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Hui-Hsin Huang, Fu Jen Catholic University, TaiwanAbstract
This research investigates the influence of taboos on customer decision-making and behavior, specifically applying the “death taboo” concept to hotel accommodations. A death taboo in this context refers to customers encountering information or phenomena related to a death having occurred in the hotel. Even without objective service failures, such encounters trigger psychological responses that impact customer experience and decisions. It conducted two experiments with 300 participants to explore changes in customer satisfaction, switching intention, switching costs, and repurchase intention (hotel retention). It is manipulated three death taboo scenarios: word-of-mouth (WOM) about a past death, personal experience (PE) of strange phenomena, and a mixed scenario combining both. These represented low, middle, and high death taboo contexts, respectively. Results indicate that encountering a death taboo significantly reduces customer satisfaction, particularly in the high (mixed) taboo context. Fear levels varied significantly across scenarios (Mix > PE > WOM), influencing satisfaction in low (WOM) and high (mixed) contexts, but not the middle (PE). In low taboo situations, customers consider switching costs rationally; however, stronger death taboos cause fear to override rational considerations of switching costs. This study demonstrates how the death taboo complexly influences customer behavior, showing a transformation from psychological change to explicit action, providing empirical contributions to marketing and customer decision theories.
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Conference: ACP2026Stream: Qualitative/Quantitative Research in any other area of Psychology
This paper is part of the ACP2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Huang H. (2026) Taboo Marketing in Consumer Behavior: A Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Perspective on Hotel Accommodation Decisions ISSN: 2187-4743 – The Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences 2026 Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 9-14) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4743.2026.2
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4743.2026.2
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