The Effect of Unrelated Supporting Service Quality on Consumer Delight, Satisfaction, and Repurchase Intentions

Supporting services that are related to the core service, such as hospitality and consultation, can enhance the value of a core service. Yet, firms also use supporting services unrelated to the core service to increase consumer satisfaction, delight, and repurchase intentions toward the core service. However, there is little empirical evidence on whether the use of unrelated supporting services has such anticipated effects. This article aims to investigate how unrelated supporting service quality affects consumer delight, satisfaction, and, in turn, repurchase intentions. The results from three experiments reveal that unrelated supporting service quality influences repurchase intentions by affecting consumer delight rather than satisfaction. Thus, unrelated supporting services can serve to delight (but not satisfy) consumers if they are positive, relevant to the consumer segment, and of high quality. In turn, these unrelated supporting services will also influence intentions to repurchase. Consumer delight and unrelated supporting service quality also significantly influence repurchase intentions, but only when the core service quality is high. Unrelated supporting service quality does not influence repurchase intentions if core service quality is low. This suggests the importance of focusing on core service quality first, before trying to delight consumers with extras.