When Sport Consumers Meet Service Touchpoints: A Bayesian Cross-context Investigation on Customer Satisfaction Through the Lens of Sport Experience Design

Abstract

Leveraging the Sport Experience Design framework and Bayesian structural equation modeling, the current study represents an initial attempt to examine how sport context-centric antecedents interact with social-psychological characteristics to elicit an optimal holistic experience at a recreational participatory sport event (n_study1 = 181) and peripheral tailgating events at college football games (n_study2 = 1,246). The influence of service quality on customer satisfaction was attenuated when performance expectation was positively disconfirmed in the tailgating service, but not in the participatory sport service. Consumer involvement diminished the positive impact of service quality on satisfaction among customers of the participatory event, but not among tailgating attendees. Collectively, the results demonstrated heterogeneity in customer satisfaction, which can depend on the preexisting sport involvement of customers at participatory events of physically demanding sports but revolves around the reference-dependent assessment of service performance at tailgating events. These findings offer nuanced empirical support for the notion that sport consumer experiences would not be fully understood without considering the interaction between consumers’ social-psychological characteristics and service encounters.