The Effect Of Nostalgia On Service Failure

Abstract

Nostalgia induced by savoring precious past experience helps a person feel loved and protected and may help them cope with loneliness. Generally, these positive, prosocial functions, which nostalgia provides, are derived from the content of the memories. However, recent research shows that the process of recalling nostalgic memories could have an important, but different impact on consumers' behavior.

When people face nostalgia through the recollection of positive experience and become aware of its non-repeatability, they seek to enjoy and prolong the experience. Due to the motivation to savor nostalgic experiences, people are likely to be more tolerant of waiting. To this extent, the inclination to reminisce about past experiences motivates people to be more accepting of, thus less dissatisfied with service failure.

Unlike other research focusing on social functions of nostalgia, we examine the effect of nostalgia to a particular service failure: delayed shipping. Nowadays, on-line retailers that use a delivery service is commonplace. Therefore, we believe our research will give critical implications about the effects of nostalgia on service failure. We theorize that nostalgia could have a positive effect on consumer patience, especially for delayed shipping, and the distance to a nostalgic memory affects consumer patience and dissatisfaction. Two studies have confirmed these effects.