Customer delight in a retail context: investigating delightful and terrible shopping experiences

The concept of delight is of great interest to practitioners who understand that to keep customers loyal, a firm must go beyond merely satisfying to truly delighting them [Bus. Mark. Dig. 17 (1992) 17; Mark. News 24 (1990) 10]. However, few studies specifically dedicated to customer delight have surfaced in the marketing literature [J. Retail. 73 (1997) 311], and no research to the authors' knowledge has explored delight in a retail setting. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine customer delight in a retail-shopping context. Specifically, qualitative research was conducted to determine the sources of delightful and terrible shopping experiences for retail shoppers. Critical incident analysis of 113 depth interviews with shoppers revealed several factors associated with delightful or terrible shopping experiences and the resulting consequences from these experiences. A number of strategic implications are discussed, and limitations and directions for future research are also addressed.