Purpose While humor is known to help relational outcomes, its usefulness for sellers to build strong relationships with their business partners and achieve performance remain unknown. Specifically, humor styles (constructive versus offensive) and business sectors (service-based versus other) may play an important role. To fill this gap in extant marketing literature, this study aims to test the effects of humor styles among salespersons of different business sectors on relationship quality and business performance. Design/methodology/approach This research paper derives hypotheses from prior studies referring to humor effects in psychology and management, business-to-business and relationship marketing literature. The hypotheses are tested using a sample of 175 salespersons operating across different business sectors. Findings While constructive humor is shown to have positive effects on relationship quality and business performance regardless of business sectors, a different pattern is found for offensive humor. Specifically, the results show that business sector moderates the effects of this type of humor, which has negative effects on relationship quality and business performance, but only when used by salespersons in non-service-based business sectors. Research limitations/implications The limitations of the research concern the cultural context. The lack of responses from salespersons from different countries may be considered as a direction for future studies exploring connections between humor usage and culture in business-to-business marketing. Practical implications This study brings strategic insights into how to use humor in a business-to-business context. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, no previous study has thus far examined the proposed set of inter-related research constructs.

This article investigates how consumers regulate their postconsumption guilt and rumination through positive reappraisal and the effects of this regulating process on satisfaction. Two studies conducted in different contexts and using different methods show that positive reappraisal increases with rumination and guilt but more strongly when guilt is low (vs. high). Results also reveal the mediating effect of positive reappraisal on the guilt–satisfaction relationship such that people feeling guilty and engaging in positive reappraisal exhibit lower satisfaction with their consumption. Further, this mediating effect is moderated by rumination, such that positive reappraisal mediates the indirect effect of guilt only when rumination is low.

Purpose – This paper aims to determine how consumers may regulate their guilt through rumination and emotional support and how such regulation affects their consumption. Compelling research indicates that consumption may sometimes induce guilt. Social–psychological literature suggests that a potential way for consumers to regulate their consumption-related guilt is to seek emotional support. Design/methodology/approach – Two studies, which measure (Study 1) and manipulate (Study 2) guilt, investigate how guilt and rumination affect emotional support and subsequent consumption. Findings – The results show that guilt and rumination interact and prompt individuals to seek emotional support. The valence (positive or negative) of feedback they receive affects and interacts with their guilt to affect their intention to consume the guilt-inducing product again. Shame is shown to mediate the effect of post-feedback guilt on consumption intentions. Research limitations/implications – The results extend previous research on guilt by emphasizing emotional support seeking as a specific way of coping in response to guilt feelings and shame as an outcome of guilt. Moreover, the present research shows that guilt can affect behavioural intentions, an effect that surprisingly has not been previously identified in literature. Practical implications – For brands and retailers providing guilt-inducing products, the results suggest that providing emotional support – for instance through reinsurance messages – may have positive effects on consumer emotions and intentions. Originality/value – Using two different methods, the research findings offer deeper understanding of how guilt is related to cognitions such as rumination, to emotions such as shame and to behavioural intentions.

For sellers, the efficacy of humor to create trusty relationships and achieve performance with buyers remains unknown. Specifically, the question of if – and when – sellers should use humor still deserves examination. To answer this question, this research builds on the four phases that characterize long-term relationships (exploration, buildup, maturity, and decline) to argue that humor might be inefficient when used in the exploration phase. Two studies conducted among buyers ( n = 322) then reveal that although constructive humor has overall positive effects on the performance of the sellers through a mediating effect of trust, this effect is not observed during the exploration phase. The other type of humor – offensive humor – has a negative effect regardless of the phase in which it is used. Taken together, these results first indicate that sellers may gain from using humor only if the relationship with their buyers is not at the exploration phase since this particular phase is the only one when a negative effect of humor on trust and subsequent performance is observed. Furthermore, these results indicate that offensive should be avoided in all the relationship phases.

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