members of a emotional group have; however, the variation refers to the products of individual emotional difference, e.g. the common topic of delighted and relaxed emotion refer to positive topic, and they are different for the awakening state. Delight refers to a kind of strong positive emotional state. Chen Shugong (2004) thinks that Customer Delight refers to the strong positive emotional state and recalled by the satisfaction of customer demands. In this way, if it satisfies customer Esteem Require, it may build strong positive emotional reaction of customer and Customer Delight will arise. Therefore, the below hypothesis were proposed:

H5 Awakening level has significant impact on Positive emotion.

H6 Positive emotion has significant impact on Customer Delight.

H7 Awakening level has significant impact on Customer Delight.

3.4 Customer Delight, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty

In the early stage, Parasuraman, Zeithamland Berry(1994), Voss, Parasuraman and Grewal(1998), Zhang Shuqing(2000)[11]; the enterprise practitioners argued that Customer Satisfaction is the basis of Customer Delight, but as the inadequate condition. it was supported by Anderson and Vikas as well. In this point of view, Customer Satisfaction is the basis of Customer Delight and Customer Delight is the extension of Customer Satisfaction that leads to Customer Loyalty. From the point of view from the enterprise practitioner reaches the support from many scholars, such as Jones and Sasser argued that only extremely satisfied customers demonstrate loyal behavior. Kumar and Iyer also argued that Customer Delight as the indicator of satisfaction. Meanwhile, they argued that the interactive behavior (employee attitude, employee assistance and interpretation provided) and service characteristics (For instance cleaning service, the exact time to complete the service process and the stated time to complete the service process) from the service provider can classify the factors lead to Customer Satisfaction and Customer Delight, thus service features lead to Customer Satisfaction and the interactive behavior from the service provider could lead to Customer Delight. Ngobo also argues that Customer Delight refers to 100% of Customer Satisfaction and has obviously influence on Customer Loyalty.

H8 Customer Delight has significant impact on Customer Satisfaction.

H9 Customer Delight has significant impact on Customer Loyalty.

Based on above analysis, hypothesis model will be drawn as figure 4:

The Esteem Require from the Customer Delight model was based on the Customer Delight model suggested by Kline (20), and Kline revealed that Customer Delight can be led from the satisfaction of Esteem Require of customer. The self-involvement of customers from the observation variable referred to the Consumer Involvement Profiles (CIP) theory suggested by Laurent and Kapferer (1985). Also, as the endogenous potential variable, this research set the awakening level and Positive Emotion suggested from the research of Finn (2005). The Customer Delight model was suggested based on the research of Li Rui, Van Maanen, Kunda, and Rafaeli A. In the Customer Delight model, the endogenous variables were set to Customer Loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, cognitive level, and static variable.

Table 1.Customer Ethnography Analysis

 

4. Starbucks Case Study

4.1 Starbucks Background

Case studies were performed based on Starbucks, and this study identified how customer selfinvolvement and customer's Esteem Require affect the Positive Emotion and awakening level through the Customer Delight model. In modern large and middle-sized cities, Starbucks has become the sign of status and taste for young and a trend for white-collar, the new generation with strong or potential consumption ability has natural acceptance for new things. It means special opportunity for the development of Starbucks. For white-collar who pursue and fancy on Starbucks, Starbucks develops rapidly in China. Starbucks lies in that the center of customer requirement transfers from product to service, and the service transfers to experience; Starbucks creates a "coffee religion" with characteristics of "Starbucks experience".

4.2 Analysis Method

The Customer Delight model was suggested based on the research of Li Rui, Van Maanen, Kunda, and Rafaeli A. In the Customer Delight model, the endogenous variables were set to Customer Loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, cognitive level, and static variable.

In order to reach the aim of the research, it makes statistics and analysis of the collected questionnaire as follows:

(1) It uses frequency analysis to make population statistics and analysis

(2) It uses EFA and CFA to make analysis on the validity of analyzed content in the questionnaire.

(3) It uses Cronbach α to calculate the reliability of analyzed content in the questionnaire.

(4) It uses Pearson correlation analysis of the inter relationship among all variables.

(5) In order to know about the relationship among all variables, it uses path analysis to analyze the hypothesis.

For the statistics above, SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 20.0 are used to make analysis. P-values of the used statistics and analysis are all below 0.05.

4.2.1 Collecting Methods of Materials and Characteristics of Sample

4.2.2 Validity and Credibility Analysis

In order to detect the factor of construct validity, it makes elemental analysis. According to the rules that when Factor loading is more than 0.4, it is efficient, when Factor loading is more than 0.5, it is obviously efficient. It eliminates the injurious factor with varinax. Finally, all the Factor loadings in the thesis are more than 0.6. As shows in Table 2 through factor analysis, all the factor values of EFA are bigger than 0.6 and all the reliabilities are bigger than 0.7; in aspect of statistics, the result is effective. As show as Table 2.

