“Role of consumer personality and involvement in understanding customer experience”

The objective of this study is to understand customer experience which is a construct made up of experiential elements created by the organization such as product, service scape, and brand and that of consumer ’ s personal values and preferences. When the experiential element interacts with the consumer construct, it starts an involvement process that makes the consumer evaluate the product (as a measure) on hedonic and utilitarian dimensions. The product/brand, when used, elicits emotions that lead to purchase intention behavior which is presented in the structural model. The authors have followed Tan, Foo and Kwek (2004) nested model approach in order to achieve the best fitting model for testing our hypothesis.

Introduction  The word "experience" has come a long way, it is not limited to play and concert, to movies and TV shows rather it occurs whenever an organization intentionally uses service as a stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates an event memorable. Thus, an organization should concentrate on providing great experiences to its customer, as experiences are seen as memorable, inherently personal, existing in the minds of an individual who have been engaged on the emotional, physical and intellectual or even on spiritual level (PineII and Gilmore, 1998; Gilmore and Pine II, 1997).
Moreover, Carbone and Hackel (1999) define experience as the takeaway "impression" formed by people when they encounter products, services and businesses. Thus, experience results into formation of impression and, in order to create such a takeaway impression, Millan and Grath (1999) opine that the organization will have to open up their creative thinking to their customer's entire experience with a product or service called consumption chain. As a result, the organizations will be able to discover the new opportunities to position their offerings in ways, which will lead to the discovery of emotional, aspirational and participative aspects of consumer behavior over functionality and rationale (Gentile et al. In order to capture the emotional aspect of the consumer, organization needs to focus on softer aspect of the consumer, as he encounters with the organization. Thus, Veroef et al. (2009) suggest that it is customer experience that focuses on softer and non technological aspect of consumer, as it concentrates on current experience of the customer, rather than record history of customer.
Moreover, customer's experience concerns not only with the actual functioning of the good or service, but also with emotions and includes smells, sounds, sights, tastes and textures of the good or service, as well as with the environment in which it is offered. It also includes customer's entire experience with a product or service, called, the consumption chain (Millan & Mac Grath, 1999) that relates to the multisensory, fantasy and emotive aspects of product usage experience . Thus, Chaudhari and Holbrook (2001) confer that once the customer experiences the emotional element of pleasure in the usage of a product, she/he will form a more favorable affect toward the brand consumed.
Hence, we conclude that customer experience not only involves gathering of knowledge about the product but also focuses on the pleasure associated with its usage, fantasies, feelings, fun and emotions that one attaches with its brand, which can be good or bad, depending upon the individual stimuli, environment in which it is offered and marketing communication used for the purpose of interaction.

Need of the study
Various authors have studied customer experience that results from interaction with the product (Malhalke, 2008;Desmet and Hekkert, 2007; Hamilton and Thompson, 2007) (Holbrook, Chestnut, Oliva and Greenleaf, 1984;Havlena and Holbrook, 1986;Caru and Cova, 2003). Further, emotions act as mediator (Schifferstein and Hekkert, 2007;Westbrook, 1987;Philips and Baumgartner, 1999;Richins, 1997) that leads towards satisfaction (Cardozo, 1965;Westbrook, 1987;Oliver, 1999) and loyalty ( These studies have studied a positive link exist between consumer emotion and the experience provided by product that results into satisfaction and loyalty irrespective of the fact that consumer also plays an important role is creating experience. Desmet and Hekert (2007) and Sarker, Bose, Palit and Haque (2013) provide that customer experience is a function of the consumer constructs (lifestyle, economic situation, occupation, age, personality and self concept) and those characteristics of the product that include the instrumental qualities that involve using, operating, and managing products. These also include the non-instrumental qualities which refer to the interactions that do not directly serve a function in operating a product, such as playing with or caressing the product and further include non-physical qualities that entail fantasizing about, remembering, or anticipating usage of the product or fantasies about interaction with the product. Therefore, Loudon and Bitta (2002, p. 341) stress that it is important to study how a consumer perceives important links between the products or service and her/him, in terms of the values it can express or the needs it can fulfill. As a result, the consumer becomes interested in the product or service and channelizes her/his energy towards it, thus, getting motivated to act towards the product or service.
Recognizing the role of consumer in experiencing the product, we provide that customer experience should measure the role of consumer personalities and its involvement with the product. This makes consumer to evaluate the product (as a measure) on hedonic and utilitarian dimension. The product/brand, when used, elicits emotions that lead to purchase intention behavior. This provides the baseline for framing our objectives: 1. To identify the role of consumer personality and consumer involvement in evaluation of a product. 2. To find the emotions that product evaluation elicit due to the usage of the product. 3. To understand the level of satisfaction customer experience results into.
To measure customer experience, this research study takes product experience as a means by specifically focusing on the measurement and validation of five separate, but interrelated domains: consumer personality, consumer involvement, purchase motivation, emotion and satisfaction, which are presented in our conceptual model.

