The effects of humor on career guidance e-services

Authors

Zahra Zahedi Nejad Master student
Eeva-Liisa Oikarinen
Simo Hosio University of Oulu

Keywords:

career guidance e-services, Humor, E-service, customer evaluations, performance of e-service, functionality of e-service

Abstract

Through an experimental design, we examine the humor’s moderating effect on the interaction between process and outcome in terms of customer evaluations of the career guidance e-services. Our results suggest a favorable process reduces an unfavorable outcome regarding satisfaction, enjoyment, and behavioral intentions when related humor is embedded on the website. However, on a non-humorous website, the functional process has no effect when outcome is unfavorable. Although, aside from the compensatory effect, we discover for websites with unfavorable process and outcome, the use of related humor gives rise to more negative customer evaluations in comparison with a non-humorous website.