Exploring Alternative Antecedents of Customer Delight

Abstract

Satisfaction researchers in marketing are in general agreement that the emotion of delight is comprised of joy and surprise. This study reviews the relevant emotions literature in psychology, the neurosciences and philosophy to show that there may be two different kinds of delight - one with surprise and one without surprise. The work of Plutchik (1980) is often cited as the basis for conceptualizing delight as being comprised of joy and surprise. When Plutchik's two studies were replicated using more positive complex emotion terms than the original study, it was found that subjects could feel delight without being surprised and that there were different emotion terms that were considered by subjects to be comprised of joy and surprise. It is shown how these findings clarify and explain some unexpected results obtained in past research on customer delight. The implications of these finding for both theory and practice are also discussed.