A Cognitive Appraisal Process of Customer Delight: The Moderating Effect of Place Identity

Abstract

This study aims to empirically examine an integrative model centered on customer delight drawing from cognitive appraisal theory and place identity theory. A self-completed survey administered in English at three tourism destinations in Australia (Phillip Island, Great Ocean Road, and Sovereign Hill) generated 457 valid responses. The results show that authenticity and employee helpfulness are positively associated with customer delight, which in turn, positively affects the positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) intention. Customer delight is a principal mechanism that transmits the influence of authenticity and employee helpfulness to PWOM. In addition, place identity moderates the relationship between customer delight and PWOM such that the higher the place identity, the weaker is the relationship between customer delight and PWOM. The findings advance the current theorizations on several fronts and offer managerial implications for destination marketing practice in terms of customer experience management, marketing communications, and customer service.

Keywords

customer delight authenticity employee helpfulness place identity PWOM

Introduction

The role of satisfaction as the quintessential metric for business success has been challenged by marketplace realities (Barnes et al. 2016). For example, companies have found that customers, despite being satisfied, could defect at a high rate (Finn 2005). More than 60% of customers who switched to another brand categorized themselves as “satisfied” (Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan 2008). Marketing practitioners have realized that customer satisfaction does not necessarily translate into customer loyalty, whereas delight, an emotion beyond mere satisfaction, can notably lead to better marketing outcomes (e.g., share-of-wallet, retention). Therefore, the marketing focus has shifted from simply satisfying customers to delighting them.

Emotions are central to tourist behavior and crucial for tourism research (Prayag et al. 2017). Delight, in particular, is vital to hedonic consumption as it accords a main reason for people engaging in leisure: to seek pleasure (Barnett 2013). As a positive emotion, delight is an important motive and outcome of hedonic consumption, essential in creating memorable customer experiences (Ma et al. 2013). In the tourism industry, striving for customer delight is a new trend (Ali, Kim, and Ryu 2016). Tourism scholars advocate that compared with satisfaction, customer delight is more closely associated with customer loyalty (Kim 2011), business profitability, and competitive advantage. This is because delight implies a stronger state of customer engagement, delightful service is not easily imitated, and people prefer to talk of delightful experiences rather than adequate or satisfactory experiences (Crotts, Pan, and Raschid 2008).

Extant research on customer delight in tourism can be categorized into two streams. The majority of literature is in hospitality settings and focuses on how service quality influences hotel guest delight (e.g., Magnini, Crotts, and Zehrer 2011; Torres, Fu, and Lehto 2014; Torres and Kline 2013). The other stream of studies focuses on how customer experiences affect customer delight at theme parks (e.g., Ma et al. 2013), airports (e.g., Ali, Kim, and Ryu 2016), and tourism destinations (e.g., Jiang, Ramkissoon, and Mavondo 2016). This existing body of research, due in part to a focus on determinants of customer delight, has not empirically investigated an integrative model centered on customer delight, which could shed light on the relative and interactive relationships between customer delight and other important constructs.

This study aims to empirically examine an integrative model centered on customer delight. The conceptual framework (see Figure 1) is rooted in cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) and place identity theory (PIT). Compared with other approaches of studying emotions that address emotions’ inherent characteristics (e.g., valence, arousal levels), CAT focuses on the causes and outcomes of emotions to explain the emotion’s psychological process (Lazarus 1991; Watson and Spence 2007). It is common for tourism studies that adopt CAT to aggregate appraisals into summary dimensions such as goal relevance and goal congruence (e.g., Cai, Lu, and Gursoy 2018; Ma et al. 2013). Although this approach is useful and has confirmed the impact of goal relevance and goal congruence on emotions in various contexts, merely examining these global dimensions of appraisals may oversimplify the complexity of consumption experiences. Understanding how appraisals of discrete consumption experiences affect specific emotions is important to theory development and is of managerial significance for designing tourism experiences. This study examines customer appraisals of authenticity and employee helpfulness based on the following considerations. Authenticity is an essential human aspiration, a vital driving force of traveling, and a fundamental tourism experience (Jiang et al. 2017; Kolar and Zabkar 2010). Furthermore, consumption experiences at a tourism destination are cocreated by tourists and service employees. Employee helpfulness is a key determinant of service efficacy and customer–employee interaction quality during service encounters (Keh et al. 2013). Authentic experiences and helpful service staff are not only relevant to the tourist but also assist the tourist to achieve leisure goals when traveling. Therefore, authenticity and employee helpfulness serve both goal relevance and goal congruence in CAT (Lazarus 1991).

Figure 1.

The conceptual model.

In addition, the conceptual model incorporates place identity to generate new insights regarding how CAT works in tourism. Tourism is essentially a place-based phenomenon (Wang and Xu 2015). It involves traveling to and temporarily consuming a tourism destination, which provides the central arena where a tourist interacts with the travel system. Therefore, modeling tourist emotions by incorporating the place-based perception is a meaningful research attempt. Based on theorizations about the extended self (Belk 1988), it is contended here that a tourist can identify with the tourism destination, and such self-extension could affect tourist behavior. However, few if any academic works have addressed how place identity could influence the cognitive appraisal process of customer delight.

