Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(2017): Smile for a while. The effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction. In: Journal of Service Management 28 (2), S. 284-304. DOI: 10.1108/JOSM-11-2015-0372
Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customers' affective states (pleasure, arousal, and dominance) and satisfaction. Building on the stimulus-organism-response framework and theories of emotional contagion and feelings-as-information, the main hypothesis was that a smiling (vs non-smiling) employee significantly increases customer satisfaction through the mediating influence of pleasure. Design/methodology/approach - The study used a quasi-experimental two-group between-subjects design. A total of 210 customers at a large retail bank had a brief service encounter at the store entrance with a smiling (vs non-smiling) bank teller. Customers then went into the bank to do what they came to do. Before leaving the bank, customers completed a survey that included demographic information, affect (pleasure, arousal, and dominance), and measures of customer satisfaction. Findings - A smiling (vs non-smiling) employee had a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. This effect was mediated by pleasure, but also, to a weaker extent, by dominance. These results contradict previous claims that smiling-induced emotional contagion does not remain throughout the completion of a service encounter. Practical implications - Managers should encourage, and potentially train, employees to act in ways associated with positive emotions. Managers could also hire employees based on how good they are at acting and expressing themselves in a genuinely positive manner and create a pleasant store atmosphere so that the feelings and behaviors displayed by frontline employees are genuine rather than inauthentic. Originality/value - This is the first experimental field study to examine the isolated effect that employee-displayed smiling has on customers' affective states and satisfaction. The results provide more direct evidence for the psychological processes justified by emotional contagion and feelings-as-information theories. Furthermore, the finding that dominance mediates the smiling-satisfaction link has never been shown before.
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(2017): The depicted service employee in marketing communications. An empirical assessment of the impact of facial happiness. In: Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 38, S. 186-193. DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.06.006
Abstract: Employees are often depicted in service firms' marketing communications material. This study examines one particular aspect of such depictions: the signaling of happiness in terms of the employees' facial expressions. It is assumed that depicted faces transmit emotional signals, that receivers are hardwired to react to such signals, and that the emotional signals influence the outcomes of the receivers' information processing activities. Our empirical results show that this was indeed the case: employee display of happiness was positively and significantly associated with employee evaluations. The contribution of employee happiness remained significant when other characteristics of the depicted face (e.g., attractiveness) were controlled for. Our results also show that employee evaluations had a positive impact on the overall evaluation of the offer of the employee's firm, and that the employee evaluations mediated the association between employee display of happiness and the evaluation of the offer.
1999
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(1999): The chameleon effect. The perception–behavior link and social interaction. In: Journal of personality and social psychology 76 (6), S. 893-910. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893
Abstract: The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively rind unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment. The authors suggest that the mechanism involved is the perception-behavior link, the recently documented finding (e.g., J. A. Bargh, M. Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996) that the mere perception of another' s behavior automatically increases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior oneself Experiment 1 showed that the motor behavior of participants unintentionally matched that of strangers with whom they worked on a task. Experiment 2 had confederates mimic the posture and movements of participants and showed that mimicry facilitates the smoothness of interactions and increases liking between interaction partners. Experiment 3 showed that dispositionally empathic individuals exhibit the chameleon effect to a greater extent than do other people.
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