The effect of humor in electronic service encounters

Abstract

By means of an experimental design, we investigate the moderating effect of humor on the interplay between process and outcome in terms of customer evaluations of the electronic service encounter. We conclude that a favorable process mitigates an unfavorable outcome in terms of enjoyment, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions when related humor is included on the website. Contrary, on a non-humorous website, the functional process has no effect when outcome is negative. However, in addition to the positive, compensatory effect, we find that for websites that are unfavorable in terms of process and outcome, the use of related humor causes more negative customer evaluations compared to a non-humorous website.