Customer delight: universal remedy or a double-edged sword?

Purpose Over the last years, the concept of customer delight has moved into the focus of attention. The necessity of surprise for achieving customer delight and the problem of increased customer expectation (spiral of expectations) have been controversially discussed in the literature. The purpose of the paper is therefore to investigate whether customer delight necessarily requires surprise and whether a misdirected delight strategy can backfire by creating disloyal customers. Design/methodology/approach This study employs a 2 (after-sales extra value: yes vs no)×2 (knowledge about the extra value: yes vs no) between-subject, scenario-based experiment ( n =472) in a hotel environment and partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze the data. Findings Study results show that surprise is not a necessary prerequisite for achieving customer delight, but its presence strengthens the delight experience for the customer, positively impacting customer loyalty intentions. Conversely, a surprising nonoccurrence of an expected delight measure causes anger, inducing negative word of mouth and reduced repurchase intentions. Practical implications To pursue a sustainable customer delight approach, companies should recognize that they do not need to surprise their customers on every occasion, but rather ensure that customers do not fall short of anticipated delightful events. Originality/value The current research strives to contribute to the theory and practice by shedding light on two so far not appropriately addressed research areas of customer delight: the necessity of surprise to evoke customer delight and the consequences of absent but expected delight measures.