Literature review
2.1. Consumer personality, consumer involvement with the product, product evaluation emotions and satisfaction. Personality can be defined as that inner psychological characteristic (qualities, attributes, traits, factors and mannerism) that influences a person's product choice (Schifman and Kaunak, 2007, p. 136). On the other hand, the choice of a product enhances the consumer's self concept, i.e., the possession of a product reflect a consumer's image of him or herself (Pachauri, 2002).
Various authors have interestedly investigated the concept consumer personality and have developed Big five model that states that, there are five type of personality trait (Golderg, 1990;Norman, 1963;Costa and McCrae, 1992). Therefore, this big five model has been regarded as an important development in the study of consumer personology (Baumgartner, 2002).
One of the five traits of consumer personality is neuroticism, which states for a neurotic person, it is hard to control his/her emotion and purchases on a whim. Another personality trait is extraversion, which refers to a person who is energetic and adventagereous. The third personality trait is openness to experience, which refers to being imaginative, having wide interest and being excited about those interests. Thus, such a consumer is more willing to consider others opinions and viewpoints. The fourth personality trait is agreeableness, which means the degree to which a person is in accordance with the rules established by the others. The final personality trait listed is conscientiousness, that involves traits like efficient, organized, dutiful, and self disciplined. This shows an individual being oriented towards his goals (Costa and McCrae, 1992;Tsao and Chang, 2004).
These dimensions have been studied differently by various authors in consumer behavior to associate consumer personality with the choice of product. Sarker et al. (2013) have examined the influence of personality in buying consumer goods, whereas, Mulyanegara and Tsarenko (2009) and Saran et al. (2016) have examined the relationship between consumer personality and fashion consumption. Bosnjak et al. (2007) have investigated that consumer personality plays an important role in finding one's involvement with the product and find that consumer who involve themselves in experiencing the goods in terms of value tends to have higher affective or emotional involvement with the product (Zaickhowosky, 1999). Moreover, in experiencing a product, consumer personality and his/her involvement with the product forms a link towards evaluation of the product. Therefore, Tsao and Chang (2010) and Matzler et al. (2006) have found impact of big five personality traits on consumer's ways of evaluating the product. They find that consumer who posses personality trait of neuroticism, extraversion and openness to experience influences consumer to evaluate product on hedonic dimension, whereas agreeableness personality trait impacts utilitarian evaluation of the product.
In addition, many studies have associated consumer personality traits with different type of emotions consumer experiences during consumption of the product. More importantly, Rusting and Larsen (1997) and Costa and McCrae (1980)  Therefore, Matzler et al. (2005Matzler et al. ( , 2006 and Mooradian and Olver (1997) have examined the impact of consumer personality trait in experiencing automobiles. The results provide that consumer personality not only affect consumers' feelings, his/her attitudes and behaviour, but also act as an important antecedent towards post purchase processes such as satisfaction (Singh, 1990;Tan et al., 2004). Moreover, the results evidence the existence of a direct relationship between personality and self-satisfaction, but with the mediating system of emotions, i.e., emotions play a crucial role in satisfaction (Matzler et al., 2006). Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are presented: H1. Customer personality influences hedonic evaluation of product. H2. Customer personality influences utilitarian evaluation of product. H3. Customer personality influences positive emotion towards a product. H4. Customer personality influences negative emotion towards a product H5. Customer personality influences satisfaction.