To bridge the research gaps, this study proposes relationships between customer delight, authenticity, employee helpfulness, place identity, and positive word of mouth (PWOM), drawing on existing theorizations from mainstream psychology (e.g., Lazarus 1991), environmental psychology (e.g., Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminoff 1983; Twigger-Ross and Uzzell 1996), marketing (e.g., Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999; Zhao, Yan, and Keh 2018), and tourism (e.g., Ram, Björk, and Weidenfeld 2016; Su, Swanson, and Chen 2016). Findings of this study contribute to the literature on customer delight, customer experience, and organizational frontlines in tourism settings. Besides, this study provides a deeper understanding of CAT by exploring customer delight as a key mediator in the influence of appraisals on PWOM. Furthermore, the study pioneers in examining the moderating effect of place identity on the relationship between customer delight and PWOM. This conceptualization offers a more nuanced lens to investigate the relationship embedded in the model. Additionally, understanding how customer delight is elicited from appraisals of authenticity and employee helpfulness is useful for destination marketing managers to better design tourism experiences, develop marketing communications, and improve customer service.

Theoretical Background and Hypotheses Development

Customer Delight

The term “customer delight” was not widely used in academia until the 1990s. Noting that the customer response in modern consumption is not confined to sheer satisfaction, Oliver, Rust, and Varki (1997) introduced “delight” grounded on the emotive and experiential benefits of hedonic consumption (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982). In marketing, customer delight is conceptualized from either the confirmation-disconfirmation paradigm perspective or the affect-based perspective (Oliver, Rust, and Varki 1997). Based on the confirmation-disconfirmation paradigm, customer delight emerges when there is surprisingly positive performance beyond customer expectation (Rust and Oliver 2000). From the affect-based perspective, delight is a mixture of joy and surprise, conceptually similar to pleasant surprise (Oliver, Rust, and Varki 1997).

Customer delight is related to but independent of the satisfaction concept. First, customer satisfaction derives from fulfilling what is expected, whereas delight requires an unexpectedly high level of satisfaction beyond the mere fulfillment of a consumption goal. This is why delight may produce exceptional behavioral results, such as greater loyalty than satisfaction (Oliver, Rust, and Varki 1997). The second difference between delight and satisfaction is the element of surprise. Delight contains arousal, joy, and pleasure that can be intensified by surprise; hence, the delightful experience is more memorable than its satisfactory counterpart (Berman 2005). Third, satisfaction is more cognitive although it has a dual cognitive and affective nature (Oliver, Rust, and Varki 1997), whereas delight is entirely affective (Berman 2005).

The majority of literature on customer delight in tourism focuses on customer service as a predictor of hotel guest delight. For instance, Magnini, Crotts, and Zehrer (2011) found that the most important determinant of hotel guest delight is customer service. Torres and Kline (2013) developed a customer delight typology including problem resolution delight, professional delight caused by staff expertise, comparative delight caused by superior service, charismatic delight caused by exceptionally friendly staff, and fulfillment delight caused by self-esteem needs being satisfied. Additionally, a few studies explore how customer experiences affect delight. For example, Ma et al. (2013) reported that customer delight at a theme park arises when tourists appraise their theme park experiences as unexpected, positive, important to personal well-being, and congruent with their goals. Jiang, Ramkissoon, and Mavondo (2016) suggested that the customer experience of fun at a tourism destination might enhance customer delight.

This study incorporates the aforementioned two main factors (i.e., customer experience and customer service) of customer delight into one model by testing tourist appraisals of authenticity and employee helpfulness as antecedents of customer delight. The proposed relationships are rooted in CAT.

Cognitive Appraisal Theory

CAT proposes that evaluations of the experience elicit specific emotions, which would further affect behavioral responses (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999; Lazarus 1991; Watson and Spence 2007). From a cognitive appraisal perspective, emotion is “a mental state of readiness that arises from cognitive appraisals of events or thoughts” (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999, p. 184). Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer (1999) argued that the most critical element distinguishing emotions from other affective terminologies (e.g., moods, attitudes) is that emotions arise in response to appraisals. The concept of appraisal means an evaluative judgment and interpretation of experiences (Lazarus 1991). Two types of appraisals are widely accepted in the literature: goal relevance and goal congruence. The former indicates that an emotional response can be aroused only if the event is relevant to the person (Lazarus 1991). The latter means that the person would evaluate the event based on whether it facilitates or impedes the personal desire (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999). CAT further uses emotions’ evaluative roots to explain their impact on consumer behavior (Watson and Spence 2007). Specifically, emotions may facilitate or inhibit actions as people may behave to promote positive emotions and avoid negative emotions (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999).

CAT sets the foundation for the main effects proposed in this study due to the following reasons. First, this theory provides an in-depth approach for understanding the psychological process of emotions in the general marketing field; it is a dominant theory for studying the antecedents and outcomes of consumption emotions (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999; Watson and Spence 2007). Second, while CAT has been applied in a few studies that investigate the tourist behavior and tourism experience (e.g., Cai, Lu, and Gursoy 2018; Choi and Choi 2019), scholars call for more research to comprehend how CAT functions in tourism (Cai, Lu, and Gursoy 2018). Third, according to CAT, a tourist who favorably evaluates a travel experience may generate a joyful emotion (e.g., delight) and further perform behaviors that promote this feeling (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999). Therefore, it is arguable that CAT offers an auspicious path of mapping the process of customer delight by linking it to tourist appraisals (of authenticity and employee helpfulness) and behavioral intentions (e.g., PWOM).

Authenticity

The concept of authenticity is connected with what is genuine, real, and/or true (Beverland and Farrelly 2010). The conventional conceptualization of authenticity is object-related, depicted by objective authenticity and constructive authenticity (Reisinger and Steiner 2006). The former distinguishes the real object from its copies. It means that the authentic experience derives from the recognition of the toured objects as inherently original rather than a copy or an imitation (Reisinger and Steiner 2006). The latter means that the authentic experience can arise from the authentic reproduction or recreation of the original. It indicates that authenticity is a socially constructed interpretation of the object’s nature rather than an objectively measurable quality (Beverland and Farrelly 2010). In this sense, the replication of old traditions can be regarded as authentic (Reisinger and Steiner 2006). Another type of authenticity recognized in the literature (e.g., Jiang et al. 2017) is existential authenticity. Existential authenticity is activity-based; it refers to a state of existential being (i.e., being one’s true self or being true to one’s nature) that can be activated or pursued by engaging in tourism activities (Steiner and Reisinger 2006).

