Description
To discuss the importance of the relationship between service providers’ positive affective
displays, the value of a “real” smile within the consumers’ perception of authentic service delivery and
how these relate to satisfaction and future intentions.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Exploring consumers' responses to service providers' positive affective displays
Sandra Gountas Michael T. Ewing J ohn I. Gountas
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To cite this document:
Sandra Gountas Michael T. Ewing J ohn I. Gountas, (2007),"Exploring consumers' responses to service
providers' positive affective displays", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research,
Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 97 - 109
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Exploring consumers’ responses
to service providers’ positive
affective displays
Sandra Gountas
Department of Management and Marketing, Business School,
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Michael T. Ewing
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics,
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and
John I. Gountas
Department of Management and Marketing, Business School,
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – To discuss the importance of the relationship between service providers’ positive affective
displays, the value of a “real” smile within the consumers’ perception of authentic service delivery and
how these relate to satisfaction and future intentions.
Design/methodology/approach – The literature reviewdiscusses underpinning theory concerning
the role of expressive display in service provision. In particular the importance of authenticity is
explored through qualitative and quantitative research in an extended duration service setting. The
quantitative data are analysed using SPSS and path modelling (AMOS).
Findings – The ?ndings indicate a strong positive relationship between affective displays (including
the “real” smile), overall service satisfaction and life satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications – The study advances existing research and raises
suggestions for future research including how personality differences may affect the service
provider’s ability to interact with their customers appropriately.
Practical implications – The wider implications for marketing practitioners are concerned with the
services marketing mix. The authors suggest ways that managers may improve interactive service
standards.
Originality/value – The literature reveals no other study that has quanti?ed the value of a “real”
smile within expressive display.
Keywords Customer satisfaction, Customer services quality, Service delivery, Airlines
Paper type Research paper
The role of expressive display in service provision
Research has shown that positive affective displays such as smiling, displaying
friendliness and genuine concern for clients has positive outcomes such as reported
satisfaction and intention to repurchase (Parasuraman et al., 1985; Ashforth and
Humphrey, 1993; Dubinsky, 1994; Price et al., 1999; Pugh, 2001; Grandey, 2003;
Grandey et al., 2002). In extended duration services such as organized holidays,
positive affective displays perceived to be genuine strongly enhance consumers’
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1750-6182.htm
Exploring
consumers’
responses
97
Received June 2005
Revised October 2005
Accepted July 2006
International Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research
Vol. 1 No. 1, 2007
pp. 97-109
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1750-6182
DOI 10.1108/17506180710729637
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enjoyment of the total experience (Price et al., 1999). Although many researchers
believe that authentic displays of the expression from service providers and general
impression management are important, there is very little research to measure the
effects of these variables on consumer satisfaction. There is no quantitative
research, in the literature, for aspects, such as the impact of service provider’s
sincere smiles on perceived consumer satisfaction (Grandey et al., 2002; Grandey,
2003).
Interpersonal satisfaction is an important heuristic within the overall service
experience and positive, happy expressions, perceived to be sincere, elicit a more
heuristic processing style than serious expressions, fostering trust and acceptance
whereas more sombre expressions call for further cognition or evaluation (Ottati et al.,
1997; Krull and Dill, 1998). Therefore, in the context of services marketing, the
perception of the service provider’s expressive display, including an impression of
willingness, courtesy and sincerity, may lead to overall service satisfaction and
intention to repurchase. Whereas complex evaluation methods present a danger for
service organizations as a more thoughtful approach to service evaluation may result
in the consumer being less enthusiastic about the service received.
Logically, it follows that less positive consumer responses to service will have a
negative impact on the consumer’s overall evaluation and intention to repurchase.
Hence, the observation of interpersonal relationships, between service providers and
consumers, are becoming increasingly important (Preis, 2003; Fournier and Mick, 1999;
Bagozzi, 2000; Bitner, 1990):
H1. The service provider’s expressive display positively in?uences service
satisfaction.
H2. The service providers’ expressive display positively in?uences the likelihood
of the consumer choosing the service again (intention to repurchase).
Expressive display
Neal et al. (1999) distinguish between the instrumental and expressive indicators of
satisfaction. The expressive indicators are the psychological interpretation of a
product or the affective component that will result in the ultimate measure of
satisfaction. Neal et al. (1999) cite several studies that indicate that the expressive
displays are more important in determining satisfaction than instrumental indicators.
The consumer’s perception of the marketers’ attitude may determine the consumer’s
attitudes towards the ?rm and in some circumstances the consumer’s perceptions of
concepts such as social regard (genuineness, respect, deference, and interest) will be the
de?ning predictor of satisfaction (Butcher et al., 2003).
Individuals perceive expressive display, also viewed as emotional expressiveness,
through the combination of “facial expressions, voice, gestures, and body movement to
transmit emotions” (Friedman et al., 1980). Service employees learn and practice
impression management as part of their jobs and companies often use service scripts in
an attempt to standardize service. Yet, in order to in?uence consumers, expressive
displays must be sincere as the perception of insincerity is not conducive to positive
service evaluation (Grandey et al., 2002; Pugh, 2001; Price et al., 1999; Dubinsky, 1994;
Lynch, 1992).
