Literary Issues in Contrast Effect - Essay Example

According to Six Sigma, quality requires entrepreneurs to look at their own business from the customer’s perspective and not be based on their perspectives. By understanding the transaction from the needs and processes of customers, the company can explore what customers see and feel. Consequently, marketers can identify areas where significant value or improvement be added. Kotler (2000, p. 36) underscored that customer expectations are relevant to key determinants of their satisfaction, consumer experiences, and loyalty. It is wise that marketers need to either meet or exceed such expectations; otherwise, it could lead to customer defection or dissatisfaction. Feldman and Lynch (1988) argued that when customers express their expectations before their consumption experience, it would most likely bring them more convenience during the experience. The same points were emphasized by  Morwitz and Fitzsimons (2004); Dholakia and Morwitz (2002); Kardes, Allen, and Pontes (1993); and Fitzsimons & Williams (2000) respectively.

Similarly, quite several researchers have disclosed that if one compares customers who have less or no knowledge that there will be an upcoming service evaluation process versus those forewarned customers about a service encounter, which later be asked to evaluate the said service; tend to supply higher negative post-experience evaluations (Ofir and Simonson, 2001). This means, that if one anticipates that there is an evaluation process of a product or service, he or she spontaneously creates some expectations (as exampled by Fitzsimons and Williams 2000), then later could lead to producing more negative (i.e., lower) evaluations based on their experience/s with the firm or business. This phenomenon is somewhat popular as the “contrast effects”.

Contrast effects commonly exist when contextual primes or the stimuli seem evaluatively non-representative. If a prime is practically similar to the target, prime-consistent effects are possible; however, if the prime, as well as the target, are disparate or opposite (Sherif & Hovland, 1961), contrast effects occur.

In general, previous researches support various predictions on the impact of stating expectations before a service is encountered on post-experience evaluations. Some of these include: an assimilation effect, as well as confirmation bias, which proposes that the positive or negative expectations of an individual before the experience will significantly determine and create more extreme in the post-experience evaluations; next is that a contrast effect suggests that persons stating positive (negative) expectations usually evaluate the service more negatively or positively after the experience, and negativity enhancement emphasizes that stating expectations will make more negative evaluations.