Product involvement and product evaluation.
Involvement is defined as internal state of mind that the consumer experiences while making purchase of a product. This internal state has arousal properties and like motivation, it also has a directional influence on how consumers would behave (Loudon and Bitta, 2002). Thus, the focus of involvement is on the individual consumer, as he/she is involved with the product (Andrews et al., 1990).
Moreover, it has been examined that consumer involvement with the product is determined by his/her cognitive or subjective information processing system. The results showed that consumer who possesses objective knowledge involves themselves for the product which is utility oriented and where consumer possesses subjective knowledge is oriented towards achieving pleasure from the usage of the product (Loudon and Bitta, 2002).
Thus, it has been stated that consumer involvement with the product influences consumer to evaluate the product on utilitarian and hedonic dimensions (Dhar and Wertenbroch, 2000). Hedonic and utilitarian are the two dimensions of a product that define the performance and experiential aspects of customer experience (Mano and Oliver 1993). Therefore, we propose that involvement leads to evaluation for the product: H6. Consumer Involvement with the product positively influences hedonic evaluation of the product.
H7. Consumer Involvement with the product positively influences utilitarian evaluation of the product.

Product evaluation, emotion and satisfaction.
Batra and Ahtola (1990) find that the consumers evaluate a product on two basic dimensions: hedonic and utilitarian. Hedonic dimension means the experience of using the product and the utilitarian dimension is derived from the function performed by the product . Further, Park et al. (1986) state that hedonic dimension of the product can be defined as the pleasure potential of a product and utilitarian dimension as the ability of a product to perform functions in everyday life of the consumer. Moreover, these dimensions of product act as antecedents towards arousing customer feelings (Hansen and Christensen, 2007). Mano and Oliver (1993) confer that customer experience with the product, whether utilitarian or hedonic, act as input to the product related emotional experience, whereas, Tsao and Chang (2010) have found that hedonic dimension of the product influences emotion, such as fun, excitement, and enjoyment, that when measured leads to satisfaction.
That's why, today, marketers are increasingly interested in understanding the nature of emotion in the purchase process, and to explain the meaning of the consumer's emotions towards a product usage the term affect is conceived appropriate, as it provides umbrella for a set of more specific mental processes including emotions, moods and attitude, to (Bagozzi et al., 1999). Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are presented: H8. Hedonic evaluation of product influences positive emotion. H9. Hedonic evaluation of product influences negative emotion. H10. Utilitarian evaluation of product influences positive emotion. H11. Utilitarian evaluation of product influences negative emotion. H12. Hedonic evaluation of product influences satisfaction. H13. Utilitarian evaluation of product influences satisfaction. Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) state that emotion play important role in studying experiential view of the consumer. Therefore, research on consumer emotions has been reflected in the following concepts: affect, hedonism, mood, and feelings, but does not reflect the actual meaning of emotion (Sorensen, 2008). Therefore, Bagozzi et al. (1999) define emotion as a mental state of readiness that arises from cognitive appraisals of events or thoughts and has a phenomenological tone accompanied by physiological processes often expressed physically (e.g., in gestures, posture, facial features); and may result in specific actions to affirm or cope with emotion, depending on its nature and meaning for the person having it. More specifically, emotions are expressed through two groups, the positive and the negative valenced emotions (Sorensen, 2008).