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Expressive display and emotional contagion
Displaying friendliness and positive emotions are part of many service product
offerings and in service work; a positive, smiling disposition is often part of the job and
not always a true re?ection of the service provider’s mood state (Hochschild, 1983;
Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987). The service provider’s efforts need to appear sincere even
though the clients may understand that this display is not sincere but, simply, part of
the job (Hochschild, 1983). Simply assuming that a positive expressive display from a
service employee is genuine may be wrong, despite the norms of appropriate emotion
expression learned by service employees (Pugh, 2001).
During an interaction between two people, mimicry of expression takes place and
this is a dynamic process. Each person involved in the process will perceive the other’s
expressive display and respond. Greater consumer satisfaction occurs if the consumer
perceives the service provider’s response to be appropriate (Dube and Menon, 2000).
Obviously, some service situations such as the provision of funeral services require a
more sensitive and temperate approach and in some cases, such as the provision of
medical services may require the display of a range of emotions changing and adapting
rapidly according to each individual patient’s personal condition.
When the consumer “catches” the emotions that the sender displays, this could be
described as emotional contagion. The power of emotional contagion is a
much-pondered topic and evidence shows that people do tend to imitate one
another’s facial expressions, body language or postures, vocal tones and expressions.
The process of emotional contagion is not always easy to control and is unconscious
emanating from facial and bodily movement that is imperceptible to the human eye
(Hat?eld et al., 1994). These contentions emphasize the need for service organizations
and their employees to be aware of the different ways in which consumers perceive
expressive display and to pay particular attention to those emotions that are in their
control.
Past research has indicated that socialization of staff, through punishment and
reward are likely to encourage the display of desired emotions (Rafaeli and Sutton,
1987; Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993). However, studies have shown that the true inner
feelings of the service provider will “leak” because it is dif?cult to display fake
emotions for a sustained period of time (Ekman et al., 1988; Ambady and Rosenthal,
1992). Therefore, genuine or sincere feelings may be an implicit requirement of service
providers’ expressive display to avoid consumers detecting unsatisfactory, fake
performances.
Expressive display and sincerity
Goffman (1959, p. 15) refers to “belief in the part one is playing.” The need for belief and
trust implies that emotions perceived as insincere, consciously or unconsciously will
not be useful in in?uencing consumers to perceive the service offering positively.
Expressive display, sincerity and their role in service provision need closer
consideration in services management and consumer satisfaction research. Grandey
et al. (2002) conducted experimental research to test, amongst other things, if a service
employee with a fake smile will be perceived as less friendly, therefore “worse” than an
employee with a genuine smile. The ?ndings of the research indicate that perceived
authenticity is important and positively relates to the impression of friendliness formed
about the server. In addition, perceived authenticity related to the overall satisfaction
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with the service experience and related to greater satisfaction than perceived fake
performance. Grandey et al. (2002) remarked on the lack of research in this area and
their literature search revealed no quantitative research examining whether a service
provider’s genuine smile has an impact on overall service satisfaction. A further search
by the authors also failed to ?nd this:
H3. The perception of a service provider’s “real” smile positively in?uences
service satisfaction.
The ?ndings of Grandey’s (2003) study indicate that authenticity or sincerity has direct
and indirect effects on satisfaction evaluation. This means that sincerity, as a broader
concept embraces the whole performance including the expression of the service
provider, personal attributes of the provider and the functional aspects of the actual
task delivery is an important area deserving further research.
The personal and organisational impacts of service providers’ expressive
display
An advantageous outcome of positive display, from the service employees’ perspective,
is that positively perceived displays tend to result in consumers giving higher rewards
or “tips” (Pugh, 2001; Tsai, 2001; Tsai and Huang, 2002). When considering the effects
of a particular desirable behavior, the potential impact of the opposite, negative
behavior requires equal thought. False displays may be detected and have a negative
effect on consumer evaluation and insincerity has been noted to result in lower ratings
being given to “guilty” staff in customer surveys (Grandey, 2003). Managers often use
customer surveys as a management decision-making tool for recognizing and
rewarding staff effort, so the impact of negative consumer evaluation may have
longer-term consequences for the service provider than merely providing feedback, for
the organization, about a discrete period of service provision.
The interaction with service providers may have further reaching consequences for
consumers also as their appraisal of and response to staff may represent more than a
simple reaction to good or bad service as the desire for authentic, positive displays may
relate to a more fundamental human need. For example, Aaker (1997) suggests that
sincerity taps an innate aspect of human personality, which implies a link between the
way in which one’s treatment as a consumer and overall life satisfaction:
H4. The service provider’s expressive display positively in?uences reported life
satisfaction.
Indeed, several authors have referred to the need to examine consumer satisfaction as a
function of life satisfaction in general (Meadows et al., 1992; Spreng et al., 1996;
Fournier and Mick, 1999; Neal et al., 1999). The model developed by Neal et al. (1999,
p. 154), measures if leisure satisfaction “captures the leisure experience across a variety
of situations over a period of time.” This measurement includes macro dimensions and
measures as well as the micro. It is appropriate to take a micro/macro approach that
acknowledged the variability and instability of service provision over different
duration. The aforementioned model considers that leisure is a component of life
satisfaction. This being the case, all types of leisure activity, which for some includes
any act of consumption, may be said to be an intrinsic part of the overall perception of
life satisfaction or quality of life:
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H5. Life Satisfaction in?uences service satisfaction reports.