The major avenue for customers to experience authenticity at a tourism destination is through authentic tourist attractions (Ram, Björk, and Weidenfeld 2016). Thus, this study focuses on object-based authenticity and defines authenticity as the customer evaluation of the genuineness of marketing offerings at a tourism destination (Kolar and Zabkar 2010; Ram, Björk, and Weidenfeld 2016).

The Relationship between Authenticity and Customer Delight

The proposed positive relationship between the appraisal of authenticity and customer delight can be supported by regulatory focus theory, which distinguishes between goals with a promotion focus and those with a prevention focus (Higgins 1997). While a prevention focus orients consumers’ thoughts toward safety, responsibility, and obligation, a promotion focus is associated with aspiration, advancement, and accomplishment. When a promotion focus is dominant in a consumer’s mind, the attainment of a desired goal would generate stronger cheerfulness-related emotions than when a prevention focus dominates (Higgins 1997). Consumers expect promotion goals to be fulfilled by hedonic benefits of a product. Hence, a positive consumption experience with a product’s hedonic benefits enhances high-arousal pleasure, which in turn, evokes customer delight (Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan 2008). The authentic experience serves hedonic needs and promotion-focused goals (e.g., aspirations) for consumers. Ostensibly, the positive evaluation of authenticity might engender customer delight. For example, the hotel service design that offers guests an authentic experience of the country culture has been found to enhance foreign guest satisfaction with the hotel (Ariffin, Nameghi, and Soon 2015). The preceding review of literature informs the following hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1: A more positive evaluation of authenticity experienced at a tourism destination is associated with a higher level of customer delight.

Employee Helpfulness

Employee helpfulness is defined as the customer evaluation of the extent to which the service employee provides help to the customer and shows a willingness to serve (Keh et al. 2013). It is an essential component of frontline service employees’ customer-oriented attributes (Brady and Cronin 2001). In other words, employee helpfulness embodies the customer orientation philosophy, which means putting customers’ interest first, knowing their needs, and offering better solutions to their problems (Bagozzi et al. 2012). Employee helpfulness comprises the reliability and responsiveness dimensions in the SERVQUAL model. It reflects the customer evaluation of the frontline service employee’s competence to perform the promised service dependably and accurately, as well as the employee’s willingness to provide prompt service (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1988).

The Relationship between Employee Helpfulness and Customer Delight

Frontline service employees’ customer-orientated behaviors make a customer feel acknowledged, valued, and special (Torres and Kline 2013) and help to maintain and enhance the customer’s self-image (Schneider and Bowen 1999). These benefits stimulate positive emotions of the customer (Schneider and Bowen 1999). Research has shown that taking care of a guest’s needs is a vital service attribute for evoking hotel guest delight (Torres and Kline 2013). Frontline service employees’ commitment, professionalism, and problem-solving skills have been suggested to positively affect hotel guest delight (Torres, Fu, and Lehto 2014; Torres and Kline 2013). Keh et al. (2013) explored the effects of service employee attributes on customer satisfaction. They reported that employee helpfulness has a stronger positive influence on customer satisfaction with the employee than other employee attributes (i.e., physical attractiveness and displayed emotion). Zhao, Yan, and Keh (2018) found that frontline service employees’ in-role behaviors featured by employee helpfulness and other job-prescribed actions enhance positive emotions (e.g., contended, joyful, and pleasant) of customers. Based on the preceding discussion, the following hypothesis is developed:

Hypothesis 2: A more positive evaluation of employee helpfulness is associated with a higher level of customer delight.

The Relationship between Customer Delight and PWOM

Examining the influence of emotions on post-consumption behavioral intentions, such as the intention to recommend, is an important academic attempt in marketing and tourism (Prayag et al. 2017). According to CAT, emotions elicit or inhibit specific actions to enhance the positive affect and avert the negative affect (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999). In particular, hedonic emotions derived from hedonic consumption might motivate consumers to perform certain behaviors with the aim of re-experiencing pleasurable feelings (Ding and Tseng 2015). For example, through sharing with others the positive consumption experience, a consumer rehearses and relives pleasant emotions, which may become more salient than the emotions associated with the consumption experience itself (Berger 2014). In marketing, Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan (2008) found that delightful customers are more likely to spread the word for a product. In tourism, Litvin, Goldsmith, and Pan (2008) argued that people would share their travel experiences because of joy. Hui, Wan, and Ho (2007) contended that tourists need to be happy during their vacations before they consider recommending the tourism destination to others. Hence, the following hypothesis is developed.

Hypothesis 3: A higher level of customer delight is associated with a stronger PWOM intention.

The Mediating Effect of Customer Delight

CAT theorists suggest that emotions mediate the influences that appraisals have on decision making because emotions arise from cognitive appraisals and directly drive actions (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999; Watson and Spence 2007). Westbrook (1987) argued that affective responses to product consumption experiences constitute a major and powerful source of customer motivation. In tourism, Lee et al. (2008) found that positive emotions (i.e., happy, energetic, excited, and relaxed) mediate the impact of the festival environment on patrons’ loyalty to the festival. The study about hotel service in China conducted by Su, Swanson, and Chen (2016) shows that perceived service quality indirectly affects referral intention through emotions (i.e., happiness, joy, and delight) of hotel guests. In the present context, it is plausible that the customer evaluation of authenticity and employee helpfulness provides the content of PWOM communication, which is about the authentic consumption experience and helpful service staff. Furthermore, delight offers the motivation that drives a consumer to recommend. Therefore, it is proposed that customer delight serves as a mediating variable that accounts for the PWOM intention in response to the appraisals of authenticity and employee helpfulness.