Emotion and satisfaction.
Various researchers have examined the role of emotion in the usage of the product. It has been found that consumer experience with the product can elicit emotions such as disappointment, attraction, shame, pride, disgust, contempt, admiration, satisfaction, fear and anger (Schifferstein and Hekkert, 2007). Therefore, Richins (1997) provides that the consumer experiences positive and negative emotions under different consumption situations. Moreover, Schifferstein and Hekkert (2007) study the relationship between consumer emotion and consumption of the product. Furthermore, Oliver (1999) extended this work by showing that emotion elicited by the product act as mediator towards achieving consumer desired level of satisfaction.
Thus, Hirschman and Holbrook (1982) opine that certain usage of products generates an emotional reaction in the consumer during consumption which must be monitored, so as to determine its linkage to consumer satisfaction. Therefore, Phillips and Baumgartner (1999) confirm that it is important to study the positive and negative affectivity in explaining consumer level satisfaction achieved or not. Moreover, Westbrook (1987) provides study of emotion and consumption relationship act as central aspects of post purchase processes. Therefore, the following hypotheses are presented: H14 Positive emotions influence consumer satisfaction. H15 Negative emotions influence consumer satisfaction.
On the basis of the aforementioned literature review and hypotheses inferred, this research investigates the structural relationship among the five dimensions namely, customer personality, consumer involvement, product evaluation, consumer emotion, and satisfaction and is named as five-factor solution model. Items measuring these elements with their dimensions, as suggested by their authors, are given in Table1 in Appendix.
Moreover, we have extended the fivefactor solution model to sixfactor solution model (customer personality, consumer involvement, product evaluation, consumer emotion, and satisfaction and loyalty) with the inclusion of the construct, consumer loyalty, as shown in Figure 1, to test whether consumer personality, has a direct impact on ones loyalty towards the brand. Therefore, the model stated in Figure 1 includes two models, the six factor solution model and the five factor solution model.

The model
Given the specific domains for measuring customer experience discussed above, it becomes important to establish the relation between the constructs in order to find the construct domains being antecedents and those being the outcome. The main effect model featured in Figure 1 has been partly derived from Tsao and Chang (2010), who propose customer personality being an important antecedent to purchase motivation; partly from Bosnjak et al. (2007) who state that consumer personality and involvement correlation results into purchase intention; and partly from Mano and Oliver (1993) who have examined product evaluation evaluated on hedonic and utilitarian dimensions eliciting emotion that results into satisfaction.
Therefore, we provide that customer experiences occur when consumer personality interacts with the involvement process. The correlation between these two makes the consumer to evaluate product on hedonic and utilitarian basis, that when evaluated elicit emotion resulting into satisfaction, as provided in Figure 1. Furthermore, this model examines the role of consumer personality in determining ones loyalty towards the product consumed, as discussed above. This includes the study of structural relationship among customer personality, consumer involvement, product evaluation, consumer emotion, satisfaction (five factor solution model) and consumer loyalty, as provided in Figure 1, and is named as six factor solution model.

Fig. 1. The five factor solution model and the six factor solution model
In order to select the best model for testing our hypotheses out of these two models, we first examine the construct distinctiveness of the fivefactor solution model and the six-factor solution model, i.e., hypothesized model, via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), as provided by Tan et al. (2004), and the model that provides the best fit for the data is selected for testing the hypothesis.
Secondly, on the hypothesized model, nested model approach is applied, whereby successive paths have been relaxed to test whether any addition or subtraction of the parameter in the hypothesized model impacts fit indices, thus, resulting into another model. The model that provides the best fit indexes, on comparison with the other model, has been chosen as the best fitting model. The changes in the fit indexes are examined through structural equation modeling.

Thus, our study follows Tan et al. (2004) and
Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) nested model approach in order to achieve the best fitting model.

Scale measurement validity and reliability.
Confirmatory factor analysis has been applied to test the reliability and validity of the items used in the five factor solution model and six factor solution model. The measurable items used in both the models are the same. Thus, the results reported in the tables up to the construct satisfaction describes the five-factor solution model and the inclusion of the construct loyalty describes the six factor solution model, i.e., hypothesised, model. Reliability for each of the construct was obtained using the calculation of a Cronbach's alpha coefficient. As illustrated in Table 2, all coefficient alpha estimates, ranging from 0.5 to 0.9, for this study were in compliance with the requirement of internal consistency, as stated by Nunnally (1978). Moreover, the scales have been purified by excluding some of the items with low Cronbach's alpha value, as shown in Table 3.