This is based on the basic premise that “life satisfaction is functionally related to
satisfaction with all of life’s domains and sub-domains” (Neal et al., 1999, p. 154).
Studies have shown that satisfaction occurs at different levels and that all domains
contribute towards overall satisfaction (Andrews and Withey, 1976; Dube and Menon,
2000; Schwartz, 1990).
Methodology
The study utilizes both qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research
stage included expert interviews with airline management and a series of ten focus
groups comprising airline passengers with an average of ten respondents per focus
group (n ¼ 110). A loosely structured interview guide explored the components of
consumer satisfaction with airline services including instrumental and expressive
variables. The focus group ?ndings indicated that expressive display and perceived
sincerity are important and in?uential in the consumer’s overall assessment of service
provision and marketing communications.
Based on the focus group ?ndings, the questionnaire aims to measure the
relationships between the service variables, consumer satisfaction, life satisfaction,
and intention to repurchase. Forty-?ve items, hypothesized to contribute towards the
consumer’s satisfaction response, were tested. The items draw upon the extant
literature concerned with customer satisfaction during service experiences. The items
attempt to measure the instrumental and expressive aspects of service provision. A
major northern hemisphere leisure airline provided the respondents for the original
survey in 2000. A southern hemisphere airline agreed to administer a re?ned version of
the original survey in 2003. The survey took place on range of the airline’s major
domestic and international destinations during August-December 2003. Following the
airline’s normal method of sampling, there were between ?ve and ten questionnaires
distributed on each ?ight to seat numbers pre-assigned by the marketing research
manager. This ensured that service personnel were not involved in the selection of the
consumers asked to participate in the survey. The ?ndings reported, in this paper, are
those concerned with the relationships between service providers’ expressive display,
consumers’ reported life satisfaction, overall service satisfaction and intention to
repurchase.
Limitations
The key limitations of the survey are that it took place in a single industry and,
therefore, there can be no claims about replicability or transferability to other service
situations.
The construct items
Expressive display uses the following items developed from developed from
conducting the focus groups in the exploratory stage which considered the service
attributes deemed important by the participants; and a review of the literature
concerned primarily with service providers’ sincere expressive display, found in the
marketing and psychology literature (Cronbach a ¼ 0.94):
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Q12. The behavior and attitude of the crew instills con?dence in you.
Q14. The crew is courteous.
Q16. The crew members show sincere willingness to help the passengers.
Q20. The crew members give real, friendly smiles.
Q25. The crew members show genuine care for the passengers.
Q28. The crew members are positive towards the passengers.
The satisfaction with life scale uses the items, below, adapted from the satisfaction
with life scale (SWLS) (Diener, 1984) (Cronbach a ¼ 0.87):
Q26. The conditions of my life are excellent.
Q29. I have most of the things I want in life.
Q41. In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
Q42. I am satis?ed with my life.
Q43. If I could live my live again, I would change almost nothing.
Simple statements measure the perceived level of overall satisfaction and likelihood of
repurchasing. The respondents rated the items using a ten-point Likert scale with
anchors of strongly disagree and strongly agree. The ten-point scale was chosen for its
ease of use and because ten-point scales have previously been shown to have a high
predictive and convergent validity (Parasuraman, 1995). The ten-point scale allows the
participant to express their evaluation with a greater degree of differentiation.
Response rates
In its regular customer satisfaction research, the airline usually achieves a 40 percent
rate of return in completed questionnaires. The 3,000 questionnaires distributed for
this study yielded 1,232, which represents a return rate of 41 percent. Seventy-two of
the questionnaires were unusable due to excessive missing values or the respondent
reported being less than 16 years old. This left 1,160 useable questionnaires reducing
the successful response rate to 39 percent which is still well above the average response
rate for this industry and comparable to the airline’s normal response rate.
Data analysis
SPSS and path analysis (AMOS) are the software programs chosen to examine the
data. Bivariate correlations and multiple regressions examined the relevance of the
expressive display items to overall satisfaction and intention to repurchase.
A path analysis examines the relationships between the variables. Path analysis is
the original SEM technique that aims to estimate causal relationships between
observed variables. The overall aim of path analysis is “to estimate causal versus
non-causal aspects of observed correlations” (Kline, 1998, p. 96; Grapentine, 2000). Path
analysis allows the direct and indirect effects of the analyzed models. This can be
invaluable to researchers and practitioners as measurement of indirect effects allows
the researcher to understand the importance and strength of mediating variables.
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In complex product offerings, as many services are, many variables are likely to have
both direct and indirect impacts on outcomes.
Clearly, knowledge of how and where variables in?uence each other is very useful,
especially when service providers/marketers are able to de?ne the indirect and direct
effect of such variables, understand what and which variables they may be able to
in?uence, and develop a better framework for intervention at the appropriate stage of
the service. In fact, “if an indirect effect does not receive proper attention, the
relationship between two variables of interest may not be fully considered” (Raykov
and Marcoulides, 2000, p. 7). In many instances where peripheral information or
variables may in?uence attitudes, for example in the case of political campaigns media
induced perceptions of politicians often in?uences voters more than the politician’s
of?cial policies (Holbert and Stephenson, 2003).