Hypothesis 4a: Customer delight mediates the relationship between authenticity and PWOM.

Hypothesis 4b: Customer delight mediates the relationship between employee helpfulness and PWOM.

Place Identity

Place identity is a substructure of self-identity (Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminoff 1983). Environmental psychologists define place identity as a host of cognitions, beliefs, perceptions, or thoughts that an individual invests in a spatial setting to distinguish oneself from others (Jorgensen and Stedman 2001; Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminoff 1983). The place identity process in environmental psychology depicts how self-identity develops through accommodating, assimilating, and evaluating the physical environment, governed by four principles: distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem, and self-efficacy (Twigger-Ross and Uzzell 1996). The first and foremost principle of place identity is the desire to maintain personal distinctiveness or uniqueness (Knez 2005). For example, a person who lives in New York might use the place identification of “New-Yorker” to represent a lifestyle unique to this city. The second principle, continuity, demonstrates one’s desire to preserve continuity with the past self (i.e., place-referent continuity) and with personal values (i.e., place-congruent continuity). For instance, one likes going back to one’s hometown because it reminds him or her of childhood. One chooses to visit Vienna because he or she is passionate about classical music. The third principle is place related self-esteem, which means that living in or visiting a place makes a person feel proud. Lastly, place-related self-efficacy reflects a personal belief that one is capable of carrying out activities at a certain place (Twigger-Ross and Uzzell 1996). In general, place identity is a primary mechanism for tourists to form relationships with tourism settings and independently influences tourists’ place-based perceptions (Davis 2016). Place identity does not require first-hand experience of the place. Instead, it can be shaped based on an abstract notion of a place before the actual visit (Davis 2016). Based on PIT, this study explores the moderating effect of place identity on the relationship between customer delight and PWOM.

The Moderating Effect of Place Identity

Although sharing WOM serves a range of functions for consumers (e.g., impression management, emotion regulation, social bonding, and persuasion) (Berger 2014), there is psychosocial cost associated with the decision to provide PWOM (Cheema and Kaikati 2010). Specifically, providing others with positive evaluations about a product may increase the likelihood of them adopting the product, thereby decreasing the uniqueness of that product (Cheema and Kaikati 2010). Hence, a person who identifies highly with a product and views it as an extended self would be less likely to share the product with others in order to sustain personal distinctiveness.

Research in marketing has shown that this psychosocial cost is especially salient for publicly consumed discretionary products (Cheema and Kaikati 2010). This is because peer influence is more powerful for the purchase of discretionary products (e.g., an iPhone, a watch), compared with necessary products (e.g., electricity, water) (Goodrich and Mangleburg 2010). Besides, as products consumed in public are observed by others, publicly consumed discretionary products are even more susceptible to peer influence (Childers and Rao 1992). The stronger the peer influence, the more likely that PWOM of a product (e.g., a tourism destination) would encourage others to consume the product (e.g., visit the recommended destination), and the more likely the uniqueness associated with the product would decrease. In addition, publicly consumed discretionary products are better than other product categories at conveying symbolic meanings about an individual, constructing self-concept, and enhancing self-identity (Escalas and Bettman 2005). Therefore, the detrimental effect of PWOM in terms of potentially reducing personal distinctiveness derived from consumption may be greater for publicly consumed discretionary products.

Tourism marketing offerings are publicly consumed discretionary products (Crouch et al. 2007). With the development of social media, tourism consumption has become more publicly visible as tourists are able to share their travel experiences instantly with a wider range of audience. It is thus plausible that a tourist who identifies highly with a tourism destination tends to be more sensitive to the cost of losing uniqueness associated with this destination and consequently pays less attention to the emotion of delight when deciding whether to make recommendations. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Hypothesis 5: Place identify moderates the relationship between customer delight and PWOM such that the higher the place identity, the weaker is the relationship between customer delight and PWOM.

Taken together, the conceptual model of this study is presented in Figure 1.

Methods

Study Sites and Procedure of the Survey

Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It has a rich tourism repertoire with natural, cultural, and historical attractions. Tourism highlights in Victoria include Phillip Island, Great Ocean Road (GOR), and Sovereign Hill (Tourism Victoria 2018). Given the outstanding natural, historical, and/or cultural attractions and their popularity among tourists, these three destinations were selected as data collection sites of this study.

The Phillip Island Penguin Parade is one of Australia’s most popular attractions. It offers tourists the experience of watching the world’s smallest penguins toddling up the beach to their burrows. In the Koala Conservation Center, treetop boardwalks allow tourists to see koalas in their natural habitat. Churchill Island at Phillip Island is a historic working farm, which exhibits the lives of early Australian settlers and past farming practices (Phillip Island 2018).

The GOR is a 243-kilometer stretch of road along the southeastern coast of Australia. It is one of the world’s most scenic coastal drives. Tourists there can enjoy the scenery of the towering 12 Apostles, crashing waves, pristine rainforests, and vast farmlands. The GOR also offers historical and cultural attractions including galleries, museums, heritage buildings, and lighthouses (Great Ocean Road 2018).

Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, Victoria, is Australia’s “foremost outdoor museum” (Sovereign Hill 2018). It re-creates the goldfield in the 1850s and brings Australia’s gold rush history to life. Tourists can pan for gold at the Red Hill Gully Diggings and venture underground on a gold mine tour. At night, Sovereign Hill presents a sound-and-light show staging a significant event in the gold mining history.