Table 2.Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Through the test of reliability, values of every factor are all more than 0.7, and some of them even are more than 0.9 that prove the reliable and efficient reliability of the factor. The measurement index of the measurement model in the research is of high fitness and the result of CFA can be seen from Table 3; every measurement value is obviously connected with the corresponding potential factor. So each result of CFA is effective as well in aspect of statistics. As show as Table 3.

Table 3.Confirmatory factor Analysis(CFA)

As show in table 4, X2/df should be less than 3, RMR should be less than 0.08 and IFI, TLI, CFI should be bigger than 0.9. As shows in Table 6, the value of X2/df=2.875(less than 3)IFI, TLI, CFI is more than 0.9 that is obvious in statistics.

Table 4.Configuration evaluation

4.2.3 The path analysis on hypothesis test.

As shows in Table 5, H1, H2, H3 is false and others are true. Among them, H1, H2, H3 is negative correlation and others are positive correlation. The obvious influential relationship of Esteem Require and positive emotion, Esteem Require and awakening level, customer self-involvement and awakening level is false. The final model path as show in figure 4 :

Table 5.Model path coefficients

Fig. 4.Customer Delight Index Contents Hypothesis Model.

 

5. Conclusion and Implication

5.1 Conclusion

In order to build Customer Delight Index Contents Model to measure the influential factors of Customer Delight index and identify the relationship among Customer Delight, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. H1 Esteem Require has no significant impact on Positive emotion. H2 Esteem Require has no significant impact on Awakening level. H3 Customer Self－involvement has no significant impact on Positive emotion. H4 Customer Self－involvement has significant impact on Awakening level. H5 Awakening level has significant impact on Positive emotion. H6 Positive emotion has significant impact on Customer Delight. H7 Awakening level has significant impact on Customer Delight. H8 Customer Delight has significant impact on Customer Satisfaction. H9 Customer Delight has significant impact on Customer Loyalty. It builds measurement model with the previous research. In the empirical analysis, it takes advantages of questionnaire survey and takes the most popular catering service industry -Starbucks as an example. The questions used in the research are consist of high reliability and validity in this research. Questionnaires were collected and population statistics has been analysed. EFA and CFA are used to make analysis on the validity of analyzed content in the questionnaire and it guarantees the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. In order to identify the relationship among all variables, it uses path analysis to analyze the hypothesis. H1, H2 and H3 were all rejected. The obvious influential relationship of Esteem Require and positive emotion, Esteem Require and awakening level, customer self-involvement and awakening level were rejected.

Through the hypothesis of H1 and H2, meeting Esteem Require is not the necessary and sufficient condition to win Customer Delight.

Fig. 5.Model path.

In the previous research, Yoo, Park and Maclnnis (1998) say "in the process of customer self-involvement, positive emotion and awakening will bring positive Customer Delighted feelings after customers accepting various stimulations of external service environment, such as pleasure, excitement and so on." Through the test of H3 and H4, there is obvious influence of customer self-involvement on awakening level, however, there is no obvious influence of customer self-involvement on positive emotion. Through the test of H5, customer self-involvement indirectly influence positive emotion through the obvious influence on awakening level. All of H5, H6 and H7 were verified and accepted. The relationship among positive emotion, awakening level and Customer Delight is verified as well. There is obvious influence of awakening level on positive emotion, there is obvious influence of positive emotion on Customer Delight and there is obvious influence of awakening level on Customer Delight.

All of H8, H9 were verified and accepted. The relationship among Customer Delight, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty is verified as well. There is obvious influence of Customer Delight on Customer Satisfaction, there is obvious influence of Customer Delight on Customer Loyalty and there is obvious influence of Customer Satisfaction on Customer Loyalty.

In conclusion, Customer Self-involvement can lead to high awakening level and customer Awakening level can bring positive emotion to the customer. Awakening Level and positive emotion refer to the key factors that cause Customer Delight, instead of customer expectation, Customer Delight is actually based on customer awakening level and positive emotion, which is different from the Customer Satisfaction model. There is obvious influence of Customer Delight on Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty.

5.2 Implication

As show in the table 6, Customer Delight comes from the positive emotion awaked by customers' self-involvement in the service process. The service that delighted customer will lead to Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. The research measures the formation mechanism of Customer Delight and submits some new academic opinions; besides that, empirical research and analysis on the formation mechanism of Customer Delight could generate certain reference values for the academic research on Customer Delight in future.

Table 6.Comparison between Customer Satisfaction and Customer Delight