AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

Investigating the effects of consumption-associated cues on disappointment, regret and post-consumption behaviours

by Muhammad Ismail Hossain




Institution: Monash University
Department: Department of Marketing
Year: 2015
Keywords: Consumption; Attribution; Expectation; Disappointment; Regret; Repurchase; nWOM; Complain
Record ID: 1047198
Full text PDF: http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/1144473


Abstract

Consumers invariably encounter both positive and negative consumption experiences in their lives. Prior research finds that negative consumption experiences result in particular affective and behavioural reactions. This research focuses on how consumers respond to consumption-associated cues, in particular, causal attributions, expectations, and perceived information search, in terms of feelings of disappointment and regret, and how these emotions subsequently influence consumers’ post consumption behaviours. The uniqueness of this research lies in its attempts to ascertain the role of the multidimensionality of disappointment and regret in determining consumers’ responses to negative consumption experiences. The thesis presents three scenario-based experiments. Findings in general show that causal attributions, expectations, and information search efforts indeed induce disappointment and regret in different ways across different dimensions. Findings also support the notion, proposed but untested in the literature, of a sequential relationship between disappointment and regret as they result in different behavioural actions. This research not only advances theories of attributions, expectations, and disappointment and regret, but also gives practitioners new insights into ways by which they can strategically choose to influence emotions to reduce their negative effects on post-consumption behaviours. This thesis has six chapters. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the background of this research. It identifies the research gaps, defines the research objectives and develops the research questions. It then points out the theoretical and managerial contributions of this research and provides the outline of the thesis. Chapter 2 examines the relevant literature with a focus on negative consumption experience, the resultant feeling of disappointment and regret including their dimensions and these emotions’ effects on consumer behaviour, specifically repurchase and coping intentions. The chapter first presents an overview of cognitive appraisal theory that shows the causal chain of cognitions-emotions-behaviours. This is followed by a review of the consumption-associated cues that produce negative emotions, in particular disappointment and regret. This thesis then presents the literature relating to the effects of negative emotions on the behavioural responses with a focus on consumers’ repurchase and coping intentions. The review presented in this chapter offers an impetus in discovering the suitable research design and measurement instruments to answer the flagged research questions (Chapter 3) as well as in developing the conceptual models and research hypotheses (Chapter 4, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6). Chapter 3 details the research design including an outline of the research methods used to test the research hypotheses. More importantly, this chapter explains briefly the type and stages of the scenario-based experiments as well as the methods used to analyse the data. The details of the experimental studies including the…