Personality orientations, emotional states, customer satisfaction, and intention to repurchase

Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 72 – 75

Personality orientations, emotional states, customer satisfaction, and intention to repurchase John Gountas ⁎, Sandra Gountas 1 Department of Marketing and Management, School of Business, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia Received 1 June 2005; received in revised form 1 October 2005; accepted 1 August 2006

Abstract This paper explores how personality orientations and emotions influence consumer's service perceptions in the airline industry. Emotions and their relationships to satisfaction, and marketing in general, is an important yet under researched area in consumer behaviour thus limiting our understanding of consumer's emotional experiences during their interactions with service providers [Bagozzi, RP, Gopinath, M. The role of emotions in marketing. Acad Mark Sci 1999; 27(2):184–206.]. Little research investigates the relationships between personality differences, emotional states, and individual consumer behaviour [Levenson RW. The intrapersonal functions of emotions. Cogn Emot 1999;13(5): 481–504.]. [Verbeke, W. Individual differences in emotional contagion of salespersons: it's effect on performance and burnout. Psychol Mark 1997; 14 (6):617–636.] investigates the effects of personality differences and emotional contagion of sales personnel in a service setting and suggests that both need consideration because they influence service performance outcomes. However, little research, in marketing looks at the differences of consumers' emotional experiences in a service setting according to their personality characteristics. This study examines the relationships between tourism consumers' emotions, personality orientations and service satisfaction. The research findings suggest a direct relationship between the consumers' personality orientation, emotional characteristics and self-reported satisfaction of the service experience. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Personality; Emotions; Emotional contagion; Satisfaction

1. Background to personality and emotions research Many researchers agree that a link exists between personality and emotions. Personality according to Hjelle and Ziegler (1992) is the overarching construct that includes emotional/affect and other personality characteristics. Pervin (1993) suggests that affect is part of all major personality theories in varying degrees. Affect or emotional predispositions are extensions of, or closely related to a range of personality traits (Watson et al., 1988). The question of whether personality or affect is superordinate or subordinate depends on the approach used by the researchers and/ or theorists. Which construct comes first, or which one subsumes the other appears to be somewhat subjective and the literature search did not reveal a definitive paradigm, which clarifies this ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 9479 2615; fax: +61 3 9479 5971. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Gountas), [email protected] (S. Gountas). 1 Tel.: +61 3 9479 2178; fax: +61 3 9479 5971. 0148-2963/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2006.08.007

question. Once personality traits have formed, they tend to influence, emotional activation and emotional regulation (Izzard et al., 1993). Larsen (1987) and Larsen and Ketelaar (1991) suggest that according to personality characteristics, people (consumers) experience and demonstrate variable behaviours and emotions. Tellegen (1985) suggests that emotional predispositions are the results of a cluster of personality traits and affect is another expression or description of certain personality traits. Consumer reactions to affective experiences vary according to the situational context and the complex interpretations or appraisals of the events by the individual (Izzard, 1977; Plutchik, 2003; Tomkins, 1980). Verbeke (1997: 622) provides research with sales people and identified four emotional types: the Charismatics, Empathetics, Expansives and Blands. The Charismatic emotional types are able to transmit and receive emotions. They are able to infect others with emotions and catch others' emotions. The Empathetic types are receptive to emotions by other people (susceptible to emotional contagion) but are unable to influence

J. Gountas, S. Gountas / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 72–75

the emotions of other people, i.e., unable to infect others. The expansive types are able to influence other's emotions i.e., they are able to infect others. However the Expansives are not able to feel empathy and they do not feel nor receive emotions from others, that is, they are unaffected by emotions. The Blands are neither influenced by, nor, influencing other people's emotions (neither infecting nor infected by emotions). The four emotional types responded differently in work settings. Verbeke (1997) reports that the Charismatics and Empathetics are better performers in sales. The Expansives were more vulnerable to emotional burnouts and produced lower sales results. From the consumers' side of the service interaction, it is reasonable to assume that personality differences cause consumers to experience different responses to emotional influences (positive and negative); and also that some consumers are capable of influencing the emotional experiences of others (other consumers and service providers involved in the service interaction). Extensive research identified two separate and independent dimensions of affective factors labelled as positive and negative emotionality/ affect (Watson et al., 1988; Watson et al., 1999). Positive and negative affect factors correlate differentially with other psychological and social constructs. Levenson (1999) suggests that there is a need for more research to understand how personality influences emotional responses. Such knowledge would be extremely useful in designing service settings and developing appropriate marketing strategies to suit different personality orientations. Emotions constitute a major part of individual personality and affective experiences influence consumer's behaviour and perception during consumption interactions. H1. Consumers' personality orientations relate differentially to positive and negative emotional states during the service interaction. Several researchers call for further research concerning emotions that arise during and post-product/service consumption (Bagozzi and Gopinath, 1999; Richins, 1997; Mattila and Enz, 2002). Bagozzi and Gopinath (1999), suggest that, emotions are important influences on the actions of consumers and marketing professionals need to consider them as essential variables to include in services marketing operations. Most of the major emotion/affect theories when tested in a variety of consumer behaviour studies but the findings indicate different degrees of successful application regarding validity and reliability. However, very little research in the tourism literature explores the relationships that may exist between the constructs of emotions and tourism service satisfaction. Whether it is appropriate to label satisfaction as an emotion, or as an emotive quality, or as an outcome of a Positive Emotion is still debatable. Arieti (1974) and Fromme and O'Brien (1982) consider satisfaction as an emotion, whilst other researchers have stated that satisfaction is an expressed emotional reaction to a service context (Russell, 1980; Havlena and Holbrook, 1986). Preis (2003) suggests that the relationship between a service provider and the consumer has a positive impact on whether repurchase will occur. Therefore, personality as the antecedent influence of the interactions between consumers-

