Emotions in service research: evolutionary analysis and empirical review

ABSTRACT

This study provides a bibliometric review of emotion-focused research in the service discipline by examining the main research themes and concepts, conceptual foundations, and the most recent research fields. Six-hundred forty-seven documents on emotions were extracted and examined by performing co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses as well as qualitative content analysis. Co-citation analysis results show that ‘emotions’ is a defined research area with six fundamental themes; namely, positive customer emotions, emotional reactions to service failure and recovery, measurement of emotions, empirical analysis of emotions, brand love, and customer delight. In addition, various theoretical foundations could be employed in various empirical contexts, among which conservation of resources and social exchange play a great role. An examination of the most recent documents via bibliographic coupling analysis clarifies six appealing research trends and releases various recommendations on the occasions for further investigation to be drawn.

摘要

本研究通过检查主要研究主题和概念、概念基础和最新研究领域，对服务学科中以情感为中心的研究进行了文献计量学回顾。通过共引和书目耦合分析以及定性内容分析，提取了6047篇情感文献。

共引分析结果表明，‘情绪’是一个定义的研究领域，有六个基本主题；即积极的客户情绪、对服务失败和恢复的情绪反应、情绪测量、情绪实证分析、品牌爱和客户愉悦感。此外，各种理论基础可用于各种实证背景，其中资源节约和社会交换发挥着重要作用。

通过书目耦合分析对最新文献进行审查，澄清了六个有吸引力的研究趋势，并在需要进一步调查的场合发布了各种建议。

KEYWORDS:

• Emotions
• anger
• happiness
• service research
• co-citation
• bibliographic coupling analysis

关键词:

• 情绪、愤怒、幸福、服务研究、共引、书目耦合分析。

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).