Underpinned by the Bagozzi and Dholakia (1999) goal setting and striving framework this research firstly develops a negative online customer experience model after which regulatory focus theory is used to compare this model with a positive online customer experience model. Analysis of responses from 201 respondents in the first study shows service failure causes negative affective and cognitive experience and has an impact on dissatisfaction and negative word of mouth in the online retailing context. Moreover, results of a second study among 200 respondents indicates that while customer priority in a successful shopping context is affective experience, in a service failure the customer priority moves from an affective to a cognitive experience. Similarly, compared to cognitive experience, affective experience has a higher impact on customer satisfaction and positive word of mouth in a successful shopping context, while in an unsuccessful shopping context cognitive experience has higher impact on dissatisfaction and negative word of mouth. The findings of this study contribute to customer experience management in both successful and unsuccessful shopping situations.