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and-service providers may affect both the level of consumer satisfaction evaluation and the intention to repurchase. H2. Consumer's personality orientations relate differentially to overall service satisfaction as well as its components (i.e., the Tangible and Intangible Service aspects). H3. Personality orientations relate differentially to intention to repurchase. 2. Research method A service satisfaction survey conducted with a UK leisure airline during 2000–2001 produced N = 2196 useable consumer responses. During a long period of qualitative and quantitative research work, the items of the four personality orientations used in the survey, were developed and refined. The four personality orientations items are an extension and adaptation of the four Jungian personality orientations (Gountas and Gountas, 2001). The original Jung (1971) conceptualisation has been adapted to form only four core personality orientations: the thinking or logical, the feeling or emotional, the material or physical and the intuitive or imaginative (Gountas, 2003). The conceptualisation of each personality orientation proposes four distinctive ways of perceiving the world and therefore consumers may have different preferences and attitudes towards tourism services. This includes different evaluative criteria that each personality orientation may use, expressed as different individual values, motives, emotions and appraisals of experiences. To measure consumer's service interaction emotions the researchers used Plutchik's (2003) scales that were adapted according to the primary exploratory research findings with representative groups of tourism consumers in the UK. To measure service attributes, the SERVQUAL instrument items were adapted and grouped to assess Company Image, Crew (Service) Performance and Tangible aspects of service. The decision to adapt the SERVQUAL instrument is in keeping with Parasuraman's (1995) suggestion that the SERVQUAL is not appropriate for all types of research problems and it should be adapted to fit the characteristics of different industries and companies. Single statements measured overall satisfaction and likelihood of, or intention to repurchase. A ten point Likert scale measured the respondents' level of agreement with the item statements. 3. Research findings and discussion Reliability analysis of the emotion constructs and serviceevaluation was acceptable: Positive Emotions (a = .62), Negative Table 1 Personality factor correlations Table 1

Thinking

Thinking Material Feeling Intuitive

1

a

.448a .496⁎⁎ .633⁎⁎

Significant at .01.

Material

Feeling

Intuitive

1 .629⁎⁎ .361⁎⁎

1 .563⁎⁎

1

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J. Gountas, S. Gountas / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 72–75

Table 2 Summary of all path model fit indices Path

χ2

df p

Model 5.775 4

Cmin/ GFI df

Table 3 Direct and indirect effects associated with the Feeling personality orientation AGFI RMSEA NFI

.217 1.444 1.000 .992

.014

TLI CFI

1.000 .998 1.000

Emotions (a = .69); Company Image (a = .89), Crew (Service) Performance (a = .91), and Tangible Service Elements (a = .70). The reliability analysis of the four Personality Orientations as formulated in previous test–re-test studies (Gountas, 2003) produced very robust Cronbach Alpha. The original test–re-test studies' Cronbach Alphas produced were, Thinking (a = .85), Material (a = . 80), Feeling (a = .83), and Intuitive (a = . 85). The present study by necessity reduced the number of items for each personality construct (three predictor items instead of five–six), which resulted in somewhat lower Cronbach Alpha (Thinking/ Logical a = .62, Material/Physical a = .50, Feeling/Emotion a = .50, and Intuitive/Imaginative a = .50). Overall, the findings suggest that the four personality orientations are independent (low collinearity as the factor correlations are modest (see Table 1). A path analysis model tests the relationships between all hypothesised variables examined the direct and indirect effects using Amos software. Table 2 shows the model summary that indicates a good fit between the model and the data (Fig. 1). The more specific relationships between each of the personality constructs associated with the emotional states, the service attributes and service satisfaction evaluation, are shown in the following tables of direct and indirect effects (Tables 3 and 4). In this study, the material and feeling personality orientations are both directly and indirectly associated with perceived service satisfaction and repurchase. No significant findings for the thinking and intuitive orientations emerged. This clearly indicates that differences in personality orientation result in different responses to service provision. The differences between the personality orientations reflect their general preferences and hierarchy of service needs. For example, the Material orientation is shown to be more concerned with the tangible aspects of the service (total effects' standardized regression coefficient = 0.176⁎⁎⁎); and

Fig. 1. The full path model indicating the direction of all relationships between personality orientations, Positive and Negative emotions, service attributes and services outcomes (satisfaction and likely intention to repurchase).

