The Consumer Regret: Moderators, Mediators and Consequences

This paper aims to explain the relationship between regret and behavioral responses that may have an impact on the firms ’ profitability. How can we model the impact of regret on customer behavior? The specific emotion of regret is assessed and its influence on customers ’ behavioral responses (complaining, switching, word-of-mouth, return and inertia) is examined. The empirical data were obtained from a survey on 620 Tunisian consumers. All the consumers have different attitudes to regret. The appearance of such individual emotion is articulating around as intern variables as well as extern ones. The variables identification defines the impact of the regret on the consumer purchase process. It was found that regret have a direct impact on behavior over and above the effects of dissatisfaction. We argue with incorporating emotions such as regret into a general (dis)satisfaction measurement, and we support the idea of specific emotions approach to customer dissatisfaction. Implications on the practice of services marketing and the theory are discussed. The proposed model is the first one which incorporates dissatisfaction between regret and its consequences. It uses multiple regression method to study the relationships between regret and its moderator’s variables and mediator’s ones