Many retail and service firms use mystery deals (i.e., offers whose identity is unknown until after purchase) to increase awareness and short-term sales (e.g., Hill et al., 2016). Examples include blind booking of flights (e.g., Eurowings) or mystery boxes in the service (e.g., Burger King) and retail industry (e.g., Sock Mafia). Consumers only find out which specific service or product they receive after having purchased the offer.

Extant research demonstrates that such mystery deals increase consumers’ purchase motivation, for example, by stimulating curiosity, positive affect, or overoptimism (i.e., the tendency to expect to receive the best possible outcome; e.g., Goldsmith & Amir, 2010). Surprisingly, however, prior literature does not provide empirical evidence on how consumers react to mystery deals after the purchase, especially when they do not receive their preferred outcome.

On the one hand, consumers’ overoptimism toward the outcome of the deal before the purchase increases the chances of expectation disconfirmation (e.g., Oliver, 1980) after the purchase, which should result in a decrease of consumers’ loyalty canceling out positive short-term effects of mystery deals. On the other hand, emotion spillover theory (e.g., Brown & Kirmani, 1999) suggests that positive pre-purchase affect might spill over to the post-purchase phase and positively influences consumers’ evaluations of the mystery deal in a way that it counteracts potential negative consequences from undesired outcomes. We therefore pose the following research questions: (1) How do mystery deals influence consumers’ brand loyalty intentions in the post-purchase phase? (2) Do consumers’ overoptimistic expectations in the pre-purchase phase have negative consequences on their brand loyalty intentions in the post-purchase phase? (3) To what extent can spillover effects of positive affective reactions counteract any negative effects?

We conducted four studies (online scenario and laboratory experiments) involving survey and facial expression data. We find that loyalty intentions increase, if the outcome of the mystery deal meets consumers’ overoptimistic expectations. Yet, even if consumers do not obtain the desired outcome, loyalty intentions do not fall below the level of consumers receiving a conventional promotion. Our research explains this effect by an emotional spillover of positive pre-purchase affect on post-purchase affect and loyalty intentions which further (compensates) complements potential (dis)confirmation effects.

With our findings, we are the first to provide insights into the long-term effects of mystery deals, thereby extending research on mystery deals that has only focused on the pre-purchase phase. By including both favorable and unfavorable resolution outcomes, we also contribute to the research stream of positive uncertainty, which has mainly focused on favorable outcomes. Furthermore, by demonstrating an emotional spillover, we broaden existing knowledge on the role of positive affect for uncertainty creation and resolution. From a managerial perspective, mystery deals allow retail and service firms to not only increase sales but also to improve customer retention, especially when they are able to target consumers’ preferences. However, even if firms cannot target consumers’ preferences, our results suggest that they can still use mystery deals as promotional tool to increase sales without incurring negative long-term consequences on customer loyalty.

If “Data is the new oil”, Biometric AI is emerging as the new Social Media, developing heavily in usage by corporations, governments and even educational institutions. This biometric data however is often collected at the expense of individuals’ collective privacy (giving up one’s privacy influences another's personal privacy). In response, marketing personal privacy is now one way companies differentiate to compete comparing such personalization as a service for consumers. However, these protections are at times superfluous. While personal identities are kept anonymous, collective group behaviours create archetypes of behaviours that an ‘unknown individual’ can be slotted into, for example, to set the price for goods or services. This is where a single or collection of biometric trackings; the speed of typing on a keyboard; webcams measuring head, eye or facial movements; or even a microphone picking up background noise, can be scraped to determine a user’s preferences and a price set live, dynamically adjusting to each user's current state and preferences. This is conceptually called dynamic participatory biometric pricing technology (DPBPT) and allows for mass customization. Traditionally, consumers can evaluate product attributes (e.g., price, availability) before making a decision as shown in the literature with attribute-based evaluation models. However, in the case of DPBPT, the price changes live in front of the consumer based on their unconscious body and facial movements, not in response to a cognitive action (click and wait), giving the consideration of this new technology the need for new theoretical explorations. Such an innovation, once thought of as a scary Orwellian science fantasy or shopper’s heavenly delight, today is emerging in a variety of forms from banking, adapting website displays, to customizing marketing materials. From such growth in biometric tracking, ethics and privacy are receiving increasing attention in the public media. Therefore, this topic is timely and of importance to study. Given these challenges to a consumer’s privacy, DPBPT is explored from a multitude of perspectives (ethically, sociologically and regulatory), and while technically possible is of service to society.

Through a series of experiments, conducted pre and post covid emerging utilizing 842 participants an omnibus of factors are utilized to create the biometric interaction model (BIM) which utilizes reactance theory to explore how consumers would accept, reject, and respond to the service value being offered by such a conceptual technology.

This research is the first to explore such a conceptual technology and what privacy concerns influence a consumer’s service experience and what factors simply raise privacy concerns in the individual but do not affect their ability to consume. Further, in terms of commercial importance, where mass customizations could remove service barriers and generate significant profits for consumer industries, this research contributes by looking at what factors affect its adoption and the implications of its implementation for commercial businesses.

