EFFECTS OF EMPLOYEES' POSITIVE AFFECTIVE DISPLAYS ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY INTENTIONS: AN EMOTIONS-AS- SOCIAL-INFORMATION PERSPECTIVE (original) (raw)
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Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2018
Emotional expressions have a pervasive impact on organizational behavior. However, it is unclear how such effects are modulated by the intensity of emotional displays. We investigated in online, laboratory, and field experiments how varying intensities of service providers' emotional displays (expressed through text, intonation, or physical displays) influence customer service outcomes. We show that in mundane service interactions, displays of intense happiness or sadness are interpreted as inappropriate and inauthentic, and lead to reduced trust in the service provider. We further demonstrate the mediating effect of trust on satisfaction with the service (Study 1), expected satisfaction with the product (Studies 2 and 3), and actual product use (Study 4). The studies highlight perceptions of appropriateness and sincerity as mechanisms underlying the interpersonal effects of emotional intensity. We propose that emotional intensity be incorporated in theorizing and research on organizational behavior to arrive at a more complete understanding of emotional dynamics.
Journal of Service Research, 2024
This study introduces affect-as-information theory to the service encounter context and advances that customer and employee affective displays during a service encounter together estimate post-encounter customer satisfaction (CSAT). A large-scale dataset of 23,645 real-life text-based (i.e., chat) service encounters with a total of 301,280 genuine messages written by customers and employees was used to test our hypotheses. Automatic sentiment analysis was deployed to assess the affective displays of customers and employees in every individual text message as a service encounter unfolded. Our findings confirm that in addition to customers’ overall (mean) affective display, peak (i.e., highest positive or least negative) and end (final) affective displays explain additional variance in satisfaction. Further, as customer displays may not fully capture their satisfaction process and employees understand the service quality they deliver, we propose and confirm that service employee displayed affect explains further variance in CSAT. Our analyses also find that the predictive power of affective displays is more pronounced in service failure than non-failure encounters. Together, these findings show that automatic monitoring beyond operational variables and customer overall affect (i.e., adding customer peak and end, and employee affective displays) can expedite the evaluation of CSAT immediately upon completion of a service encounter.
Organizational display rules (e.g., “service with a smile”) have had mixed relationships with employee emotional labor—either in the form of “bad faith” surface acting (suppressing or faking expressions) or “good faith” deep acting (modifying inner feelings). We draw on the motivational perspective of emotional labor to argue that individual differences in customer orientation will directly and indirectly relate to these acting strategies in response to display rules. With a survey of more than 500 working adults in customer contact positions, and controlling for affective disposition, we find that customer orientation directly increases “good faith” acting while it moderates the relationship of display rules with “bad faith” acting.
Customers’ Emotional Responses to Employees’ Displayed Positive Emotions
Australian Journal of Business and Management Research, 2012
The study sought to determine the customers’ emotional responses to employee displayed emotions at lunar parks in Zimbabwe. Hundred adult consumers were surveyed soon after an observation of the employee-consumer interaction. Employee emotional displays were measured using observational methods and customers’ emotional states were assessed using the PAD scale. Bivariate regression analysis was used to analyse data. The study revealed that employee displayed emotions positively influences customers’ emotional states of pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Unlike the findings from previous studies the dominance dimension was found to relevant to the lunar park services.
Journal of Business Research, 2007
Much of the marketing and management literature is concerned with the relationship between service providers' positive affective displays, the consumers' perception of authentic service delivery and their reported satisfaction [Grandey AA. When "The Show Must Go On": surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Acad Manage J 2003;46(1):86-96; Tsai WC, Huang YM. Mechanisms linking employee affective delivery and customer behavioural intentions. This paper responds to the need for further research in the relationship between service providers' positive affective displays and consumers' perception of authentic service delivery; and the relationship between these and reported satisfaction [Price L, Arnould E, Tierney P. Going to extremes: managing service encounters and assessing provider performance. Grandey AA. When "The Show Must Go On": surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Acad Manage J 2003;46(1):86-96]. Research conducted with a national airline in 2003 is analysed to measure the influence of service providers' positive expressive displays on life satisfaction, overall consumption satisfaction and intention to repurchase. The findings indicate a strong positive relationship between, and within affective displays, overall service satisfaction and life satisfaction. A path model tests the direct, indirect and total effects of expressive display on overall service satisfaction, life satisfaction and likelihood of repurchase. Finally, we discuss implications for industry and academic research.
