Service with A Smile and Encounter Satisfaction: Emotional Contagion and Appraisal Mechanisms
Patricia Barger and Alicia Grandey tested whether primitive emotional contagion explains why service with a smile predicts satisfaction. They examined mimicry and mood as mediators and contrasted them with a direct path through the customer's judgement of service quality. Independent coders rated the strength of employees' and customers' smiles at three points in real service encounters, and 173 customers completed surveys afterwards. Mimicry was supported. Only appraisals of service quality, and not customers' own mood, fully accounted for the link between the employee's smiling and satisfaction.
Patricia Barger and Alicia Grandey tested whether primitive emotional contagion explains why service with a smile predicts satisfaction. They examined mimicry and mood as mediators and contrasted them with a direct path through the customer's judgement of service quality. Independent coders rated the strength of employees' and customers' smiles at three points in real service encounters, and 173 customers completed surveys afterwards. Mimicry was supported. Only appraisals of service quality, and not customers' own mood, fully accounted for the link between the employee's smiling and satisfaction.
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Barger, P. B., & Grandey, A. A. (2006). Service with a smile and encounter satisfaction: Emotional contagion and appraisal mechanisms. Academy of Management Journal, 49(6), 1229-1238. doi:10.5465/AMJ.2006.23478695. Read at the level of the abstract.