Story notes contributed by Dr. Donald Barnes, Associate Professor of Marketing at the UNCW Cameron School of Business.

Donald Barnes, Ph.D. associate professor of marketing at UNCW Cameron School of Business, along with his co-authors Tobias Kraemer, Matthias H. J. Gouthier, Nadine Ludwig, and Andreas Giese from the University of Koblenz, recently published a paper titled “After-service gifts: evaluating how presence, context and value impact customer satisfaction and customer delight” in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice.

According to Barnes "Many firms are trying to develop tactics to create customer delight because of the many benefits delighted customers bring to the table, including word-of-mouth and loyalty. However, firms also understand that as these tactics get more expensive, there is a greater hit to the bottom-line. In the hopes of shedding some light in this area, my colleagues from Germany and I studied the dynamics of after-service gifts while accounting for the luxury of the delighting firm, as well as the value of the gift.

A really interesting finding from this research is in certain situations it is the thought that counts and not the value of the gift. In other words, firms might be able to gain great benefits with comparatively “lower cost” gifts. Our team is really excited to publish this research at the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, as this international journal emphasizes connecting academic research with managerial practices."

Read the journal article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10696679.2020.1842769