Before the actual field survey was conducted, the questionnaire was pre-tested on 41 respondents to ascertain how well each measurement and the whole questionnaire would work. Based on the pre-test results, the instrument for the main study was finalized. The survey was designed and administered in English among tourists over 18 years of age at the aforementioned tourism destinations. The fieldwork for this study was conducted over two months. At Phillip Island, data were collected at the Penguin Parade and Koala Conservation Centre. Data from visitors to the GOR were collected at the 12 Apostles tourist site. Data from visitors to Sovereign Hill were gathered on the Main Street. The researcher approached tourists face-to-face on a next-to-pass basis and asked a qualifying question (“Are you a tourist at this destination?”) to make sure the potential respondent belonged to the target population. The researcher then communicated the study purpose and invited the tourist to participate. The fieldwork yielded to a 53% response rate. A total of 461 copies of the questionnaire were collected, 4 of which were dropped because of missing data, resulting in 457 cases for analysis. A sample of 457 fulfills the recommended minimum size for sampling adequacy of the structural equation model in this study (Bagozzi and Yi 2012; Hair et al. 2006).

The respondents’ profiles are shown in Table 1. The sample consisted of 210 males (46%) and 247 females (54%). The majority (395, or 86.4%) of respondents were independent travelers. Most of the respondents completed undergraduate or postgraduate education (354, or 77.5%). The distribution of respondents among three data collection sites is as follows: 170 questionnaires (37.2%) from Phillip Island, 144 (31.5%) from Sovereign Hill, and 143 (31.3%) from the GOR. Table 1 also reveals that respondents mainly came from Australia (130, or 28.4%), Asia (158, or 34.6%), and Europe (125, or 27.4%).

Table 1.

The Respondent Profile (N = 457).

Variable	Frequency	Percentage
Gender
Male	210	46
Female	247	54
Age
18–25	121	26.5
26–35	157	34.4
36–45	75	16.4
46–55	55	12.0
56–65	33	7.2
66–75	12	2.6
Above 75	4	0.9
Highest level of education
Primary education	4	0.9
Secondary education	94	20.5
Undergraduate (diploma only)	74	16.2
Undergraduate (bachelor’s degree)	170	37.2
Postgraduate	110	24.1
Other	5	1.1
Travel mode
Package traveler	62	13.6
Independent traveler	395	86.4
Data collection location
Phillip Island	170	37.2
Great Ocean Road	143	31.3
Sovereign Hill	144	31.5
Country of origin
Australia	130	28.4
Americas	28	6.1
Europe	125	27.4
Asia	158	34.6
Other	16	3.5

Measurement Scales

Measures were adopted from the extant literature and slightly modified to fit the research context (see Table 2). Authenticity was measured with five items adapted from Ramkissoon and Uysal (2011). Employee helpfulness was captured using five items like “Service employees at the destination give me prompt service” (Dabholkar, Thorpe, and Rentz 1996; Hennig-Thurau 2004). Five items were borrowed from Kim, Vogt, and Knutson (2015) to assess customer delight. PWOM was gauged by five items adapted from Harrison-Walker (2001). Place identity was measured using five items, such as “Visiting this destination says a lot about who I am” and “I feel this destination is part of me” (Jorgensen and Stedman 2006; Ramkissoon, Smith, and Weiler 2013). All constructs were captured by the seven-point Likert scale anchored from “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (7), with “neither agree nor disagree” (4) at the midpoint.

Table 2.

Psychometric Properties of Constructs.

Constructs and Items	Standardized Factor Loadings	t Statistic	Composite reliability	AVE
Authenticity (AUT)			0.798	0.502
AUT1 There are locally made souvenirs at this destination.	0.561
AUT2 This destination allows me to interact with the local people.	0.742	11.005***
AUT3 I enjoy the unspoiled natural scenery at this destination.	Deleted
AUT4 This destination reflects the history of the place.	0.691	10.574***
AUT5 I can experience local ways of life at this destination.	0.815	11.463***
Employee Helpfulness (EH) (Service employees at the destination . . .)			0.929	0.725
EH1 give me prompt service.	0.824
EH2 react quickly to my requests.	0.876	22.968***
EH3 are highly committed to meeting my needs.	0.865	22.540***
EH4 are highly competent.	0.871	22.773***
EH5 treat me well.	0.819	20.719***
Customer Delight (CD)			0.898	0.640
CD1 I am delighted by my experiences at this destination.	0.749
CD2 This destination provides more than I have expected.	0.846	18.467***
CD3 I feel positively surprised by what I have experienced at this destination.	0.825	17.981***
CD4 I thoroughly enjoy my interaction with others at this destination.	0.730	15.694***
CD5 This destination offers experiences that exceed what I have imagined.	0.842	18.375***
Place Identity (PI)			0.951	0.797
PI1 Visiting this destination says a lot about who I am.	0.805
PI2 I feel this destination is part of me.	0.891	23.181***
PI3 There is congruence between this destination and my self-identity.	0.923	24.513***
PI4 This destination reflects the person I am.	0.936	25.026***
PI5 I identify strongly with this destination.	0.902	23.636***
PWOM			0.935	0.783
PWOM1 I will say positive things about this destination to other people.	0.916
PWOM2 I will recommend this destination to those who seek my advice.	0.963	37.756***
PWOM3 I will encourage friends and relatives to visit this destination.	0.836	26.233***
PWOM4 I will be proud to tell others that I visited this destination.	Deleted.
PWOM5 I will share my experiences of this destination with other people.	0.816	24.879***

Note: All factor loadings are significant at the 0.001 level. AVE = average variance extracted.

***

p < 0.001.