Five-factor personality trait
Consumer Loyalty Satisfaction Product evaluation Emotion

Consumer involvement
In addition, convergent validity for the two product categories used for the survey has been assessed on the criteria provided by Simonin (1999) that states the factor loadings of the construct should be .5 or greater than .5 and content validity has been established through a literature review and by getting the items evaluated from two experienced researchers.
To establish discriminant validity, Fornell and Larcker's (1981) criteria is used that suggests that the shared variance among any two constructs (that is, the square of their intercorrelation) should be less than the average variance extracted (AVE) of each construct (Fornell and Larcker, 1981).
As shown in Table 3, the AVE of the underlying construct is larger than the shared variance with other constructs. This implies that all the constructs stated in Table 3 exhibit discriminant validity.
For measuring reliability of the construct, Fornell and Larcker's (1981) and Bagozzi and Yi (1988) criteria has been used which provide that construct reliability should be greater or equal to 0.60 and the values for AVE should be greater than or equal to 0.5. For this study, the entire construct reliabilities are high, ranging between 0.5 and 0.9 and all AVE values are greater than or equal to 0.5, thus, confirm the reliability of each construct. Note: Average variance extracted on diagonal; the square of their intercorrelation below the diagonal.
In nut shell, the results provided above confirm the reliability and validity of the constructs of the two models. Construct distinctiveness of the two has been tested via CFA, to select the best model as a base for testing our hypothesis. For this, Tan et al. (2004) chi-square difference tests criteria has been used to analyze the best model, as shown in Table 4 (chi square difference = 49.342 significant at p < .01) indicating that the hypothesized six factor solution model (customer personality, consumer involvement, product evaluation, affectivity, satisfaction and consumer loyalty) provide a better fit for the data than the five factor solution model (customer personality, consumer involvement, product evaluation, affectivity, and satisfaction).
Hence, the more parsimonious model, that is, the hypothesized six factor solution model has been selected from amongst the two models for testing our hypothesis. The overall measurement result, as presented in Table 5, are CMIN chi square = 602.282, degree of freedom = 403, p value=0.000. The fit indices are all in acceptable ranges with GFI = .906, AGFI = .877, CF I= .947, NFI = .858 and RMSEA = .037.
Once the results show that the hypothesized model provides better fit for the data. We have followed Anderson and Gerbing (1988)'s nested model approach to test our hypotheses as well as the procedure provided in study undertaken by Tan et al. (2004) which shows that the hypothesized model fits the better fits the data. Under this method, the successive paths in the hypothesized model are relaxed resulting into alternate models, as shown in Table 4. The hypothesized model is, then, taken as basis for nested model comparison to study the changes in the fit indexes. This, not only, helps to find the best model that fits the data, but also, test the significance of paths added in the model.

Model result
The analyses are conducted using structural equation modeling via AMOS (version 21.0). Standardized parameter estimates for the hypothesized model are presented in Figure 2 in Appendix. The hypothesized six factor solution model has been used as the basis for the nestedmodel comparison whereby the successive paths have been relaxed, resulting into other models as shown in Table 5, in order to examine the change in the fit indexes, as provided by Tan et al. (2004). The significance level of the change in chi-square between the hypothesized six factor solution model and the relaxed model reflects the effects of the added paths, providing a test of the model's fit. A non-significant change in chi-square suggests that the added paths are not significant and hence provides support for the hypothesized model. Table  5 present results of hypothesized and relaxed models, along with change in chi square for these nested models (cited in Tan et al., 2004). All analyses were conducted using structural equation modelling through Amos (21.0 version).
We find that when consumer personality is not allowed to affect consumer loyalty (model 2), the model compares favorably with the fully mediated model 1 (change in chi square = 22.098, df = 10, p < .05). However, model 3 also compares favorably with the fully mediated model 1 (change in chi square 27.07, df = 17, p < .05) for cell phone. As models 2 and 3 are nested models, we use the chisquare difference test and find no significant difference between the two models. For cell phone, change in chi square = 4.97, p < .05.
Hence, we select the more parsimonious model of the two, namely model 3 as the best-fitting model which has a direct path from consumer personality to purchase evaluation to emotion, but without the variables of satisfaction and loyalty. The standardized estimates for the various paths and their associated p-values are provided in Table 6.
The results shown in Table 6 in Appendix for cell phone provide that customer satisfaction influences consumer loyalty and is impacted by both positive and negative emotions where negative emotion has negative impact on satisfaction, as provided by our H (hypotheses) 14 and H15. Moreover, consumer evaluation of product on utilitarian dimension impacts consumer satisfaction, as hypothesized in H13. Evidently, Westbrook (1987); Oliver (1993); and Mano and Oliver (1993) confer that in the consumption process, consumer's emotions and product evaluation directly affect satisfaction appraisal.
Moreover, emotions experienced by consumer are influenced by the evaluation he/she makes for the product is provided in H8-H11. In case of cell phone it has been found that hedonic evaluation significantly affect consumer positive emotion and utilitarian has significant but negative influence on negative emotion which supports our H8 only. This is in confirmation with the results provided by Mano and Oliver (1993) that state hedonic evaluation for the purchase of product enhances positive affect.
Moreover, customer personality plays an important role in experiencing emotion in consumption of the product, as proposed in H4-H5. The results shown in Table 6 provide that, neuroticism significantly affect positive, as well as negative emotion, thus supporting our H4 and H5. Tsao and Chang (2010) state that neuroticism and openness to experience affect negative emotion. This confirms our hypothesis that consumer personality affects emotions while experiencing the product.
Product evaluation on hedonic and utilitarian dimensions are also affected by the type of personality trait consumer possess, as predicted in our H1 and H2, and the type of involvement the consumer have for the product as stated in H6 and H7. In case of cell phone, among the five personality traits, openness to experience has a significant impact on hedonic and utilitarian evaluation and agreeableness has a significant impact on utilitarian evaluation, as shown in Table 6. These results are in confirmation with the study conducted by Tsao and Chang (2010) who examine consumer personality as an important antecedent of product evaluation and find agreeableness positively and significantly impacts utilitarian evaluation, whereas openness to experience significantly and positively affecting both hedonic and utilitarian evaluations. Thus, we find support for our H1 and H2.
Regarding H6 and H7 which state that evaluation of product is affected by the type of involvement the consumer has for the product, the results for cell phone provided, consumer's need type of involvement affect utilitarian evaluation of the product. These results are in confirmation with the study conducted by Mano and Oliver (1993) who have found two-factor solution that revealed a utilitarian factor consisting of need, and a hedonic factor consisting of interest. Thus, this provides us with the reason to support our H6 and H7.