The influence of emotions displayed and personal selling on customer behaviour intention
Service Industries Journal, 2012
The impact of employee performance on customer behavioural intentions and consumption behaviour is important to service marketers. In many service settings, service organizations require emotional display and personal selling to stay competitive in todays market. Based on a review of service literature, this study investigates the effect of emotions displayed and personal selling on customer purchase amount and re-patronage intention in convenience-goods retail service settings. This work applies mystery shopper methods to data collected from a Taiwan bakery chain. Analysis of the results from 519 responded questionnaires in this study reveal that positive emotions displayed by contact personnel are unrelated to consumption expenditure, but do affect re-patronage intention. Further, the results show that personal selling negatively influences consumption amount. This study suggests that service managers consider enhancing their emotional display perspective in human resource practices, and focus on performing personal selling as a consumer need, in different service industries.
Is “service with a smile” enough? Authenticity of positive displays during service encounters
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2005
Service providers use impression management strategies to engender satisfaction and repeat business in customers. Managing emotional expressions is one strategy to meet those goals. We extended research on the ''Duchenne Smile'' to see if authenticity of employee expressions influenced the impressions formed of the employeeÕs friendliness and the overall satisfaction with the encounter. Furthermore, we took two other factors into account-task performance and busyness-to examine the conditions under which authenticity would have the greatest impact. In Study 1, we obtained reactions to videotaped simulations that manipulated authenticity of positive displays and task performance during a hotel check-in encounter. ANCOVA results supported that authenticity of the service provider enhanced perceptions of friendliness, but only influenced customer satisfaction when tasks were performed well. In Study 2, hierarchical linear modeling with reactions from 255 customers of 64 restaurant servers showed that perceived display authenticity enhanced the perceived friendliness of the employee when the store was slow, but less so when it was busy. Display authenticity had a direct effect on customer satisfaction, regardless of task performance (which was generally high) and busyness. We conclude that display authenticity is an extra-role behavior for service encounters with an additive effect on encounter satisfaction only when other factors are at optimal levels. We suggest implications for display rule policies and service training.
Customer orientation as moderator of display rules and surface acting
Organizational display rules (e.g., "service with a smile") have had mixed relationships with employee emotional labor-either in the form of "bad faith" surface acting (suppressing or faking expressions) or "good faith" deep acting (modifying inner feelings). We draw on the motivational perspective of emotional labor to argue that individual differences in customer orientation will directly and indirectly relate to these acting strategies in response to display rules. With a survey of more than 500 working adults in customer contact positions, and controlling for affective disposition, we find that customer orientation directly increases "good faith" acting while it moderates the relationship of display rules with "bad faith" acting.
How emotional displays and service quality impact satisfaction and loyalty: A gendered look
Journal of Foodservice Business Research, 2019
Success in the restaurant industry is, in part, determined by boundary spanning service providers' ability to manage their emotions with the goal of providing excellent service while simultaneously authentically displaying the proper emotions to connect with the guest. How men and women respond to these displays of emotion is of interest, as previous scholars have demonstrated perceptions and reactions to service delivery differ across genders. This study utilized a between subject quasi-experimental design manipulating each one of the independent variables (gender, emotional labor, and service quality) in a dichotomous fashion for each scenario. The dependent variables measured were satisfaction and loyalty. The results indicated that women are more receptive to deep acting than are their male counterparts, and are thus, more likely to be loyal to an organization if deep acting is employed. How to encourage deep acting among foodservice providers is discussed.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 2014
The impact of emotional labor on customer outcomes is gaining considerable attention in the literature, with research suggesting that the authenticity of emotional displays may positively impact customer outcomes. However, research investigating the impact of more inauthentic emotions on service delivery outcomes is mixed (see . This study explores 2 potential reasons for why the service outcomes of inauthentic emotions are largely inconsistent: the impact of distinct surface acting strategies and the role of service delivery context. Drawing on social-functional theories of emotions, we surveyed 243 dyads of employees and customers from a wide variety of services to examine the links between employee surface acting and customer service satisfaction, and whether this relationship is moderated by relationship strength and service personalization. Our findings suggest that faking positive emotions has no bearing on service satisfaction, but suppressing negative emotions interacts with contextual factors to predict customers' service satisfaction, in line with social-functional theories of emotions. Specifically, customers who know the employee well are less sensitive to the negative effects of suppressed negative emotions, and customers in highly personalized service encounters are more sensitive to the negative effects of suppressed negative emotions. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications.