On happiness, sadness or indifference: investigating the transference effect of Outcome valence in service perceptions

Moods, feelings and valence are acknowledged as important subjects of interest in consumer research as they are found to have a strong influence upon information processing and service evaluation. In the services literature, Brady and Cronin (2001) and Brady et al. (2006) advocate that ‘outcome valence’ is an important factor in service quality assessment as it constitutes customer‘s belief whether the service outcome is good or bad, regardless of their evaluation of any other aspect of the experience. In extending current conceptualisation of valence in service experience, this study investigates the transference effect of outcome valence between different service encounters. Specifically, we examined the extent to which a student’s feeling towards an academic result has a bearing upon his/her subsequent service experience in a hedonic coffee house context. We conducted an experimental study involving 300 undergraduate students who were promised with attractive prizes for top achievers in a multiple-choice test. A video lecture was first shown to the participants before the online test administration. Grades were then randomly assigned to participants and prizes were given to the top scorers. Finally, they were taken to a coffee house within the campus to evaluate its service quality. As expected, the study found that those who feel sad with their grades in the online test evaluate the lecture delivery less positively compared to those who feel happy with their grades. Interestingly, although those who feel sad reported the lowest rating on the lecture delivery, they reported the highest rating on the coffee house service experience. Those who were indifferent over their grades, however, reported the lowest rating in the hedonic context compared to other groups. Results gathered demonstrate the variability of transference effect of outcome valence between different service contexts. Managerial implications and theoretical contribution of the study are then discussed in the light of the findings.