1. The effect of emotional provider support on angry versus anxious consumers
- Author
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Menon, Kalyani and Dube, Laurette
- Subjects
Consumer behavior ,Advertising, marketing and public relations ,Business ,Business, international - Abstract
To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2007.04.001 Byline: Kalyani Menon (a), Laurette Dube (b) Keywords: Consumer emotions; Coping; Provider response strategies; Services Abstract: This paper examines the trend in service firms to integrate an emotional dimension into provider responses to consumer emotions. An empirical study showed that such a strategy is effective only if the consumer coping demonstrates an emotional engagement with the service episode. Because both angry and anxious consumers cope primarily by planful problem solving (i.e., attempting to resolve the situation and attain their consumption goal), provider responses that offered solutions (instrumental support) were more effective than responses that offered emotional support. Further, angry consumers were emotionally engaged with the situation while anxious consumers emotionally disengaged from it. Consequently, provider response that included emotional support and instrumental support was the most effective for angry consumers, but there was no benefit to also including emotional support for anxious consumers. Author Affiliation: (a) School of Business and Economics,Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3C5 (b) Desautels Faculty of Management McGill University, 1001001 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1G5
- Published
- 2007