Emotions in service research: evolutionary analysis and empirical review

This study provides a bibliometric review of emotion-focused research in the service discipline by examining the main research themes and concepts, conceptual foundations, and the most recent research fields. Six-hundred forty-seven documents on emotions were extracted and examined by performing co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses as well as qualitative content analysis. Co-citation analysis results show that 'emotions' is a defined research area with six fundamental themes; namely, positive customer emotions, emotional reactions to service failure and recovery, measurement of emotions, empirical analysis of emotions, brand love, and customer delight. In addition, various theoretical foundations could be employed in various empirical contexts, among which conservation of resources and social exchange play a great role. An examination of the most recent documents via bibliographic coupling analysis clarifies six appealing research trends and releases various recommendations on the occasions for further investigation to be drawn.