Results

Common Method Variance

Common method variance (CMV) was assessed because the standardized self-report questionnaire was utilized to collect data for both independent and dependent variables from the same individual (Podsakoff et al. 2003). In the survey design, a psychological separation was created by means of a brief introduction to each scale, and the scale items were carefully constructed. The questionnaire emphasized that “all information will be treated as strictly confidential” and “there are no right or wrong answers.” The researcher also assured the respondents that their anonymity would be protected. These procedures have been suggested as potentially effective in minimizing common method bias (Podsakoff et al. 2003). To address potential concerns about CMV, Harman’s single-factor test was conducted using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The EFA results yielded a five-factor structure that accounted for 76.60% of the total variance, and the first factor accounted for 18.82% of the variance. As a single factor did not emerge from the data and no one factor accounted for the majority of variance, common method bias is not a pervasive issue in this study (Podsakoff et al. 2003).

The Measurement Model

In terms of sample distribution, skewness and kurtosis statistics were checked and the data were not considered as violating the normality assumption for the purpose of structural equation modeling (SEM) (Bagozzi and Yi 2012; Hair et al. 2006; Kline 2015). The maximum likelihood method of estimation was used as the SEM estimation procedure. To investigate the psychometric properties of scales, a five-factor measurement model was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Anderson and Gerbing 1988). For scale purification, one item of authenticity (“I enjoy the unspoiled natural scenery at this destination”) was deleted because of a low standardized factor loading (SFL) (<0.50) (Hair et al. 2006). The initial model demonstrated mediocre fit, and one item of PWOM (“I will be proud to tell others that I visited this destination”) was deleted in the diagnostic process by checking modification indices. In each case, deleting items did not significantly change the conceptual domain or harm the intended meaning of the construct.

The CFA results demonstrated that the measurement model fit the data well (Hair et al. 2006): χ²(220) = 551.77, p < 0.001; goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = 0.908; normed fit index (NFI) = 0.937; incremental fit index (IFI) = 0.961; Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.955; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.961; and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.058. Reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of main constructs were established using the procedure proposed by Fornell and Larcker (1981). As shown in Table 2, for each construct, the composite reliability is above 0.75, exceeding the suggested threshold of 0.70 (Anderson and Gerbing 1988). This indicates adequate reliability and internal consistency of all measures (Hair et al. 2006). From Table 2, SFLs are all greater than 0.55 and significant (p < 0.001). The average variance extracted (AVE) of each construct exceeds the threshold of 0.50 (Hair et al. 2006). These results suggest that sufficient convergent validity was established (Hair et al. 2006). As shown in Table 3, the square root of AVE for each latent variable is higher than the correlations between any pair of latent variables, which provides evidence for adequate discriminant validity (Fornell and Larcker 1981).

Table 3.

Interconstruct Correlations, Square Roots of AVE, Mean, and Standard Deviation.

	AUT	EH	CD	PI	PWOM
AUT	0.709
EH	0.538***	0.851
CD	0.607***	0.504***	0.800
PI	0.215***	0.022	0.373***	0.893
PWOM	0.327***	0.412***	0.666***	0.373***	0.885
Mean	5.18	5.57	5.45	4.17	5.97
SD	1.10	0.93	0.92	1.31	0.95

Note: Figures on the diagonal are the square roots of the AVE. SD = standard deviation; AUT = authenticity; EH = employee helpfulness; CD = customer delight; PI = place identity; AVE = average variance extracted.

***

p < 0.001.

Hypotheses Testing

The hypothesized direct and indirect effects were tested using SEM. The structural model demonstrated a reasonably good fit: χ²(132) = 468.717, p < 0.001; GFI = 0.901; NFI = 0.923; IFI = 0.944; TLI = 0.935; CFI = 0.944; and RMSEA = 0.075. The hypotheses-testing results of direct relationships (hypotheses 1–3) and indirect effects (hypotheses 4a and 4b) are shown in Table 4. Authenticity is positively associated with customer delight (β = 0.461; t = 7.357; p < 0.001), in support of hypothesis 1. Employee helpfulness is positively associated with customer delight (β = 0.341; t = 7.133; p < 0.001), in support of hypothesis 2. Customer delight is positively associated with PWOM (β = 0.642; t = 12.483; p < 0.001), in support of hypothesis 3. Figure 2 demonstrates the structural model with path estimates. As shown in Figure 2, authenticity and employee helpfulness explain 33% of variance in customer delight (R² = 0.33). Authenticity, employee helpfulness, and customer delight explain 41% of variance in PWOM (R² = 0.41). The paths of the indirect effects were further examined. Results indicate that customer delight mediates the relationship between authenticity and PWOM (β = 0.296; t = 6.382; p < 0.001), in support of hypothesis 4a. Customer delight mediates the relationship between employee helpfulness and PWOM (β = 0.219; t = 4.673; p < 0.001), in support of hypothesis 4b.

Table 4.

Results of Hypotheses Testing (Hypotheses 1–4).

Hypotheses	Direct Effect		Indirect Effect		Results
Hypotheses	β	t Value	β	t Value	Results
Hypothesis 1: Authenticity—Customer delight	0.461	7.357***			Supported
Hypothesis 2: Employee helpfulness—Customer delight	0.341	7.133***			Supported
Hypothesis 3: Customer delight—PWOM	0.642	12.483***			Supported
Hypothesis 4a: Authenticity—Customer delight—PWOM			0.296	6.382***	Supported
Hypothesis 4b: Employee helpfulness—Customer delight—PWOM			0.219	4.673***	Supported

Note: PWOM = positive word of mouth.

***

p<0.001.

Figure 2.

Hypotheses-testing results (structural equation modeling).

