Does a smiling employee make a difference? Do men and women evaluate emotional cues differently in a commercial service setting? Previous work suggests that positive affective displays influence customer responses to service encounters, yet the impact of gender on these evaluations remains unclear. The main objective of this study was to examine whether men and women respond differently to positive and negative affective displays in brief, mundane service encounters. Consistent with North American gender stereotypes and process focus, women in this study were less satisfied than men with negative emotional displays during an otherwise smooth service exchange. Conversely, in process failure situations, negative affective displays had a double whammy impact on men participants’ satisfaction ratings. The implications of these findings to service managers are briefly discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Argyly. (1986), “Cross-Cultural Variations in Relationship Rules,” International Journal of Psychology, 21, 287-315.
2.
Ashforth, B. E. and R. H. Humphrey (1993),“Emotional Labor in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity,” Journal of Management Review, 18, 88-115.
3.
Bettencourt, L. A. and S. W. Brown (2001), “Contact Employees: Relationships among Workplace Fairness, Job Satisfaction and Prosocial Service Behaviors,” Journal of Retailing, 73, 39-61.
4.
Bitner, M., B. H. Booms, and M. S. Tretrault (1990), “The Service Encounter: Diagnosing Favorable and Unfavorable Incidents,” Journal of Marketing, 54, 71-84.
5.
Blackmore, J. (1996), “Doing ‘Emotional Labour’in the Education Market Place: Stories from the Field of Women in Management,” Discourse, 17, 337-349.
6.
Blodgett, J. G., D. J. Hill, and S. Tax (1997), “The Effects of Distributive, Procedural and Interactional Justice on Postcomplaint Behavior,” Journal of Retailing, 73 (2), 185-210.
7.
Blodgett, J. G., D. J. Hill, S. Tax, K. Wakefield, and J. Barnes (1995), “The Effects of Customer Service on Consumer Complaining Behavior,” Journal of Services Marketing, 9 (4), 31-42.
8.
Bond, M. (1996), The Handbook of Chinese Psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
9.
Chodorow, N. (1978), The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10.
Czepiel, John (1990), “Service Encounters and Service Relationships: Implications for Research,” Journal of Business Research, 20,13-21.
11.
Deaux, K. (1984), “From Individual Differences to Social Categories: Analysis of a Decade’s Research on Gender,” American Psychologist, 39, 105-116.
12.
Deaux, K. and B. Major (1982), “Individual Difference sin Justice Behavior,” in Equity and Justice in Social Behavior, J. Greenberg and R. Cohen, eds. New York: Academic Press, 43-76.
13.
Ekman, P. and W. V. Friesen (1975), Unmasking the Face. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
14.
Ekman, P. and W. V. Friesen (1982), “Felt, False, and Miserable Smiles,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 6 (4), 238-252.
15.
Fischer, E. and S. Arnold (1990), “More Than a Labor of Love: Gender Roles and Christmas Gift Shopping,” Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (December), 333-345.
16.
Fiske, Susan and S. Taylor (1991), Social Cognition, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
17.
Frank, M. G., P. Ekman, and W. V. Friesen (1993), “Behavioral Markers and Recognizability of the Smile of Enjoyment,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 83-93.
18.
George, J. M. (1998), “Salesperson Mood at Work: Implications for Helping Customers,” Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 3, 23-30.
19.
Gilligan, C. (1982), In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
20.
Grandey, A. (2000), “Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional Labor,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5 (1), 95-110.
21.
Gronroos, C. (1990), Service Management and Strategy: Marketing the Moments of Truth in Service Competition. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
22.
Hall, Elaine (1993), “Smiling, Deferring and Flirting,” Work and Occupations, 20 (4), 452-471.
23.
Hall, J. A. (1984), Nonverbal sex differences. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
24.
Hecht, M. A. and M. LaFrance (1998), “License or Obligation to Smile: The Effect of Power and Sex and Amount and Type of Smiling.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24 (12), 1332-1342.
25.
Hochschild, A. R. (1983), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.
26.
Hocutt, M., G. Chakraborty, and J. Mowen (1997), “The Impact of Perceived Justice on Customer Satisfaction and Intention to Complain in a Service Recovery,” Advances in Consumer Research, 24 (4), 57-463.
27.
Hoffman, K. D., S. W. Kelley, and H. M. Rotalsky (1995), “Tracking Service Failures and Employee Recovery Efforts,” Journal of Services Marketing, 9 (2), 49-61.
Iacobucci, Dawn and Amy Ostrom (1993), “Gender Differences in the Impact of Core and Relational Aspects of Services on the Evaluation of Service Encounters,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2 (3), 257-286.
30.
Johnson, P. B. and J. D. Goodchilds (1976), “How Women Get Their way.” Psychology Today, 10, 69-70.
31.
Klaus, Peter (1985), “Quality Epiphenomenon: The Conceptual Understanding of Quality in Face-to-Face Service Encounters,” in The Service Encounter: Managing Employee/Customer Interaction in Service Business, C. Surprenant and M. Solomon. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 17-33.
