Emotional customer experience and value co-creation in the hospitality industry: insights from customers and managers

Increased customer involvement in the service process raises a significant challenge for service providers to co-create positive customer experience. This is particularly important for the hospitality industry. Hence, a holistic understanding of customer behaviour is vital for co-creating memorable customer experience and reciprocal value. Despite extensive research on the cognitive aspect of customer experience and traditional customer behaviours (e.g., loyalty and satisfaction), there has been limited focus on and understanding of customers’ emotional experience and co-creation behaviours. This research addresses this gap by providing an advanced understanding of customer emotion and co-creation behaviour and identifying important value co-creation opportunities. This is achieved through: (1) developing a new three-dimensional conceptual framework (phenomenon, process and outcome) based on a synthesis of the current literature to guide empirical exploration; (2) a study of 1,063 TripAdvisor customer reviews; and (3) a thematic analysis of six semi-structured interviews with hotel managers. The study focuses on ten five-star hotels in Dublin (Ireland) to explore customer emotion and value co-creation based on a combined application of appraisal theory and thematic analysis. The customer review analysis is used to identify prominent service- and customer-related emotion triggers. This led to the development of a Hotel Discrete Emotion Set (HDEMOS) and customers’ emotional experience typology (i.e., positive, negative, ambivalent, mixed and neutral responses). The analysis also identifies both direct and indirect co-creation behaviours (i.e., co-developing, integrating, reinforcing, diminishing, advising and justice voicing). In addition, examination of interviews with managers and their response to customer reviews highlights hotels’ current customer experience management practices. Finally, key opportunities for value co-creation are also identified by integrating lessons from both customer and provider perspectives. Overall, the thesis contributes to the literature and marketing practices in three main aspects. First, it highlights important areas for service improvement and innovation. Second, it expands on the current, somewhat limited, understanding of emotional customer experience through a nuanced account of hotel-specific discrete and multiple emotions and various co-creation behaviours. This is important to foster the co-creation of positive experience. Third, the lessons from both customers’ and providers’ perspectives offer more holistic knowledge that facilitates value co-creation. Finally, the research findings also offer important insights into the hospitality industry and the growing Irish tourism market