Managing emotions. Accenting the positive might not produce the highest satisfaction payoff.

The relationship between patient emotions during hospitalization and their retrospective satisfaction varies across service elements, across emotions, and is influenced by the temporal positioning of both emotions and the service element. Marketers should concentrate on reducing negative emotions attributed to the provider (e.g., hostility and frustration) and to the hospitalization situation (e.g., distress and depression), according to the results of the authors' study. Providers also should attempt to alleviate negative emotional states connected with arousal (e.g., jittery and excited). Positive emotions were found to be only weakly related to satisfaction. The authors suggest segmenting patients on the basis of their emotional states at particular junctures of the service delivery and then "socializing" both providers and patients to ensure successful emotion management.