THE IMPORTANCE OF AFFECT TO BUILD CONSUMER TRUST IN HIGH-CONSEQUENCES EXCHANGES

Informações

Código: MKT2796
Divisão: MKT - Marketing
Tema de Interesse: Tema 05 - Marketing de Serviços e de Relacionamento

Autores

Mellina da Silva Terres, Cristiane Pizzutti dos Santos

Resumo

This theoretical paper investigates the importance of affect displayed by service provider tobuild consumer trust in high consequence exchanges. High-consequence exchanges are difficultsituations in which the choices present a dilemma that can cause stress and severe emotional reactions(KAHN, LUCE, 2003; BOTTI; ORFALI; IYENGAR, 2009) In this context, individuals do not havemuch experience dealing with the situation, and are highly uncertain about how to solve their problem(KUNREUTHER; MEYER; ZECKHAUSER; SLOVIC; SCHWARTZ; SCHADE; LUCE; LIPPMAN;KRANTZ; KAHN; HOGARTH, 2002). In high-consequences decisions, trust will have a key role,since it reduces the exchange uncertainty and helps the consumer to shape consistent and reliableexpectations of the service (SIRDESHMUKH; SINGH; 2000). Several marketing studies haveaddressed the cognitive antecedents of trust, such as competence and efficiency (e.g. SHAPIRO;SHEPPARD; CHERASKIN, 1992; LEWICKI; BUNKER, 1994; MCKNIGHT; CHOUDHURY;KACMAR, 1998; JOHNSON; GRAYSON, 2000). However, the affective antecedents of trust have notreceived the same attention. This seems to occur, at least, due to two reasons: firstly, research on trusthave investigated business-to-business exchanges, where emotional bonds are probably weaker whencomparing with business-to-consumer exchanges (e.g., MOORMAN; ZALTMAN; DESHPANDE,1992; MCALLISTER, 1995; COSTIGAN; ILTER; BERMAN, 1998; JOHNSON; GRAYSON, 2000);and secondly, these studies generally explore service contexts with low affective content and lowconsequencechoices (e.g. restaurants and clothes retail). However, when the focus is on exchangeswith severe consequences, such as medical service encounters, the cognitive antecedents of trust seemnot to be enough to explain patient trust. In this specific case, trust based on affect seems to becomeimportant; mainly because consumers may not have ability to evaluate the cognitive aspects of thesituation (e.g. doctor’s competence), and moreover, a medical services failure can be highlyproblematic or even fatal (LEISEN; HYMAN, 2004). Consumers need to feel good and comfortablewith the doctor to go through a difficult treatment. Finally, we also investigate the importance of affectand cognition on trust in low-consequence choices. Although this is not the focus of our study, weunderstand that it is also important to understand low-consequence choices to better capture variationsin the process of trust development depending on the underlying contextual factors. We are predictingthat cognition will be more important than affect in building trust in low-consequence choices. In thiskind of situation, patients are more self-confident, less sensitive, and do not perceive a high probabilityof loss (KUNREUTHER et al., 2002), and therefore focuses more on the rational outcomes. We believethat in low-consequence encounters, trust mediates the relationship between cognition and consumers’behavioral intentions, but does not mediate the relationship between affect and consumers’ behavioralintentions. Along the article, some research propositions are done, and in the end some considerationsare presented.

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