Smile for a while: the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction

Abstract

PostprintThis is the accepted version of a paper published in Journal of Service Management. This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. Citation for the original published paper (version of record):Otterbring, T. (2017) Smile for a while: the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction. Journal of Service Management, 28(2): 284-304https://doi.org/10.1108/ JOSM-11-2015-0372 Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. Permanent link to this version:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-65528 1 Smile for a while: The effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction IntroductionThe face is believed to be the primary non-verbal channel for the communication of emotions (Small and Verrochi, 2009), with smiling being the most direct sign of positive emotions (Ekman, 1992). Smiling is a universal display (Darwin, 1872(Darwin, /1965 Ekman and Friesen, 1969; Lau, 1982) and is cross-culturally understood as a sign of happiness and joy (Ekman, 1992).Therefore, there is a very strong agreement (typically above 90 percent) between people from Western and Eastern cultures, independent of their age and gender, in determining whether an individual is happy or not, solely by looking at the individual's face (e.g., Ekman and Friesen, 1971; Ekman et al., 1987). Research also shows that all positive emotions share one single facial expression: a particular type of smile (Ekman, 1993). Thus, unlike many other expressions, smiling represents one of our few basic emotions (Ekman, 1992) and is collectively understood as a sign of friendliness, generosity, and other altruistic behaviors (Brown et al., 2003; Gabriel et al., 2015; Grandey and Gabriel, 2015; Lau, 1982;Mehu et al., 2008).Applied to a consumer context, many retail and service settings explicitly require their employees to offer "service with a smile" (Barger and Grandey, 2006; Beal et al., 2006; Grandey and Gabriel, 2015) and customers associate such behavior with high-quality service (Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987). In their conceptual framework of emotions as part of the work role, Rafaeli and Sutton (1987) argued that positive employee-displayed emotions should result in three different classes of positive outcomes from the organization's perspective:immediate gains (short-term effects such as sales), encore gains (long-term effects such as store loyalty), and contagion gains (long-term effects such as positive word-of-mouth). In support of these claims, positive employee-displayed emotions and behaviors (such as 2 smiling, greeting, expressing gratitude, and establishing eye contact with customers) increase customers' positive affect (Pugh, 2001;Trougakos et al., 2011), time spent in the store (Tsai and Huang, 2002), and actual consumption or tipping behavior (Otterbring et al., 2013a;Tidd and Lockard, 1978). Furthermore, positive employee-displayed emot...

Internal and External Determinants of Consumer Engagement in Sustainable Consumption

“…According to Koklič [27], "the SOR paradigm has served as a strong guideline for studies on consumer decision-making for decades" [27] (p. 10). Studies that apply SOR logic usually take some external factors (e.g., shopping environment) as stimulus (cause); organism is usually defined as the emotional state of an individual that can cause different consumer reactions (effects); response often implies different kinds of approach or avoidance behaviors [27][28][29][30]. In the traditional SOR model, the "stimulus" part consisted of environmental stimuli.…”

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

“…Items were combined to form an index of customer satisfaction (α = 0.82). Pleasure was measured with three semantic differentials (displeased–pleased, unhappy–happy, not joyful–joyful) from Otterbring (), using the same response format, with the items being collapsed to form a pleasure index (α = 0.74) . Loyalty intentions were measured with the three variables reflecting stated likelihood to return to the store in the future, make a future purchase in the store, and recommend the store to a friend (cf.…”

“…Applied to retail and service settings, approach behaviors include willingness to move toward, explore, return to, and spend time and money in a store, whereas avoidance behaviors represent the opposite (Donovan & Rossiter, ; Musgrove, ). Although these responses are referred to as behaviors, they also include (un‐) favorable attitudes, (dis‐) liking, and (dis‐) satisfaction (Mehrabian & Russell, ; Otterbring, ).…”

“…Pleasure describes the extent to which an individual feels pleased, joyful, and happy; arousal corresponds to feelings of excitement, stimulation, and activity; and dominance represents whether the individual feels influential, in control of, and free to act in a given situation (Donovan & Rossiter, ; Otterbring, ; Russell & Mehrabian, ). Support for the claim that these affective dimensions should mediate the effect of environmental stimuli on customers’ behavioral responses has been somewhat mixed, with the exception of pleasure, which has been found to exert the strongest and most consistent impact on customers’ approach‐avoidance behaviors (e.g., Chebat, Gelinas‐Chebat, Vaninski, & Filiatrault, ; Donovan & Rossiter, ; Donovan, Rossiter, Marcoolyn, & Nesdale, ; Otterbring, ). Indeed, the perceived pleasantness induced by the store environment “is a very powerful determinant of approach‐avoidance behaviors” (Donovan & Rossiter, , p. 54), and is therefore the primary affective dimension of interest in the current investigation.…”

The cross-cultural impact of the ingenuine smiling celebrity in online advertising

“…This might increase the risk of varying consumer behaviour (Weker, 2016;Choi & Lewis, 2017). While a number of studies investigated the effects of smiles on consumers mostly in service industries (e.g., Otterbring, 2017), none integrated the potential effect of celebrity endorsers' smiles in online advertising settings yet.…”