The Role of Emotional Attachment in Consumers’ Responses to Service Changes

Consumers are often faced with changes to the services they consume; their ability to adapt to the change is moderated by their emotional attachment to the service. Consumers with high emotional attachment (HEA) exhibit higher satisfaction levels than consumers with low emotional attachment (LEA) when experiencing gains. For service reductions (losses), both HEA and LEA consumers experience comparable dissatisfaction levels because the HEA consumers experience a positive favoritism effect and a negative invalidation of emotions, which cancel each other out. A field study and a lab experiment demonstrate these effects.



Citation:

Maura Scott and Martin Mende (2007) ,"The Role of Emotional Attachment in Consumers’ Responses to Service Changes", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 34, eds. Gavan Fitzsimons and Vicki Morwitz, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 462-465.

Authors

Maura Scott, Arizona State University, USA
Martin Mende, Arizona State University, USA



Volume

NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 34 | 2007



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