Findings
Table I indicates that each scale item correlates strongly with all others but the
correlations are not so high as to indicate collinearity amongst the items. The next step
was to transform the scale items for life satisfaction and expressive display into
summated or composite variables in preparation for the construction of the path
model.
The path model in Figure 1 sets out the relationships between the composite
variables.
The results indicate that the model is a good ?t (x
2
¼ 1.992, df ¼ 1, p ¼ 0.16,
GFI ¼ 0.999, AGFI ¼ 0.991, NFI ¼ 0.999, TLI ¼ 0.996, CFI ¼ 0.999,
RMSEA¼0.029). The following table shows the direct, indirect and total effects of
expressive display associated with the other variables and their signi?cance:
Table II shows that the direct and indirect effects of expressive display associated
with the other variables have signi?cant t-values and support the predicted direction of
the associations in all cases. Expressive display has a highly signi?cant direct effect on
both reported life satisfaction (r
2
¼ 0.273) and a highly signi?cant overall service
satisfaction (r
2
¼ 0.610). A clear relationship between expressive display and the
Intention to repurchase both directly and via overall satisfaction exists (r
2
¼ 0.160
(signi?cant) and r
2
¼ 0.380 (highly signi?cant), respectively).
Table III shows three items to be signi?cant when regressed with overall
satisfaction:
Q12. The behavior and attitude of airline crew instills con?dence in you
(r
2
¼ 0.189).
Q20. The crew give real, friendly smiles (r
2
¼ 0.107).
Q25. The crew show genuine care for the passengers (r
2
¼ 0.227).
Although the standardized coef?cients are small, this is still worthy of interest as such
results may have substantial impacts of the ?nancial performance of an organisation
(Huselid, 1995). The table indicates the quantitative measurement of a “real smile” and
that real smiles are relevant in the consumers’ assessment of overall satisfaction. The
?ndings support the hypotheses.
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Table I.
Bivariate correlations
between expressive
display items
IJCTHR
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Conclusions and directions for further research
The ?ndings provide further evidence for the importance of service providers’ positive
expressive display. The ?ndings show that it is possible to quantify the effects of “real”
smiles on service satisfaction and indicate a strong relationship between “real” smiles
and the perception of genuine care for the consumer. The combination of these items
has a strong in?uence on overall satisfaction and relates to reported life satisfaction.
This is important information for marketing practitioners and although no signi?cant
direct, relationship between life satisfaction and service satisfaction exists in this
case as might be expected (Fournier and Mick, 1999; Neal et al., 1999), it is worth
considering that this may be due to the service context being an airline. It is intuitive
that many airline passengers view the service as a means to an end, which is simply a
necessary part of a broader travel experience. Another setting may yield a signi?cant
direct relationship as well as an indirect relationship as found in this research (Neal
et al., 1999). In addition, it is possible that the association of a service variable with
general life satisfaction may be more salient to the consumer’s future decision making
than satisfaction with a single act of consumption and is a subject worthy of further
research. In this case, there was no signi?cant direct relationship between life
satisfaction and the intention to repurchase.
The wider implications for marketing practitioners are concerned with the services
marketing mix (product, place, promotion, price, people, process and physical
evidence). The marketing mix elements people and process are clearly highly salient
and relate to the human resource elements of service product development.
Management must aim to achieve an optimum functional design, staff recruitment,
and training to ensure that staff naturally ?t the interpersonal requirements of the
job and that the conditions of the service context and that these are conducive to
sincere and positive, expressive display.
Figure 1.
The path model
Expressive
Display
Life Satisfaction
Intention to
Re-purchase
Overall Satisfaction
0.27
0.60
0.16
0.61
0.07
Exploring
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105
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Table II.
Table of effects:
expressive display
associated with life
satisfaction, overall
service satisfaction and
likelihood of repurchase
IJCTHR
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Selecting appropriate staff may require an understanding of individual differences and
their impact on expressive display and emotional. Verbeke (1997) examined the effects
of personality and the ability to infect others’ with emotions, and to catch others’
emotions in a positive manner and found four broad personality orientations, which
responded to emotions differently: charismatics, empathetics, expansives and blands.
The charismatics are able to both transmit to and receive emotions from others, the
expansives are mostly successful in transmitting but insensitive to receiving, the
empathetics are good at receiving but not so successful in transmitting and the blands
do neither very well.
Presumably, these personality orientations apply to both the service provider and
consumer, which have implications for the interactive aspects of services marketing in
general, and particularly for extended duration, intimate, high involvement services
where the relationship between the provider and consumer is profound and very
strongly correlated with consumer satisfaction (Price et al., 1999). Further studies
concerned with individual personality differences and consumer/service provider
interaction would be extremely useful to expand the conceptualization and
understanding of service providers’ expressive display and consumers’ responses in
service provision.
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Items
Unstandardized
coef?cient b Std. error
Standardized
coef?cients b T Sig.
(Constant) 2.581 0.221 11.692 0.000
Q12 the behavior and attitude of airline
crew instills con?dence in you 0.185 0.035 0.189 5.283 0.000
Q14 airline’s crew is courteous 0.046 0.042 0.045 1.088 0.277
Q16 airline’s crew shows sincere
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Q25 the crew show genuine care for the
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Q28 the crew members are positive
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Note: Dependent variable: Q38 my overall satisfaction level with this ?ight is rated on a 10-point
Likert scale
Table III.
