Need for distinction moderates customer responses to preferential treatment
Firms provide customers with preferential treatment, which are special benefits beyond their core services, such as priority access to the service. This fulfils the customers’ need for status and distinction and encourages their desire to be different from others by using scarcity appeals, uniqueness appeals, and appeals to breaking the rules of one’s reference group. As a relationship marketing strategy, preferential treatment can generate positive emotional and behavioural responses. Yet customers may also experience a broad range of negative effects such as embarrassment, concerns about negative judgement and retaliation from others, social discomfort, and reduced satisfaction. These may be attributed to individual differences in the need for distinction, which have not been extensively researched in relation to preferential treatment.
This research aims to examine the negative emotional consequences of receiving preferential treatment that it is perceived to cause harms to others and investigate whether one’s need for distinction influences this effect. Drawing on the theory of uniqueness, this study argues that people with a higher need for distinction are less likely to perceive harm to others following preferential treatment, as they tend to be self-centred and not to care about others’ feelings and opinions. These customers will not experience moral discomfort or moral emotions and thus should experience more favourable attitudes towards the service provider than those with a lower need for distinction.
Method and sample
Two studies were conducted. Study 1 aimed to test the negative effect of perceived harm of preferential treatment to others on customers’ attitudes toward the service provider, and the impact of need for distinction on this effect. 171 participants from MTurk were randomly assigned to either condition of earned preferential treatment causing lower or higher harm to others, using a restaurant dining scenario in which they were staying in a hotel where they are a loyal member of the rewards program and a table was specially set aside for them at the hotel restaurant. Participants then rated their attitudes towards the service provider, need for distinction, and harm perceptions.
Study 2 replicated and extended the findings of Study 1 by examining how the need for distinction influences the negative effect of perceived harm to others on customers’ attitudes and whether moral emotions is the driving mechanism of this effect. Similar to Study 1, 259 MTurk participants were randomly assigned to one of two harm conditions as a result of earned preferential treatment in a restaurant dining scenario. In addition to the same set of measures as those used in Study 1, participants reported whether they felt any negative moral emotions by rating how embarrassed, awkward, uncomfortable, ashamed, disgraceful, guilty, disgusting to others, how much remorse they felt and how worried they were that they upset someone.
Key findings
- Results from Study 1 showed that when customers have a lower need for distinction, they naturally scan the environment and seek out information about others when judging their own experience, while those with a higher need for distinction tend to disregard others’ opinions and feelings, focusing solely on the benefits received from the service provider. As a result, customers with a higher need for distinction tend to evaluate the service provider more favourably than those with a lower need for distinction in situations where the preferential treatment causes a disadvantage to other customers.
- Study 2 further revealed that when preferential treatment is perceived to cause harm to others, it triggers negative moral emotions, which in turn lead to less favourable attitudes towards the service provider for those customers with a lower need for distinction but not for those with a higher need for distinction.
Recommendations
The above findings suggest that providing preferential treatment can both motivate and hinder positive customer attitudes and lasting relationships with service providers. Firms must note that offering preferential treatment entails much more than concentrating on the dyadic exchange between the customer and service provider, and consider customers’ potential negative moral emotions that may undermine the positive effects of preferential treatment. It is thus important to carefully evaluate their current practices to avoid a situation causing harm to others. They could also consider a differential approach by identifying and tracking customers with different levels of need for distinction in the same way firms track customer preferences for coffee brands and seat positions.
When designing relationship marketing programs incorporating preferential treatment offerings, firms should also attempt to prime customers to feel unique, elevating one’s need for distinction, even if temporarily. This may shift the perceptions of individuals with lower needs for distinction to focus on the self rather than considering others’ experience during the service encounter. This could be implemented through communication, for example, by emphasising that customers are receiving preferential treatment because “there are no other customers like them” or even because “they are part of a special group of customers”.
Researchers
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.