PROCESS in SPSS version 24.0 was used for testing the moderating effect of place identity. The bootstrapping technique was employed and 5000 bootstrap samples were generated to obtain the confidence interval (CI) for the moderating effect and the standard error of the interaction term (Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes 2007). The coefficient of the interaction between customer delight and place identity reaches the conventional level of statistical significance for PWOM (β = −0.079; 95% CI = [–0.125, –0.033]; t = −3.381; p < 0.001). Then MODPROBE was applied to generate data for the graphical presentation of interaction (Hayes and Matthes 2009). As shown in Figure 3, the form of this interaction confirms the predicted pattern, with the link between customer delight and PWOM being more pronounced under conditions of low place identity than under conditions of high place identity. This means that place identity has a moderating effect on the relationship between customer delight and PWOM. This relationship is weaker under conditions of high rather than low place identity.

Figure 3.

Interactive effects of customer delight and place identity on PWOM (hypothesis 5).

The PROCESS analysis results are shown in Table 5. When probing the conditional effect at different values of place identity, the relationship between customer delight and PWOM is positive and significant when the value of place identity is one standard deviation below the mean (direct effect = 0.642; t = 14.730; p < 0.001), at the mean (direct effect = 0.562; t = 14.213; p < 0.001), and one standard deviation above the mean (direct effect = 0.451; t = 8.318; p < 0.001). These results also substantiate the moderating effect of place identity as the strength of the relationship between customer delight and PWOM decreases when the value of place identity increases. The above findings support hypothesis 5.

Table 5.

Conditional Effect of Customer Delight on PWOM at Different Values of Place Identity (Hypothesis 5).

	Direct Effect	SE	t	p	BootLLCI	BootULCI
–1SD	0.642	0.044	14.730	<0.001	0.556	0.727
Mean	0.562	0.040	14.213	<0.001	0.485	0.640
+1SD	0.451	0.054	8.318	<0.001	0.345	0.558

Note: Bootstrap n=5,000. Unstandardized results are shown. SE = standard error; −1SD = one standard deviation below the mean value of place identity; Mean = mean value of place identity; +1SD = one standard deviation above the mean value of place identity. BootLLCI = Bootstrap lower level confidence interval; BootULCI = Bootstrap upper level confidence interval.

Discussions and Implications

This study responds to the recent call for researchers to develop integrative models (e.g., Prayag et al. 2017) centered on emotions by investigating the antecedents and outcomes of customer delight through the theoretical lens of CAT. Findings indicate that authenticity and employee helpfulness are positively associated with customer delight, which in turn positively influences the PWOM intention. In addition, place identity moderates the relationship between customer delight and PWOM such that the higher the place identity, the weaker is the relationship between customer delight and PWOM. The results contribute to the existing body of knowledge on several fronts.

First, this study adds to the customer experience literature by demonstrating that the experience of authenticity is positively associated with customer delight (hypothesis 1). Few if any studies have empirically investigated the relationship between authenticity and customer delight in either marketing or tourism. Therefore, this study is a pioneer in showing that authenticity experienced by a consumer triggers delight. This novel finding aligns with regulatory focus theory (Higgins 1997), as authenticity might help to achieve promotion-focused goals and hence prompt customer delight. Moreover, this finding empirically corroborates CAT by showing that the customer appraisal of the authentic experience elicits delight.

Second, this study advances the emergent research field of organizational frontlines (Singh et al. 2017) by demonstrating that the frontline service employee’s helpfulness is positively associated with customer delight (hypothesis 2). This is in line with marketing studies (Keh et al. 2013; Zhao, Yan, and Keh 2018) that indicate the importance of employee helpfulness in enhancing customer satisfaction and positive emotions. This finding is also consistent with the tourism literature, which shows that customer-oriented behaviors and skills of frontline service employees foster hotel guest delight (Torres, Fu, and Lehto 2014; Torres and Kline 2013). Furthermore, this finding substantiates CAT in that the customer appraisal of employee helpfulness provokes the positive emotion of delight.

Third, this study answers the academic call in tourism to investigate the influence of emotions on behavioral intentions (Prayag et al. 2017). As hypothesized, a positive and direct relationship was found between customer delight and the intention to recommend (hypothesis 3). This finding corroborates CAT, suggesting that consumers may respond to the hedonic emotion by spreading PWOM because they seek to re-live the pleasant experience through sharing it with others. The finding is consistent with studies in tourism (Prayag et al. 2017) that suggest a positive impact of certain emotions (e.g., joy) on PWOM. It also supports the assertion about the power of customer delight in enhancing customer loyalty (Barnes et al. 2016).

Fourth, this study confers an in-depth understanding of the sequential order of the multifaceted concepts (i.e., cognitions, emotions, and behavioral intentions) in CAT. Customer delight was found to be a principal mechanism that transmits the influence of authenticity and employee helpfulness to PWOM (hypotheses 4a and 4b). The findings shed new light on the explanatory power of emotions in tourist behavior models. Drawing on the findings, customer delight explains how tourist appraisals of the authentic experience and employee helpfulness affect the PWOM intention. Accordingly, these findings confirm the central role of emotion in the tourist’s consumption journey. Furthermore, congruent with the experiential view of consumption proposed by Holbrook and Hirschman (1982), the findings reveal a hedonic pathway from authenticity and employee helpfulness to PWOM through the hedonic emotion of delight.