Multiple regression of the
items constituting the
expressive display
variable with overall
satisfaction as the
dependent variable
Exploring
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Corresponding author
Sandra Gountas can be contacted at: [email protected]
Exploring
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doc_167783889.pdf
To discuss the importance of the relationship between service providers’ positive affective
displays, the value of a “real” smile within the consumers’ perception of authentic service delivery and
how these relate to satisfaction and future intentions.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Exploring consumers' responses to service providers' positive affective displays
Sandra Gountas Michael T. Ewing J ohn I. Gountas
Article information:
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Sandra Gountas Michael T. Ewing J ohn I. Gountas, (2007),"Exploring consumers' responses to service
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Exploring consumers’ responses
to service providers’ positive
affective displays
Sandra Gountas
Department of Management and Marketing, Business School,
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Michael T. Ewing
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics,
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and
John I. Gountas
Department of Management and Marketing, Business School,
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – To discuss the importance of the relationship between service providers’ positive affective
displays, the value of a “real” smile within the consumers’ perception of authentic service delivery and
how these relate to satisfaction and future intentions.
Design/methodology/approach – The literature reviewdiscusses underpinning theory concerning
the role of expressive display in service provision. In particular the importance of authenticity is
explored through qualitative and quantitative research in an extended duration service setting. The
quantitative data are analysed using SPSS and path modelling (AMOS).
Findings – The ?ndings indicate a strong positive relationship between affective displays (including
the “real” smile), overall service satisfaction and life satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications – The study advances existing research and raises
suggestions for future research including how personality differences may affect the service
provider’s ability to interact with their customers appropriately.
Practical implications – The wider implications for marketing practitioners are concerned with the
services marketing mix. The authors suggest ways that managers may improve interactive service
standards.
Originality/value – The literature reveals no other study that has quanti?ed the value of a “real”
smile within expressive display.
Keywords Customer satisfaction, Customer services quality, Service delivery, Airlines
Paper type Research paper
The role of expressive display in service provision
Research has shown that positive affective displays such as smiling, displaying
friendliness and genuine concern for clients has positive outcomes such as reported
satisfaction and intention to repurchase (Parasuraman et al., 1985; Ashforth and
Humphrey, 1993; Dubinsky, 1994; Price et al., 1999; Pugh, 2001; Grandey, 2003;
Grandey et al., 2002). In extended duration services such as organized holidays,
positive affective displays perceived to be genuine strongly enhance consumers’
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1750-6182.htm
Exploring
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97
Received June 2005
Revised October 2005
Accepted July 2006
International Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research
Vol. 1 No. 1, 2007
pp. 97-109
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1750-6182
DOI 10.1108/17506180710729637
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enjoyment of the total experience (Price et al., 1999). Although many researchers
believe that authentic displays of the expression from service providers and general
impression management are important, there is very little research to measure the
effects of these variables on consumer satisfaction. There is no quantitative
research, in the literature, for aspects, such as the impact of service provider’s
sincere smiles on perceived consumer satisfaction (Grandey et al., 2002; Grandey,
2003).
Interpersonal satisfaction is an important heuristic within the overall service
experience and positive, happy expressions, perceived to be sincere, elicit a more
heuristic processing style than serious expressions, fostering trust and acceptance
whereas more sombre expressions call for further cognition or evaluation (Ottati et al.,
1997; Krull and Dill, 1998). Therefore, in the context of services marketing, the
perception of the service provider’s expressive display, including an impression of
willingness, courtesy and sincerity, may lead to overall service satisfaction and
intention to repurchase. Whereas complex evaluation methods present a danger for
service organizations as a more thoughtful approach to service evaluation may result
in the consumer being less enthusiastic about the service received.
Logically, it follows that less positive consumer responses to service will have a
negative impact on the consumer’s overall evaluation and intention to repurchase.
Hence, the observation of interpersonal relationships, between service providers and
consumers, are becoming increasingly important (Preis, 2003; Fournier and Mick, 1999;
Bagozzi, 2000; Bitner, 1990):
H1. The service provider’s expressive display positively in?uences service
satisfaction.
H2. The service providers’ expressive display positively in?uences the likelihood
of the consumer choosing the service again (intention to repurchase).
Expressive display
Neal et al. (1999) distinguish between the instrumental and expressive indicators of
satisfaction. The expressive indicators are the psychological interpretation of a
product or the affective component that will result in the ultimate measure of
satisfaction. Neal et al. (1999) cite several studies that indicate that the expressive
displays are more important in determining satisfaction than instrumental indicators.
The consumer’s perception of the marketers’ attitude may determine the consumer’s
attitudes towards the ?rm and in some circumstances the consumer’s perceptions of
concepts such as social regard (genuineness, respect, deference, and interest) will be the
de?ning predictor of satisfaction (Butcher et al., 2003).
