The use of heuristics in service evaluations

Present conceptualizations of service evaluations assume that customers always use careful, thoughtful processing strategies in forming service quality and satisfaction judgments. However, research in perception suggests that people often use heuristics or decision shortcuts in making evaluations. In particular, it has been suggested that individuals may use their mood as a heuristic in several evaluative contexts. This dissertation examines the conditions under which customers are likely to their mood as a heuristic, and the effects of mood on customers' memory and judgments.

The results suggests that customers are more likely to use their mood as a heuristic when they do not expect to have future interactions with the service than when they hold such expectations, and when they perceive the service to be either very simple or very complex than when they perceive it to be moderately complex. Individuals exhibited greater memory for service encounters when they were in a good mood, when they expected to have future encounters with the service, and when the service was moderately complex. Individuals also made more extreme evaluations (more positive when in a good mood and more negative when in a bad mood) when they did not expect to have future interactions and when the service was either very simple or very complex.