Context
Subscription boxes have been thriving on the market for some years now, and may be found in various sectors such as food, drink, style, beauty, hobbies etc. Thanks to them, consumers can experience the thrill of being surprised each month by products they have not chosen et sometimes have never even heard of. The enjoyment experienced by these consumers derives from serendipity. Serendipity encompasses the feelings that result from an encounter that is positive, unexpected and that involves some degree of chance. This reasoning is quite unusual in the consumption world, where it is usually taken for granted that consumers like making informed choices. In an article published in the Journal of Marketing in 2021, Kim, Affonso, Laran and Durante investigate how serendipity can make personal choices less desirable than unexpected and random encounters.
Research questions
This paper is based on the intuition that personal choice may not always trigger the highest consumer satisfaction. As previously explained, subscription boxes rely on the thrill of a (good) surprise and being surprised by the products inside the box may be more satisfying than if the consumer had actually chosen them. Kim, Affonso, Laran and Durante hypothesize that surprise and randomness can make consumers feel lucky, which triggers serendipitous feelings and eventually influence consumer outcomes. Therefore, they ask the following research question:
– When does serendipity occur?
– Do consumers always take advantage of serendipity?
– Are serendipitous encounters always preferred to personal choices?
Method
To answer this research question, the authors conducted experiments across multiple product categories (online subscription services, works of art, movies, food consumption, music):
– Study 1 was based on real purchase experiences in four firms. 811 MTurk participants were asked to describe their personal shopping experience, either in a serendipity or in a personal choice condition.
– Study 2 was devised to check the impact of the valence of the encounter on feelings of serendipity and consumer outcomes. 447 MTurk participants had to imagine entering an art gallery. Participants were either asked to choose the painting they were about to view (personal choice condition) or were randomly presented with a painting (serendipity condition). Whatever the condition (personal choice VS serendipity), informants were randomly assigned pleasant or unpleasant paintings.
– Study 3 examined the role of attributions to chance in determining feelings of serendipity and its outcomes. 389 Mturk participants were asked about their movie preferences, and they commented on their experience about a fictitious movie trailer platform that was devised to mimic user experiences on streaming platforms. The perceived randomness of the encounter with the movie trailer was manipulated by telling the participants either that the system had “randomly chosen” a movie trailer according to their preferences (high degree of randomness) or that the platform had “carefully selected” a movie trailer based on their preferences (low degree of randomness).
– Study 4 investigated the role of diagnostic information (ie relevant information to make choices) in the process. 393 Mturk participants were asked about their experience on a fictitious functional music platform. Before accessing the platform, participants were either given diagnostic or non-diagnostic information about functional music. When accessing the platform, participants were randomly either asked to choose a song for a listening sample (personal choice condition) or directly presented with a listening sample chosen by the system (serendipity condition).
Results
– A marketplace encounter that is positive, unexpected and involves some degree of chance improves consumer outcomes compared with an encounter directly chosen by the consumer. Thus, freedom of choice does not always trigger the highest consumer satisfaction.
– When a marketplace encounter is positive, unexpected and involves some degree of chance, it generates feelings of serendipity that will positively impact consumer outcomes (namely satisfaction, meaningfulness, willingness to recommend, willingness to extend a subscription, enjoyment of the experience). This effect does not work when the encounter in negative.
– The more consumers perceive that an encounter is the result of randomness, the better the feelings of serendipity and consumer outcomes. Reciprocally, when consumers feel that an encounter was “planned” by marketers, feelings of serendipity and consumer satisfaction will decrease. Put differently, the positive effects of serendipity only work when nonrandom components are not salient.
– When consumers receive diagnostic information about an offer, they feel that they have enough information to make informed choices by themselves, which makes serendipity less desirable. In other words, when consumers perceive that they have sufficient knowledge to make a relevant choice, they prefer chosen encounters to serendipitous encounters.
Why is this article relevant for researchers?
The primary contribution of this article is to shed light on an understudied concept: serendipity. While previous research works are focused on the role of surprise (positive or negative) on consumer experiences, this article also considers randomness (role of chance), role of valence of the experience, role of diagnostic information. The existing literature links uncertainty with negative outcomes such as stress of failure to control a situation. By studying serendipity, this article changes the story: it shows that freedom to choose and control of an encounter do not always lead to the highest customer satisfaction.
The present findings complement the existing literature on recommendations that explains how consumers react to recommendations but does not explain if they favor serendipity or personal choice. This paper shows the ambivalent preferences of consumers in this regard according to valence of the experience and information provided prior to the experience.
Even though this research investigates serendipity across many product categories, other sectors – notably in the service industry and customer experiences – could be further explored. Moreover, future articles could look into the ways to turn a situation in which consumers are averse to uncertainty into a serendipitous encounter. Another interesting avenue for research would be to find out if certain personality traits of consumers make them more receptive to serendipitous experiences: for instance, are “control freaks” sometimes taken by serendipitous feelings?
Why is this article relevant for professionals?
This article may be very useful for professionals. First, the findings have been proven in several sectors, which make them directly applicable for marketers in the said sectors. Moreover, this research reveals that marketers can influence consumer perceptions of how an encounter happens (choice vs chance), which can in turn influence consumer outcomes (satisfaction, purchase intention…). Put differently, professionals can manipulate the randomness and desirability of encounters to make them more serendipitous. But, at the same time, they have to be careful not to provide too much diagnostic information that could make serendipity undesirable.
More generally, this paper prompts managers to think about how to build magic in marketplace encounters. The authors point out that their findings may echo experiences in different sectors:
– on music streaming platforms, listening experience can be improved when consumers feel they stumble upon their favorite songs rather than choose it, this is a strategy,
– at a museum, if a painting a visitor is planning on seeing is just around a corner, it may generate feelings of surprise and randomness that make the experience more enjoyable,
– at the supermarket, unexpected samplings of a consumer’s favorite foods may elicit purchases.
Although many argue that the success of platforms such as Spotify is due to their freemium model or targeting millennials, serendipity may give a interesting insight of what makes consumers stick to these business models (in spite of the inconvenience caused by ads for instance). This research notably shows that the “shuffle mode” is a an important asset for Spotify, that the company should keep up the efforts to improve its random mode algorithm. In this vein, this article calls into question the request to stop the shuffle mode when playing albums made by famous singer Adele: although to the singer, the setlist order may have been carefully thought of in an artistic manner, consumers might still derive more satisfaction from listening in random mode.