Individuals perceive expressive display, also viewed as emotional expressiveness,
through the combination of “facial expressions, voice, gestures, and body movement to
transmit emotions” (Friedman et al., 1980). Service employees learn and practice
impression management as part of their jobs and companies often use service scripts in
an attempt to standardize service. Yet, in order to in?uence consumers, expressive
displays must be sincere as the perception of insincerity is not conducive to positive
service evaluation (Grandey et al., 2002; Pugh, 2001; Price et al., 1999; Dubinsky, 1994;
Lynch, 1992).
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Expressive display and emotional contagion
Displaying friendliness and positive emotions are part of many service product
offerings and in service work; a positive, smiling disposition is often part of the job and
not always a true re?ection of the service provider’s mood state (Hochschild, 1983;
Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987). The service provider’s efforts need to appear sincere even
though the clients may understand that this display is not sincere but, simply, part of
the job (Hochschild, 1983). Simply assuming that a positive expressive display from a
service employee is genuine may be wrong, despite the norms of appropriate emotion
expression learned by service employees (Pugh, 2001).
During an interaction between two people, mimicry of expression takes place and
this is a dynamic process. Each person involved in the process will perceive the other’s
expressive display and respond. Greater consumer satisfaction occurs if the consumer
perceives the service provider’s response to be appropriate (Dube and Menon, 2000).
Obviously, some service situations such as the provision of funeral services require a
more sensitive and temperate approach and in some cases, such as the provision of
medical services may require the display of a range of emotions changing and adapting
rapidly according to each individual patient’s personal condition.
When the consumer “catches” the emotions that the sender displays, this could be
described as emotional contagion. The power of emotional contagion is a
much-pondered topic and evidence shows that people do tend to imitate one
another’s facial expressions, body language or postures, vocal tones and expressions.
The process of emotional contagion is not always easy to control and is unconscious
emanating from facial and bodily movement that is imperceptible to the human eye
(Hat?eld et al., 1994). These contentions emphasize the need for service organizations
and their employees to be aware of the different ways in which consumers perceive
expressive display and to pay particular attention to those emotions that are in their
control.
Past research has indicated that socialization of staff, through punishment and
reward are likely to encourage the display of desired emotions (Rafaeli and Sutton,
1987; Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993). However, studies have shown that the true inner
feelings of the service provider will “leak” because it is dif?cult to display fake
emotions for a sustained period of time (Ekman et al., 1988; Ambady and Rosenthal,
1992). Therefore, genuine or sincere feelings may be an implicit requirement of service
providers’ expressive display to avoid consumers detecting unsatisfactory, fake
performances.
Expressive display and sincerity
Goffman (1959, p. 15) refers to “belief in the part one is playing.” The need for belief and
trust implies that emotions perceived as insincere, consciously or unconsciously will
not be useful in in?uencing consumers to perceive the service offering positively.
Expressive display, sincerity and their role in service provision need closer
consideration in services management and consumer satisfaction research. Grandey
et al. (2002) conducted experimental research to test, amongst other things, if a service
employee with a fake smile will be perceived as less friendly, therefore “worse” than an
employee with a genuine smile. The ?ndings of the research indicate that perceived
authenticity is important and positively relates to the impression of friendliness formed
about the server. In addition, perceived authenticity related to the overall satisfaction
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with the service experience and related to greater satisfaction than perceived fake
performance. Grandey et al. (2002) remarked on the lack of research in this area and
their literature search revealed no quantitative research examining whether a service
provider’s genuine smile has an impact on overall service satisfaction. A further search
by the authors also failed to ?nd this:
H3. The perception of a service provider’s “real” smile positively in?uences
service satisfaction.
The ?ndings of Grandey’s (2003) study indicate that authenticity or sincerity has direct
and indirect effects on satisfaction evaluation. This means that sincerity, as a broader
concept embraces the whole performance including the expression of the service
provider, personal attributes of the provider and the functional aspects of the actual
task delivery is an important area deserving further research.
The personal and organisational impacts of service providers’ expressive
display
An advantageous outcome of positive display, from the service employees’ perspective,
is that positively perceived displays tend to result in consumers giving higher rewards
or “tips” (Pugh, 2001; Tsai, 2001; Tsai and Huang, 2002). When considering the effects
of a particular desirable behavior, the potential impact of the opposite, negative
behavior requires equal thought. False displays may be detected and have a negative
effect on consumer evaluation and insincerity has been noted to result in lower ratings
being given to “guilty” staff in customer surveys (Grandey, 2003). Managers often use
customer surveys as a management decision-making tool for recognizing and
rewarding staff effort, so the impact of negative consumer evaluation may have
longer-term consequences for the service provider than merely providing feedback, for
the organization, about a discrete period of service provision.
The interaction with service providers may have further reaching consequences for
consumers also as their appraisal of and response to staff may represent more than a
simple reaction to good or bad service as the desire for authentic, positive displays may
relate to a more fundamental human need. For example, Aaker (1997) suggests that
sincerity taps an innate aspect of human personality, which implies a link between the
way in which one’s treatment as a consumer and overall life satisfaction:
H4. The service provider’s expressive display positively in?uences reported life
satisfaction.