Creating unique, personalised, and memorable experiences has become a measure of business success (Beltagui & Candi, 2018). Customer experience is the ensemble of cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses triggered by external stimuli (e.g. touch points with the provider) and filtered by internal elements (e.g. personal values and individual memories) (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Zomerdijk & Voss, 2010). Whilst all services are experienced (Berry et al., 2002), designing for provoking emotional experiences to create competitive performance benefits has been identified as a distinct area of service design and customer experience (Beltagui & Candi, 2018; Zomerdijk & Voss, 2010). Recently, research has studied the design of experiential services from the perspective of sequencing (Dixon et al., 2017), experience intended (Ponsignon et al., 2017), emotional design (Beltagui & Candi, 2018), and customer participation (Blinda et al., 2019).
Recently, scholars have put forward that service modularity and architecture could play a key role in the design of efficient and effective services (Ostrom et al., 2015), with Brax et al. (2017) explicitly calling for further research to understand the relationship between service modularity and customer experience. This research therefore seeks to address the research question: What is the relationship between service modularity and customer experience?
To answer this question, this research has conducted a literature review spanning the disciplines of service operations management and marketing, covering the topics of customer experience, service design and modularity. The review found that whilst scant literature explicitly explores the effects of modularity in the customer experience, there are five key aspects relevant to the customer experience created by modular service offerings. These are: the perception of options availability (Avlonitis & Hsuan, 2017; Broekhuis et al., 2017; Ponsignon et al., 2021), comparison between options (de Blok et al., 2010; Rahikka et al., 2011), the sensation of anticipation (Dixon et al., 2017) and control (Rahikka et al., 2011), and perceiving a bespoke outcome (Ponsignon et al., 2021).
However, whilst modularity helps to efficiently manage customer request variability through the provision of modular options, customer requests that sit outside the variety offered by the options are rejected or re-directed to other service providers’ (Ponsignon et al., 2021; Silander et al., 2017). Therefore, the relationship between service modularity and customer experience is moderated by the degree of request variability introduced by the customer.
By understanding the links between customer experience and modularity as a possible design strategy to support the creation of memorable experiences, this research bridges a gap between service modularity and customer experience. Furthermore, this research proposes a number of research propositions, providing paths forward for future research to empirically evaluate the relationship between service modularity, customer experience and request variability. In particular, this research suggests an experimental research design would be a suitable research design for studying the research propositions empirically.

Mall experiences are the foundation of any future strategy for attracting customers to malls and increasing their future loyalty. Despite increasing interest in the customer experience (Bolton et al., 2018) and customer journey (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Verhoef et al., 2009), explorations of customer mall experiences are scarce. An exception is the conceptualization of four mall experience types by Gilboa et al. (2013;2016). The seductive experience describes the atmosphere of fascination and fantasy that encourages impulse buying. The recreational experience involves relaxation and entertainment activities with family and friends. The social experience is about “seeing and being seen” by the local community to fulfil needs for affiliation and support. The functional experience is the execution of a “utilitarian shopping task” comprising planned purchases.
Studies in multiple countries using this conceptualization have confirmed an impact of mall experiences on mall loyalty (Gilboa et al., 2016;2020; Gilboa & Mitchell, 2020). However, the COVID19 pandemic and associated lockdowns raise questions about the influence of the absence of mall experiences on future mall loyalty and the role of customer emotions in this process. We exploit the COVID19 lockdown to compare the impact of mall experiences under ordinary commercial situations with the impact of their absence on mall loyalty. We also compare the roles of customer emotions in these effects.
We collected data in two phases. In 2018, on-site mall intercepts were conducted among 191 British customers who visited Westfield at Stratford mall in London, UK. The survey measured the degree of satisfaction with each of 16 items (comprising the four mall experience types). In May 2020, 200 mall customers staying at home during the COVID19 lockdown completed an online survey. All respondents were London residents living or working in UK postcodes of the Westfield at Stratford area. The respondents reported the degree of longing for each of the 16 mall experiences items that were absent due to the lockdown. In both phases, the surveys measured customers’ mall loyalty, emotions, and four demographic variables (e.g., gender).
SEM analyses showed that in ordinary situations, the seductive experience increased arousal (β=.55, p<.001) and the recreational experience enhanced mall loyalty (β=.37, p<.001). By contrast, during the lockdown, the absence of the social experience reduced arousal (β=-.32, p<.001), and the absence of the recreational experience reduced pleasantness (β=-.43, p<.001). Moreover, the absence of the recreational and functional experiences increased mall loyalty (β=.48, p<.001; β=.42, p<.001, respectively).
The findings make several contributions to the services literature: First, each of the four mall experiences uniquely influences customers’ emotions or retailers’ business indicators (loyalty). Second, when customers cannot experience malls because they are closed, they tend to feel loss and, consequently, reduced pleasantness and excitement. Third, absent experiences increase future loyalty more than existing experiences. A possible explanation is that nostalgic attachment to the mall strengthens customers’ loyalty. Finally and surprisingly, the absence of the functional experience during lockdown increased loyalty more than the absence of the hedonic social and seductive experiences did. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.