| Author: | Ng, Yin Mei |
| Title: | Smiley on chest meets smiley on face : interactive impacts on customer perceptions of employee and service evaluations |
| Advisors: | Chan, Kimmy (MM) Jiang, Yuwei (MM) |
| Degree: | D.B.A. |
| Year: | 2017 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Customer services Customer relations |
| Department: | Faculty of Business |
| Pages: | ix, 177 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Intrigued by the idea of "small details that make big differences" and adopting the perspectives of the social information processing theory, stereotype content model, and parallel-constraint-satisfaction theory, the present research aims to investigate: (1) the effect of a smiley face button worn by an employee on customer service evaluations, (2) the interaction effects of an employee's multiple embodied cues (e.g., an employee's smiley face button and emotion display), and (3) the mediation effects of customer perceptions of the employee's warmth and authenticity in the underlying process of the relationship between an employee's multiple embodied cues (e.g., an employee's smiley face button and emotion display) and customer service evaluations. Results from one field and three laboratory experimental studies provided supports for the hypothesized relationships. Study 1 (a field experiment) confirmed a positive effect of the smiley face button on customers' helping behavior. Study 2, a laboratory experiment in a banking service context, provided supports for a mediating effect of customer perceived warmth. Both Study 3 (a U.S. non-student sample) and Study 4 (a Hong Kong student sample) in a hotel service context supported the moderated mediation effect of employee emotion display. Specifically, the positive effect of a smiley face button on customer service evaluations was (was not) mediated by customer perceived warmth when the employee displayed neutral (positive) emotion. In contrast, the negative effect of a smiley face button on customer service evaluations sequentially was mediated by customer perceived authenticity and warmth only when the employee displayed negative emotion. The present research made several significant theoretical contributions by: (1) proposing that a smiley face button worn by an employee, a seemingly small and simple physical environmental cue, could impact customer service evaluations; (2) exploring the underlying process and the mediating roles of customers' perceived authenticity and warmth of the employee; (3) proposing employee emotion display as a moderator of the effect of the smiley face button and revealing the beneficial and detrimental effects of a smiley face button when interacting with the employee's display of neutral and negative emotion, respectively; and (4) revealing that the differential effects of the smiley face button on customer perceptions of an employee conditional on his/her emotion display are related to the clarity, diagnosticity, and congruence of the information delivered by the employee's multiple embodied cues. This research also provides managerial implications that: (1) a smiley face button can be a simple-to-use and effective tool for organizations to convey their brand value of warmth and differentiate from their similarly competent competitors; (2) organizations should avoid requiring their employees to wear a smiley face button uniformly, but taking into account differences in their employees' emotion display behaviors; (3) managers should be cautious of the clarity, diagnosticity, and congruence of information when managing the use of multiple service environmental cues; and (4) when developing service strategy involving employee embodied cues, companies should first consider encouraging employees to display positive emotion through their internalization of the organizational values. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 991022163353603411.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 1.08 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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