Indeed, several authors have referred to the need to examine consumer satisfaction as a
function of life satisfaction in general (Meadows et al., 1992; Spreng et al., 1996;
Fournier and Mick, 1999; Neal et al., 1999). The model developed by Neal et al. (1999,
p. 154), measures if leisure satisfaction “captures the leisure experience across a variety
of situations over a period of time.” This measurement includes macro dimensions and
measures as well as the micro. It is appropriate to take a micro/macro approach that
acknowledged the variability and instability of service provision over different
duration. The aforementioned model considers that leisure is a component of life
satisfaction. This being the case, all types of leisure activity, which for some includes
any act of consumption, may be said to be an intrinsic part of the overall perception of
life satisfaction or quality of life:
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H5. Life Satisfaction in?uences service satisfaction reports.
This is based on the basic premise that “life satisfaction is functionally related to
satisfaction with all of life’s domains and sub-domains” (Neal et al., 1999, p. 154).
Studies have shown that satisfaction occurs at different levels and that all domains
contribute towards overall satisfaction (Andrews and Withey, 1976; Dube and Menon,
2000; Schwartz, 1990).
Methodology
The study utilizes both qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research
stage included expert interviews with airline management and a series of ten focus
groups comprising airline passengers with an average of ten respondents per focus
group (n ¼ 110). A loosely structured interview guide explored the components of
consumer satisfaction with airline services including instrumental and expressive
variables. The focus group ?ndings indicated that expressive display and perceived
sincerity are important and in?uential in the consumer’s overall assessment of service
provision and marketing communications.
Based on the focus group ?ndings, the questionnaire aims to measure the
relationships between the service variables, consumer satisfaction, life satisfaction,
and intention to repurchase. Forty-?ve items, hypothesized to contribute towards the
consumer’s satisfaction response, were tested. The items draw upon the extant
literature concerned with customer satisfaction during service experiences. The items
attempt to measure the instrumental and expressive aspects of service provision. A
major northern hemisphere leisure airline provided the respondents for the original
survey in 2000. A southern hemisphere airline agreed to administer a re?ned version of
the original survey in 2003. The survey took place on range of the airline’s major
domestic and international destinations during August-December 2003. Following the
airline’s normal method of sampling, there were between ?ve and ten questionnaires
distributed on each ?ight to seat numbers pre-assigned by the marketing research
manager. This ensured that service personnel were not involved in the selection of the
consumers asked to participate in the survey. The ?ndings reported, in this paper, are
those concerned with the relationships between service providers’ expressive display,
consumers’ reported life satisfaction, overall service satisfaction and intention to
repurchase.
Limitations
The key limitations of the survey are that it took place in a single industry and,
therefore, there can be no claims about replicability or transferability to other service
situations.
The construct items
Expressive display uses the following items developed from developed from
conducting the focus groups in the exploratory stage which considered the service
attributes deemed important by the participants; and a review of the literature
concerned primarily with service providers’ sincere expressive display, found in the
marketing and psychology literature (Cronbach a ¼ 0.94):
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Q12. The behavior and attitude of the crew instills con?dence in you.
Q14. The crew is courteous.
Q16. The crew members show sincere willingness to help the passengers.
Q20. The crew members give real, friendly smiles.
Q25. The crew members show genuine care for the passengers.
Q28. The crew members are positive towards the passengers.
The satisfaction with life scale uses the items, below, adapted from the satisfaction
with life scale (SWLS) (Diener, 1984) (Cronbach a ¼ 0.87):
Q26. The conditions of my life are excellent.
Q29. I have most of the things I want in life.
Q41. In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
Q42. I am satis?ed with my life.
Q43. If I could live my live again, I would change almost nothing.
Simple statements measure the perceived level of overall satisfaction and likelihood of
repurchasing. The respondents rated the items using a ten-point Likert scale with
anchors of strongly disagree and strongly agree. The ten-point scale was chosen for its
ease of use and because ten-point scales have previously been shown to have a high
predictive and convergent validity (Parasuraman, 1995). The ten-point scale allows the
participant to express their evaluation with a greater degree of differentiation.
Response rates
In its regular customer satisfaction research, the airline usually achieves a 40 percent
rate of return in completed questionnaires. The 3,000 questionnaires distributed for
this study yielded 1,232, which represents a return rate of 41 percent. Seventy-two of
the questionnaires were unusable due to excessive missing values or the respondent
reported being less than 16 years old. This left 1,160 useable questionnaires reducing
the successful response rate to 39 percent which is still well above the average response
rate for this industry and comparable to the airline’s normal response rate.
Data analysis
SPSS and path analysis (AMOS) are the software programs chosen to examine the
data. Bivariate correlations and multiple regressions examined the relevance of the
expressive display items to overall satisfaction and intention to repurchase.
A path analysis examines the relationships between the variables. Path analysis is
the original SEM technique that aims to estimate causal relationships between
observed variables. The overall aim of path analysis is “to estimate causal versus
non-causal aspects of observed correlations” (Kline, 1998, p. 96; Grapentine, 2000). Path
analysis allows the direct and indirect effects of the analyzed models. This can be
invaluable to researchers and practitioners as measurement of indirect effects allows
the researcher to understand the importance and strength of mediating variables.
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In complex product offerings, as many services are, many variables are likely to have
both direct and indirect impacts on outcomes.
