Accentuate the positive: How identity affects customer satisfaction

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to address an important gap in identity research – how does consumer identity affect satisfaction following an unambiguous product experience.

Design/methodology/approach – Two experiments were conducted involving a product experience scenario and a service recovery encounter.

Findings – Study results demonstrate that experience valence moderates the impact of identity on customer satisfaction. Specifically, we find that identity improves satisfaction with a positive (but does not increase dissatisfaction with a negative) experience, and this effect arises via enhanced performance perceptions under positive experience rather than expectations.

Research limitations/implications – Our research investigates whether the prior research argument that identity is a powerful and “sticky” source of brand evaluation is robust to product experience. Specifically, we extend the disconfirmation paradigm of satisfaction by identifying identity as a driver of satisfaction and by testing whether identity effects emerge via biased perceptions of performance or altered expectations.

Practical implications – Our findings offer interesting managerial implications in terms of using identity marketing to enhance customer satisfaction with positive experiences and to increase the effectiveness of recovery from brand failures, but identity marketing cannot shield a brand from negative product experience.

Originality/value – To our knowledge, this research is first to demonstrate the joint effects of identity and experience information on satisfaction using two different identities and settings.