Discussion and conclusion
Our findings reveal that consumer experience with the cell phone describes consumer need type of involvement influencing the consumer to evaluate the product on utilitarian dimensions. Furthermore, consumer experience positive emotion that is influenced by hedonic evaluation of the product, whereas utilitarian evaluation of the product influences negative emotion, but negatively. When studied further, we find that positive emotions and utilitarian evaluation of the product play an important role in influencing consumer desired level of satisfaction, whereas negative emotions influence consumer desired level of satisfaction, but negatively.
In addition to this, when the role of consumer personality has been assessed in experiencing cell phone, it was found that the consumers who possess agreeableness personality trait influences consumer evaluation of product on utilitarian dimension and openness to experience personality trait influences consumer evaluation of product on hedonic, as well as on utilitarian dimension, whereas the consumer who possess neuroticism personality trait influences consumer positive, as well as negative emotions in experiencing a product.
In a nut shell, we provide that the consumer personality plays an important role in evaluation of the product and elicitation of the emotions, which helps to predict the consumer's level of satisfaction. This supports the purpose of our study.
In order to establish relationships between these variables, we provide that marketing managers should segment the market on the basis of the personality trait of the consumer, as our findings suggest that the consumer with openness to experience personality trait is the one who not only considers utilitarian, that is, functional outcome from the usage of product, but also focuses on hedonic purchase motivation which can positively associate their emotions with the brand.
In addition, the marketer should build different communication strategies to communicate with different types of consumer personality, as consumers possessing different personality traits perceive product from different perspective. Therefore, the marketer should design the product and the communication that can associate the consumer emotionally with the brand.
Academically, this study contributes to the literature related to customer experience and considers customer experience creation as a two way interactivity between consumer personality and consumer involvement with product. This study has tested possible relationships between consumer personality, consumer involvement, and evaluation of product, emotion, and satisfaction and consumer loyalty.
Moreover, to create experiential experiences with the help of these relationships, as provided by our research, the marketing managers need to have an effective customer experience management that not only search for different ways for providing desired experience expected by the consumer from the usage of product/brand, but should also concentrate on designing the right type of stimuli that can engage customer with the product/brand.  Utilitarian Evaluation-Satisfaction . 19 .04 ** Satisfaction-Loyalty . 63 .05 **