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Facing contradictory emotions in event marketing: leveraging on surprise

Michela Addis

University of Rome 3, Rome, Italy

Giulia Miniero

Universita della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland and SDA Bocconi Scuola di Direzione Aziendale, Milano, Italy, and

Isabella Soscia

SKEMA Business School, Sophia Antipolis, France

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the role of surprise in reducing the negative impact of an undesired emotion, such as embarrassment, on the attitudes and behavioral intentions of consumers taking part in an event.

Design/methodology/approach – In total, 220 consumers took part in a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental within-subject design. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings – Findings show that an in-store social event designed to elicit young customersrsquo; surprise and feelings of romantic love might also give rise to a relevant negative emotion such as embarrassment, and that surprise can act as a powerful managerial tool in limiting the negative effects of this negative emotion. Moreover, brand attitude and purchase intention are outcomes of positive emotions elicited by the event.

Practical implications – The study shows that event marketing is an appealing but risky strategy. Evoking surprise is an effective way to manage negative emotions such as embarrassment that can arise unintentionally during an event.

Originality/value – The research contributes to the understanding of the role of contradictory emotions in a specific social experience, namely, the event, and focuses on unplanned and undesired the affective contributions of customers.

Keywords:Surprise,Love,Embarrassment,Event

Paper type: Research paper

1. Introduction

Since their initial conceptualization (Holbrook and Hirschman,1982), customer experiences have acquired increasingly broad interest and are now referred to as the core offer in service marketing (Grewal, Levy and Kumar, 2009; Pine and Gilmore,1999; Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010). Customer experiences require a certain degree of interaction between service providers using elements of the context that are designed to be engaging, compelling and consistent and customers (Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010). Organizations craft the potential customer experience using a wide range of tangible and intangible elements (Grewal et al., 2009; Zomerdijk and Voss,2010) and design it carefully to engage customers emotionally (Sorescu et al., 2011; Triantafillidou and Siomkos, 2014). However, as customer experiences are contextual and symbolic (Berry, Carbone and Haeckel, 2002; Brakus et al., 2009), with the main character being the customer herself, companiesrsquo; efforts to design and experience must deal with the subjectivity of the individuals involved, which is, by definition, beyond their control (Addis and Holbrook, 2001; Helkkula, 2011; Pine and Gilmore, 1999).

The major role played by individualsrsquo; subjectivity is crucial especially in customer-centric strategies, which leverage consumer insights to approach markets (Ross, 2009). The increasing diffusion of customer-centric approaches requires firms to find the right balance between two different but important needs. On the one hand, firms should make consumers participate actively in these experiences, inviting them to co-create the experiences to enhance their favorable responses (Vargo and Lusch,2004, 2008). On the other hand,firms have to maintain control over customer experiences and manage them in an attempt to limit the occurrence of risky and undesirable factors. Indeed, the outcome of customersrsquo; engagement is beyond the full control of service providers(Verhoef et al., 2009; Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010). Finding a suitable balance between these two opposite needs is critical for any organization involved in designing events and marketing stimuli to create memorable customer experiences. Despite the importance of understanding the circumstances under which marketers can influence customersrsquo; affective processes,research has overlooked this topic (Heinonen et al., 2010).Our paper contributes to the literature on customer experiences by examining customersrsquo; expected and unexpected emotional responses to the elements of the event experience. We focus on events because of their great impact in creating customer engagement and brand experiences (Fransen et al., 2013; Khan and Rahman, 2015; Zarantonello and Schmitt, 2013).

We focus on the partially controlled emotional engagement experienced by customers participating in a social event. Events include a broad range of activities such as webinars, trade shows, festivals and expositions (Preston and Hoyle, 2012), as well as themed activities, occasions, displays or exhibits that companies design and develop to engage customers and promote their brands in experiential settings that are specifically and deliberately crafted, thus “self-staged” (Sneathet al., 2005). Companies are investing largely in events and experiential marketing, and budgets for these efforts have grown by 6.1 per cent in 2015 (Event Marketing Institute,2015).

However, when marketers design their customer centric experiences to take place in social contexts, the emotions produced within the social interactions (Kemper, 2000) reduce the controllability of the experience. In these situations,because negative emotions may arise, the value of the experience might decrease because the presence of others might affect the customer experience both positively and negatively (Brocato et al., 2012).

To study the impact of negative emotions on customer-centric experiences and their value, we chose as a context a social event that took place in bars, pubs and clubs, designed by a retailer to elicit young customersrsquo; surprise and feelings of romantic love, two typical emotions that many companies leverage when planning their enter

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