32.
Kristof, Amy (1996),“Person-Organization Fit: An Integrative Review of Its Conceptualizations, Measurement, and Implications,” Personnel Psychology, 49 (1), 1-49.
33.
Kulik, Carol and Robert Holbrook (2000),“Demographics in Service Encounters: Effects of Racial and Gender Congruence on Perceived Fairness,” Social Justice Research, 13 (4), 375-402.
34.
Mattila, Anna and Cathy Enz (2002), “The Role of Emotions in Service Encounters,” Journal of Service Research, 4 (4), 268-277.
35.
Mohr, L. and M. Bitner (1995),“The Role of Employee Effort in Satisfaction with Service Transactions,” Journal of Business Research, 32 (2), 239-252.
36.
Mohr, L., M. Bitner and S. Henson (1996), “Impact of Employee Gender and Job Congruency on Customer Satisfaction,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 5 (2), 161-187.
37.
Parasuraman, A., V. A. Zeithaml, and L. L. Berry (1985), “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research,” Journal of Marketing, 49 (4), 41-50.
38.
Pugh, S. D. (2001), “Service with a Smile: Emotional Contagion in the Service Encounter,” Academy of Management Journal, 44 (5), 1018-1027.
39.
Price, L. L., E. J. Arnould, and S. L. Deibler (1995), “Consumers’ Emotional Responses to Service Encounters: The Influence of the Service Encounter,” International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6 (3), 34-63.
40.
Rafaeli, A. and R. I. Sutton (1987), “Expression of Emotion as Part of the Work Role,” Academy of Management Review, 12, 23-37.
41.
Rafaeli, A. and R. I. Sutton (1989), “The Expression of Emotion in Organizational Life,” in Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 11, L. L. Cummings and Barry Staw, eds. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1-42.
42.
Schmitt, Bernd, F. LeClerc, and L. Dube-Rioux (1988), “Sex Typing and Gender Schema Theory,” Journal of Consumer Research, 15 (June), 122-128.
43.
Smith, Amy, Ruth Bolton, and Janet Wagner (1999), “A Model of Customer Satisfaction with Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery,” Journal of Marketing Research, 34 (August), 356-372.
44.
Sparks, Beverley and V. Callan (1996),“Service Breakdowns and Service Evaluations: The Role of Consumer Attributions,” Journal of Hospitality and Leisure Marketing, 4 (2), 3-24.
45.
Spence, J. and R. Helmreich (1978), Masculinity and Femininity: Their Psychological Dimensions, Correlates and Antecedents. Austin: University of Texas Press.
46.
Sprecher, Susan and C. Sedikides (1993),“Gender Differences in Perceptions of Emotionality: The Case of Close Heterosexual Relationships,” Sex Roles, 28, 511-530.
47.
Stead, B. and G. Zinkhan (1986), “Service Priority in Department Stores: The Effects of Customer Gender and Dress,” Sex Roles, 15, 601-611.
48.
Surprenant, Carol and M. Solomon (1987), “Predictability and Personalization in the Service Encounter,” Journal of Marketing, 51, 86-96.
49.
Tidd, K. L. and J. S. Lockard (1978), “Monetary Significance of the Affiliative Smile: A Case for Reciprocal Altruism,” Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 11, 344-346.
50.
Timmers, M., A. H. Fischer, and A. S. R. Manstead (1998), “Gender Differences in Motives for Regulating Emotions,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24 (9), 974-985.
51.
Tsai, W. (2001), “Determinants and Consequences of Employee Displayed Positive Emotions,” Journal of Management, 27(4),497-512.
52.
Tsai, W. and Y.-M. Huang (2001), “Mechanisms Linking Employee Displayed Positive Emotions and Customer Behavioral Intentions,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 1001-1008.
53.
Van Maanen, J. and G. Kunda (1989), “Real Feelings: Emotional Expression and Organizational Culture,” Research in Organizational Behavior, 11, 43-103.
54.
Veroff, J., L. McClelland, and D. Ruhland (1975), “Varieties of Achievement Motivation,” in Women and Achievement, M. Mednick, S. Tangri, and L. Hoffmna, eds. New York: John Wiley.
55.
Wharton, A. S. (1993), “The Affective Consequences of Service Work: Managing Emotions on the Job,” Work and Occupations, 20,205-232.
56.
Wharton, A. S. and R. J. Erickson (1993), “The Consequences of Caring: Exploring the Links between Women’s Job and Family Emotion Work,” The Sociological Quarterly, 36 (2), 273-296.
57.
Woodruff, R., E. Cadotte, and R. Jenkins (1983), “Modeling Consumer Satisfaction Processes Using Experience-Based Norms,” Journal of Marketing Research, 20 (August), 296-304.
58.
Yavas, Ugur, Zeynep Bilgin, and Donald Shemwell (1999), “Service Quality and Relationship-Oriented Outcomes in the Hair-Care Services: An Analysis of Differences between Males and Females,” Journal of Professional Services Marketing, 19 (1), 15-29.
