Customer satisfaction with co-created hospitality services: Regulatory focus orientation and positive disconfirmation

Abstract

New enhancements that foster more customer-focused services, such as the co-creation of hotel service offerings with hotel guests, have changed the conventional thinking in the hospitality industry. In this regard, the current study contributes to the understanding of the effect of co-creation on customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry, focusing on customers' idiosyncratic characteristics. Particularly, the study investigates the moderating role of customers' regulatory focus orientation (promotion vs. prevention) and the mediating role of customers' positive disconfirmation on the relationship between value co-creation (VCC) level of hotel services and customer satisfaction. The model is tested using an experimental design with 328 responses. The results show that a high level of VCC in hotel services leads promotion-focused (prevention-focused) customers to experience lower (higher) levels of positive disconfirmation compared to a low level of VCC, as promotion-focused (prevention-focused) customers have higher (lower) performance expectations from a high VCC service offering due to the regulatory fit (non-fit) they have with the service design. The findings also indicate that service failure generates less dissatisfaction in a high VCC level in hotel services than a low VCC level since customers take more responsibility for the unfavorable outcome when they participate more in the VCC process. These results indicate that when hotels design co-created services, they need to generate coherence between customers' regulatory focus orientation and the service's VCC level.