Does Service Employees’ Appearance Affect the Healthiness of Food Choice?

Abstract

Derived from previous research on social influence on food consumption and social comparison theory, this article examines the effect of service employees' appearance on consumers' food choice using an experimental study, involving a video manipulation and eye-tracking technique. The video shows a menu being proffered by a waitress whose degree of apparent healthiness varies (healthy, overweight, unhealthy lifestyle). The menu contains both healthy and unhealthy meal alternatives. The analysis of participants' eye movements demonstrated that exposure to the overweight employee did not stimulate greater (i.e., earlier or longer) attention to unhealthy meal alternatives, whereas exposure to the employee who displayed an unhealthy lifestyle did. These findings have social and managerial implications: The postulated stigma according to which the presence of overweight others encourages unhealthy eating appears questionable. Service providers that might secretly hire according to body weight have no grounds to do so. In contrast, employees signaling an unhealthy lifestyle through their style choices prompt patrons to pay more attention to unhealthy meal alternatives. Food service providers might want to take this factor into consideration and actively manage the aspects that can be altered by simple measures.

The interplay of customer experience and commitment

“…For instance, the growing use of neurophysiological methods enhances our understanding of consumer behavior within servicescapes. The use of eye tracking technology, for instance, is established in studies of shelf space and layouts (Chandon et al, 2009;Huneke et al, 2015). Similarly, biometrics have grown in popularity, capturing physiological and behavioral responses to external stimuli (Potter and Bolls, 2012).…”

Neuroscience in service research: an overview and discussion of its possibilities

“…Few researchers applied neuro-tools to the understanding of service research problems (e.g., Boshoff, 2012Boshoff, , 2017Huneke et al, 2015). In this section of the paper, we discuss a nonexhaustive list of service research topics where neuro-insights may be particularly useful, building on recent (service) research agendas (e.g., Bolton et al, 2018;De Keyser et al, 2019;Lemon and Verhoef, 2016;Ostrom et al, 2015;Van Vaerenbergh et al, 2019;Voorhees et al, 2017;Wirtz et al, 2018).…”

“…The neuroscientific method has shown valuable to advance a wide variety of scientific (sub)domains including consumer behavior, organizational behavior, and psychology (e.g., Butler et al, 2016;Camerer and Yoon, 2015;Harris et al, 2018;Murray and Antonakis, 2019). In the service field, however, we have only found a few initial neuroscience applications (e.g., Boshoff, 2012Boshoff, , 2017Huneke et al, 2015). Recently, several calls have been launched to fuse service research with neuroscientific insights (e.g., De Keyser et al, 2015;Lemon and Verhoef, 2016;Van Vaerenbergh et al, 2019).…”

Clothes, condoms, and customer satisfaction: The effect of employee mere presence on customer satisfaction depends on the shopping situation

“…Several studies have shown that a wide array of employee behaviors and characteristics can influence consumer behavior. Among the measures found to produce thought-provoking effects in various sales settings are employee attributes ranging from bust size (Lynn, 2009), tattoos (Huneke, Benoit, Shams, & Gustafsson, 2015), and lipstick (Guéguen & Jacob, 2012) to athletic appearance (Otterbring, Ringler, Sirianni, & Gustafsson, 2018), posture (Lynn & Mynier, 1993), and interpersonal touch (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984), all of which exert a powerful impact on key customer outcomes. The same holds for verbal tactics, such as question-based nudging strategies (Kristensson, Wästlund, & Söderlund, 2017), greetings (Otterbring, Ringler, Sirianni, & Gustafsson, 2013), and employee-initiated self-disclosure (Andersson, Gustafsson, Kristensson, & Wästlund, 2016).…”