Employees' positive affective displays have been widely used as a strategic tool to enhance service experience and strengthen customer relationships. Companies have primarily focused their employee training programs on two dimensions of display: intensity and authenticity. Yet there is limited research on when, how, and why these two dimensions affect customer reactions. Drawing on the emotions as social information (EASI) framework (Van Kleef, 2009), we develop a conceptual model in which display intensity and display authenticity differentially influence customer loyalty by changing customers' affective reactions and cognitive appraisals. Further, we propose that the relative impact of either dimension depends on customers' motivation to understand the environment deeply and accurately (i.e., their epistemic motivation). We tested our model in one field study and one laboratory study. Results across these two studies provide consistent support for the proposed model and advance our understanding about how different dimensions of employees' positive affective displays enhance customer reactions. Thus, findings of this research contribute to knowledge on the interpersonal effects of emotions in customer-employee interactions. We call these traits 'The Core Four'-eye contact, speaking enthusiastically, smiling, and engaging the customer.-Ronnie Clotfelter, owner and operator of Chick-fil-A, Sharpsburg, Georgia Focus on winning one customer at a time. Be honest and sincere.
Many researchers have demonstrated the existence of an attraction effect that increases the choice probability of an existing “target” brand by the introduction of a relatively inferior “decoy” brand. This study develops a causal model that links antecedent variables with the attraction effect. We find that the attraction effect is explained to a considerable extent by changes in the following seven variables: (1) information relevance or stimulus meaningfulness, (2) product class knowledge, (3) task involvement, (4) perceived similarity between decoy and target, (5) relative brand preference, (6) share captured by decoy brand, and (7) perceived decoy popularity. The overall results were consistent across product classes studied, which included beer, cars, and TV sets. The popularity explanation for attraction effect, alluded to by Huber, Payne, and Puto (1982), was tested and found to hold true.
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