Moderating Role of Hope on the Outcome Valence–Satisfaction Relationship
Beyond attitude formation processes, we anticipate that hope is also relevant to consumer satisfaction. Consumers’ satisfaction with products has important implications for marketers, given satisfaction’s effects on repeat purchasing, negative or positive word of mouth, and complaining behavior. As such, several theoretical perspectives have been leveraged to identify antecedents to satisfaction judgments (e.g., Spreng, MacKenzie, and Olshavsky 1996; Szymanski and Henard 2001). For example, the expectancy disconfirmation perspective suggests that consumers compare actual performance levels with expected performance levels. If the product performs worse (better) than expected, a negative (positive) disconfirmation occurs, and consumers are dissatisfied (highly satisfied) (e.g., Oliver and DeSarbo 1988). Equity theory suggests that satisfaction is based on the ratio of input to output (cost to benefit) received from the product in comparison with a referent other (Fisk and Young 1985). The emotions perspective proposes that emotions such as contentment, anger, or joy experienced during Hope’s Relevance to Product Evaluation and Choice / 9 consumption can leave affective tags on the product’s memory trace that are accessed in satisfaction evaluations (Westbrook and Oliver 1991). Finally, attribution theory (Folkes 1988) proposes that consumers’ dissatisfaction with a failed product depends on whether they blame the manufacturer, uncontrollable factors in the environment, or themselves for failed outcomes. For the most part, these perspectives are noncompeting, and there is evidence for all of them.