ABSTRACT
Practitioners firmly believe that customer delight, through surprise, offers a source of competitive advantage. Yet competing conceptualisations, methodologies, and stimuli in existing studies of delight leave the relationship between surprise and delight ambiguous. This chapter will assess the different conceptualisations of delight; offer an overview of existing empirical evidence regarding the surprise-delight relationship; show that during highly hedonic experiences, surprise indirectly influences satisfaction (through joy) and can increase satisfaction overall; and propose further research avenues.
