The Value of a Smile: Does Emotional Performance Matter More in Familiar or Unfamiliar Exchanges?

PurposeThe purpose was to understand how service familiarity (i.e., the familiarity of the customer with the employee and service provided) operates as a boundary condition for the impact of employee positive emotional displays on service performance.Design/Methodology/ApproachIn Study 1, we assessed whether service familiarity (as rated by employees) moderated the relationship of employee-reported positive emotional displays and coworker ratings of service performance. In Study 2, through observed employee–customer exchanges, we tested whether customer-reported familiarity with the service context moderated the relationship between third-party-observed employee positive emotional displays and customer ratings of transaction satisfaction and employee friendliness.FindingsEmployee positive emotional displays had the strongest influence on evaluations of performance under low familiarity contexts. Thus, positive emotional displays served as a signal of good performance when there was limited preexisting information about the employee.ImplicationsService performance evaluations may be less influenced by employee positive emotional displays when the customer has a familiar relationship, suggesting that such displays from the employee are not always necessary. However, for encounters, employee positive emotional displays are more critical for signaling high quality service performance.Originality/ValueThis combination of studies is among the first to isolate the influence of service familiarity at two different levels of conceptualization and measurement using multi-source ratings of service performance.

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