Finally, this study advances CAT by incorporating place identity in the relationship between the emotion (customer delight) and behavioral intention (PWOM). Based on the results, PIT interacts with CAT in a way that when place identity is high, the influence of customer delight on PWOM becomes weaker (hypothesis 5). No study so far has been identified that examined the moderating effect of place identity on the relationship between customer delight and PWOM. This is surprising given the evident importance of place to tourism in general and to tourists’ experiences in particular. The results indicate a somewhat surprising finding; the novelty is in showing when a positive emotion (i.e., customer delight) does not link to a significantly enhanced PWOM intention. Drawing on this finding, when a tourist identifies highly with a destination, he or she would desire to sustain personal distinctiveness embodied by this destination as an extended self. Therefore, the tourist would be sensitive to the cost of losing this uniqueness by spreading PWOM, which might encourage others to visit this destination. Accordingly, the finding suggests that when using CAT to predict the impact of a certain emotion on consumer behavior, consideration should be taken into account about the extent to which the consumer identifies with the product. The finding also aligns with the consumer behavior literature (Cheema and Kaikati 2010) that suggests the psychosocial cost associated with giving PWOM. Furthermore, this study enriches academic discussions about the product as an extended self in marketing (Belk 1988) and the place as a source of self-identity in environmental psychology (Knez 2005; Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminoff 1983) by showing the importance of a tourism destination in maintaining a tourist’s self-concept.

Implications

Apart from the theoretical contributions, this study offers managerial implications in terms of customer experience management, marketing communications, and customer service. First, creating a meaningful customer experience is essential for satisfying customers and gaining advantage over industry rivals (Lemon and Verhoef 2016). Contemporary customers seek experiences that are “engaging, robust, compelling and memorable” (Gilmore and Pine 2002, 10). The present study reinforces this perspective and points to the authentic experience through which destination marketing managers can delight tourists. Thus, the creation and improvement of the authentic experience at a tourism destination should receive adequate managerial attention. To this end, tourism destinations should facilitate meaningful and personalized customer experiences. Letting tourists enter the back-stage of service and co-create the experience are ways of enhancing authenticity. Besides, tourism destinations can use interactive exhibits to engage tourists in learning and experiencing the history and tradition of tourist attractions. Storytelling is a useful means of enlivening attractions, thereby enabling tourists to discover the history of the destination in a unique and authentic way. Additionally, by indicating that authenticity is a direct determinant of customer delight, this study provides empirical evidence with which tourism destination managers can strengthen their cases for financial assistance to conserve the natural, cultural, and historic heritage. Policy makers should also consider protection schemes to preserve heritage sites.

Second, the findings show that customer-oriented service embodied by employee helpfulness is essential for organizations to achieve customer delight. It suggests that reliable, responsive, and helpful frontline employees are more likely to delight customers. This finding is of practical importance because employee helpfulness can be directly managed by destination managers through recruiting, training, and employee experience management. The insight is particularly useful for start-ups and small enterprises that do not have enough capital to develop unexpected and stimulating marketing programs to surprise tourists. Compared with trying to surprise customers, delivering basic promises through responsive and reliable service may be more effective both cost-wise and time-wise.

Third, considering the importance of place identity discussed in this study, tourism destinations are suggested to implement place-making programs to help tourists accept the destination into their self-identity. Authentic local cuisines, legends, festivals, and cultural or sport events can be useful place-making tools for tourism destinations to nurture a sincere sense of place among tourists. Consequently, tourists will develop attachment to the destination and are more likely to revisit it.

Fourth, this study models the fundamental role of emotion in the tourist behavior framework by showing that customer delight is a principal mechanism between customer appraisals (of authenticity and employee helpfulness) and PWOM. The findings suggest that marketing campaigns should highlight the emotional experiences (e.g., delight) that can be aroused through visiting a tourism destination. Tourism destinations should also incorporate emotional appeals in marketing communications. In particular, marketing practitioners can utilize music, colors, and images in advertisements to inspire customers’ emotional resonance and positively predispose them to the destination experience. For example, Tourism Australia has used a movie-like advertisement “Dundee” to encourage Americans to visit Australia. This advertisement features an engaging imagery of an interesting adventure through Australia’s outback. Another example is the tourism advertisement “Experience the Philippines,” which is characterized by warm music, bright colors, and happy feelings.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

The aforementioned conclusions need to be interpreted with caution because of a number of reasons. First, this study used nonprobability sampling, which limits the generalizability of the results beyond the study settings. Therefore, future research could use random sampling and try to test the conceptual model developed in this study on a larger and more diversified sample of customers. Second, despite that measurement reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity were established for the customer delight construct in this study, the five items may not adequately capture the emotional nuances of delight (Torres and Ronzoni 2018). Future researchers may replicate the study by using a more comprehensive instrument to measure customer delight. Third, given the criticism that delighting customers heightens their expectations and makes satisfying them harder in the next purchase cycle (Rust and Oliver 2000), it is worthwhile for future works to use this study as a springboard and shed light on the mediating role of other consumption emotions (e.g., joy, hope, and relief) in this model.

Fourth, the results show that authenticity and employee helpfulness account for 33% of variance in customer delight, which implies that future research should incorporate other appraisal determinants (e.g., the fun experience) to enhance the predictive power of the model for customer delight. Fifth, expanding on the model proposed in this study, future research could include other behavioral outcomes, such as the likelihood of revisiting and customer spending. Sixth, this study did not collect information on whether the respondents were first-time tourists or repeat tourists. It would be fruitful for future works to determine whether the theoretical model developed in this study produces different results for first-time tourists and repeat tourists. This is because the previous consumption experience might influence customer appraisals of the current consumption experience. Finally, this study relied solely on the survey method to collect information from tourists. With the cross-sectional data, causality cannot be unambiguously established. However, based on CAT, the directions of causality assumed in the model are very likely. It would be of value for future research to address this issue through scenario-based experiments.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Yangyang Jiang

Author Biography

Yangyang Jiang is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Nottingham University Business School China, University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Her research interests include customer experience, services marketing, sharing economy, and sustainable development.

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