TAF PUBLISHING

Based on the growing importance of customer emotions like gratitude in the organizational literature, the current study is focused on finding out the underlying mechanisms through which customers’ gratitude leverage the benefits to the service providers in the form of positive behaviors. Employing the reasoning of “broaden and build a theory of positive emotions,” a customer emotion versus behaviors model has been developed and tested in order to assess the mediation of customers’ delight and overall satisfaction in parallel with each other among the association of customer gratitude and behavioral outcomes (positive word of mouth and revisit intentions). This research is conducted in the context of Pakistan’s mega shopping malls. Based on the quota sampling method, a cross-sectional research design has been used to obtain data (N = 352) from shoppers. Using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis, our results specify that among two parallel mediators, the links of customer gratitude with both outcomes have been mediated by overall customer satisfaction; in comparison, customers’ delight only intermediates the association of customer gratitude with revisit intentions. This study opens up a new side in the customer gratitude literature by finding the predictive differences in the parallel mediatory mechanism of customer’s delight and overall satisfaction.