Table 3

Feeling associated with Negative Emotions Feeling associated with Positive Emotions Feeling associated with Tangibles Feeling associated with Crew Performance Feeling associated with Company Image Feeling associated with Overall Satisfaction Feeling associated with Likely to Repurchase

Direct effects

Indirect effects

Total effects

SRC

T-value

SRC

T-value

SRC

T-value

− 0.049

− 1.63

–

–

− 0.049

− 1.63

0.107

2.82⁎⁎

–

–

0.107

2.82⁎⁎

0.118

3.93⁎⁎⁎

0.037

2.85⁎⁎

0.155

5.34⁎⁎⁎

0.073

2.92⁎⁎

0.106

5.58⁎⁎⁎

0.179

5.42⁎⁎⁎

–

–

0.147

6.13⁎⁎⁎

0.147

6.13⁎⁎⁎

0.021

1.11

0.156

6.24⁎⁎⁎

0.178

6.14⁎⁎⁎

0.046

2.09⁎

0.122

5.81⁎⁎⁎

0.167

5.76⁎⁎⁎

⁎ sig. at 0.10, ⁎⁎ sig. at 0.05, ⁎⁎⁎ sig. at 0.001.

Company Image (total effects' standardized regression coefficient = 0.188⁎⁎⁎). The Material orientation is also most strongly associated with Positive Emotions during the service (total effects' standardized regression coefficient = 0.197⁎⁎⁎) and have the strongest negative association with Negative Emotions (total effects' standardized regression coefficient = −0.119⁎⁎⁎). The Feelings orientation has the strongest association with Overall Satisfaction (total effects' standardized regression coefficient = − 0.178⁎⁎⁎) and Likelihood of Repurchase (total effects' Table 4 Direct and indirect effects associated with the Material personality orientation Table 4

Direct effects

Indirect effects

Total effects

SRC

SRC

T-value

SRC

T-value

–

–

− 0.119

3.84⁎⁎⁎

–

–

0.197 6.35⁎⁎⁎

0.070 5.83⁎⁎⁎

0.176 6.77⁎⁎⁎

0.139 8.18⁎⁎⁎

0.169 6.04⁎⁎⁎

0.157 7.85⁎⁎⁎

0.188 7.23⁎⁎⁎

0.158 6.32⁎⁎⁎

0.150 4.69⁎⁎⁎

0.159 7.95⁎⁎⁎

0.143 4.61⁎⁎⁎

T-value

Material associated − 0.119 3.84⁎⁎⁎ with Negative Emotions Material associated 0.197 6.35⁎⁎⁎ with Positive Emotions Material associated 0.106 4.08⁎⁎⁎ with Tangibles Material associated 0.030 1.36 with Crew Performance 0.031 1.94 Material associated with Company Image Material associated − 0.008 0.42 with Overall Satisfaction Material associated − 0.016 0.76 with Likely to Repurchase ⁎⁎⁎ sig. at 0.001.

J. Gountas, S. Gountas / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 72–75

standardized regression coefficient = −0.167⁎⁎⁎). Tables 3 and 4 below indicate the total effects of some associations derived from the indirect effects of emotions acting as partial mediators. The Tangible Service Element construct appears to have the strongest indirect effect associated with personality orientation and emotions. The findings support the differential relationships hypothesised between the independent and the dependent emotional states. The thinking or logical personality orientation appears to be unaffected by emotional states or moods before and during the actual flight services experiences. This could be because this orientation tends to operate on the level of viewing service interactions from a logical or factual approach, and rationally evaluates their various negative and positive feeling experiences, thus maintaining an emotional or psychological detachment and equilibrium. Neither is the intuitive personality orientation affected by emotional states or moods before and during the actual flight service experiences in this study. A possible explanation is that the intuitive orientation's main driver is imagination and the nature of this particular service does not stimulate that inclination. The findings support the hypotheses that different personality orientations respond differently to the model constructs. Theoretically the paper has made a contribution to the extant body of literature by demonstrating that personality orientations have a direct relationship (as antecedents) with emotional states (positive and Negative Emotions) and that both have an influence on the consumer's evaluation of service satisfaction and intentions to repurchase in the context of an airline service. Different service settings would produce different responses from each personality orientation due to their differing inherent preferences, wants and needs for various types of products and service experiences. Replication of the study in a variety of tourism services would provide a clearer picture of the dominant preferences of each personality orientation. This would enhance the current understanding of the effects of personality/ individual differences on product/service choices and satisfaction evaluations. This knowledge would enable tourismmarketing managers to use personality and emotional states as a useful basis for developing their marketing mix and identifying predictor variables of service satisfaction and intentions to repurchase. Such knowledge would be particularly useful in specialised tourism services, solo holidays, tailor made individual services and relationship building strategies. References Arieti RJ. American handbook of psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Bagozzi RP, Gopinath M. The role of emotions in marketing. Acad Mark Sci 1999;27(2):184–206.

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