Clearly, knowledge of how and where variables in?uence each other is very useful,
especially when service providers/marketers are able to de?ne the indirect and direct
effect of such variables, understand what and which variables they may be able to
in?uence, and develop a better framework for intervention at the appropriate stage of
the service. In fact, “if an indirect effect does not receive proper attention, the
relationship between two variables of interest may not be fully considered” (Raykov
and Marcoulides, 2000, p. 7). In many instances where peripheral information or
variables may in?uence attitudes, for example in the case of political campaigns media
induced perceptions of politicians often in?uences voters more than the politician’s
of?cial policies (Holbert and Stephenson, 2003).
Findings
Table I indicates that each scale item correlates strongly with all others but the
correlations are not so high as to indicate collinearity amongst the items. The next step
was to transform the scale items for life satisfaction and expressive display into
summated or composite variables in preparation for the construction of the path
model.
The path model in Figure 1 sets out the relationships between the composite
variables.
The results indicate that the model is a good ?t (x
2
¼ 1.992, df ¼ 1, p ¼ 0.16,
GFI ¼ 0.999, AGFI ¼ 0.991, NFI ¼ 0.999, TLI ¼ 0.996, CFI ¼ 0.999,
RMSEA¼0.029). The following table shows the direct, indirect and total effects of
expressive display associated with the other variables and their signi?cance:
Table II shows that the direct and indirect effects of expressive display associated
with the other variables have signi?cant t-values and support the predicted direction of
the associations in all cases. Expressive display has a highly signi?cant direct effect on
both reported life satisfaction (r
2
¼ 0.273) and a highly signi?cant overall service
satisfaction (r
2
¼ 0.610). A clear relationship between expressive display and the
Intention to repurchase both directly and via overall satisfaction exists (r
2
¼ 0.160
(signi?cant) and r
2
¼ 0.380 (highly signi?cant), respectively).
Table III shows three items to be signi?cant when regressed with overall
satisfaction:
Q12. The behavior and attitude of airline crew instills con?dence in you
(r
2
¼ 0.189).
Q20. The crew give real, friendly smiles (r
2
¼ 0.107).
Q25. The crew show genuine care for the passengers (r
2
¼ 0.227).
Although the standardized coef?cients are small, this is still worthy of interest as such
results may have substantial impacts of the ?nancial performance of an organisation
(Huselid, 1995). The table indicates the quantitative measurement of a “real smile” and
that real smiles are relevant in the consumers’ assessment of overall satisfaction. The
?ndings support the hypotheses.
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Table I.
Bivariate correlations
between expressive
display items
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Conclusions and directions for further research
The ?ndings provide further evidence for the importance of service providers’ positive
expressive display. The ?ndings show that it is possible to quantify the effects of “real”
smiles on service satisfaction and indicate a strong relationship between “real” smiles
and the perception of genuine care for the consumer. The combination of these items
has a strong in?uence on overall satisfaction and relates to reported life satisfaction.
This is important information for marketing practitioners and although no signi?cant
direct, relationship between life satisfaction and service satisfaction exists in this
case as might be expected (Fournier and Mick, 1999; Neal et al., 1999), it is worth
considering that this may be due to the service context being an airline. It is intuitive
that many airline passengers view the service as a means to an end, which is simply a
necessary part of a broader travel experience. Another setting may yield a signi?cant
direct relationship as well as an indirect relationship as found in this research (Neal
et al., 1999). In addition, it is possible that the association of a service variable with
general life satisfaction may be more salient to the consumer’s future decision making
than satisfaction with a single act of consumption and is a subject worthy of further
research. In this case, there was no signi?cant direct relationship between life
satisfaction and the intention to repurchase.
The wider implications for marketing practitioners are concerned with the services
marketing mix (product, place, promotion, price, people, process and physical
evidence). The marketing mix elements people and process are clearly highly salient
and relate to the human resource elements of service product development.
Management must aim to achieve an optimum functional design, staff recruitment,
and training to ensure that staff naturally ?t the interpersonal requirements of the
job and that the conditions of the service context and that these are conducive to
sincere and positive, expressive display.
Figure 1.
The path model
Expressive
Display
Life Satisfaction
Intention to
Re-purchase
Overall Satisfaction
0.27
0.60
0.16
0.61
0.07
Exploring
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Table II.
Table of effects:
expressive display
associated with life
satisfaction, overall
service satisfaction and
likelihood of repurchase
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Selecting appropriate staff may require an understanding of individual differences and
their impact on expressive display and emotional. Verbeke (1997) examined the effects
of personality and the ability to infect others’ with emotions, and to catch others’
emotions in a positive manner and found four broad personality orientations, which
responded to emotions differently: charismatics, empathetics, expansives and blands.
The charismatics are able to both transmit to and receive emotions from others, the
expansives are mostly successful in transmitting but insensitive to receiving, the
empathetics are good at receiving but not so successful in transmitting and the blands
do neither very well.
Presumably, these personality orientations apply to both the service provider and
consumer, which have implications for the interactive aspects of services marketing in
general, and particularly for extended duration, intimate, high involvement services
where the relationship between the provider and consumer is profound and very
strongly correlated with consumer satisfaction (Price et al., 1999). Further studies
concerned with individual personality differences and consumer/service provider
interaction would be extremely useful to expand the conceptualization and
understanding of service providers’ expressive display and consumers’ responses in
service provision.
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Corresponding author
Sandra Gountas can be contacted at: [email protected]
Exploring
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