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Extensive research has examined how to make broadcast advertising as effective as possible. However, one area of advertising that has received little research is the effect of the announcer or spokesperson's voice on consumers’ reactions to the ad or the product being advertised. In this paper, we examine the effect of the announcer's voice quality, or an overall impression of his or her voice, on consumers’ purchasing intentions for a new service. We find that female listeners are most likely to purchase this service when they hear it advertised by a man who has a creaky voice, but least likely to purchase it when they hear it advertised by a woman with a creaky voice. Other voice qualities produce more moderate results. Men, in contrast, are relatively insensitive to the effect of voice quality.

Providing social support is a critical part of being in a relationship with someone, but people often struggle to support loved ones in person. In this paper, we show how givers can use gifts to compensate for not providing in‐person social support. Study 1 shows that when it is prohibitively difficult for givers to provide in‐person support, they give more expensive gifts. Study 2 replicates this effect for likelihood to give a gift and shows it is not due to social desirability. Studies 3, 4a, and 4b find that guilt over not having provided adequate support drives people to give gifts, and that giving gifts partially relieves givers' feelings of guilt. Studies 5 and 6 examine moderation. In Study 5, people only compensate for a lack of in‐person support with a gift when they have a strong obligation to support the recipient because they are close to them. Study 6 shows that money does not substitute for in‐person support. We show the role of gifts in enhancing givers' wellbeing and provide new customer insights to managers on reasons people purchase gifts.

Purpose This paper aims to show that whether new customers respond well or poorly to small talk at the beginning of a service encounter depends on their relationship orientation, i.e. how exchange or communally oriented they are. The authors provide service providers with tactics to identify first-time customers’ relationship orientation or set customers’ small talk expectations and thus help them use small talk more effectively. Design/methodology/approach The authors examine the effect of small talk and relationship orientation on customer intentions to use a service provider in three experiments and one cross-sectional survey. The scenario-based experiments show causality and the effect in online and in-person scenarios. The survey replicates the effect among current customers of a small business. Findings Communally oriented customers respond positively to small talk, but exchange-oriented customers respond negatively to it. Mediation analyses reveal this occurs because small talk differentially leads to initial feelings of rapport and impatience for people high (versus low) in relationship orientation. Practical implications Service providers should consider customers’ relationship orientation before starting a conversation with small talk. The authors find providers can identify exchange-oriented customers by their choice of meeting format (in-person v. video chat). Managers can also use marketing materials to attract customers with a specific relationship orientation or to set customer expectations for small talk in the interaction. Originality/value Prior research has largely shown benefits to small talk, but the authors show significant downsides for some customers and to the best of the authors’ knowledge are the first to show process evidence of why these drawbacks occur.