Effect of Positive Affective Displays - Article Example

Effect of Positive Affective Displays

When organizations craft methods of customer service, they intend to provide the best service possible by requiring the employees involved in these areas to behave in a certain way. The article “Effects of Employees’ Positive Affective Displays on Customer Loyalty Intentions: An Emotions-As-social-Information Perspective” tries to explain how these behaviors affect the receivers or the customers. The article indicates that the affective displays can be categorized into two distinct sections, namely intensity and authenticity. With regard to intensity, the employees are required to display certain actions like smiling, changing intonation, and greeting the customers with high frequency. The intended response is that of positive customer outcomes that are actually received regardless of whether the employee wants to display such affections or not. Authenticity, on the other hand, is about the consistency of employees’ emotions with their actions. Here, the smiles are authentic. With respect to this, the hypotheses in the article include that the authenticity and intensity of display affect the customer’s response in two ways; cognitively and emotionally, and that the motivation to maintain an understanding of a situation determines the effect of authenticity and intensity displays.

To show and prove that the customers have a lot to do with the effect that the display, the article conducts various forms of studies agreeing that the effect of intensity and authenticity relies on the motivation to process information. If the customer is not interested in a specific piece of information, then no display would appeal to them because the motivation is absent. The article considers intensity and authenticity simultaneously to understand the mechanisms that drive their influence on customer reactions. In the methodology, the article also considers the part played by EASI in the situation where the customer and the employee may not share outcomes or even show lasting relationships. The research also acknowledges that while positive outcomes are experienced as a result of affective displays, the managers are not mostly concerned with the short-term outcomes but the long-term ones especially concerning loyalty of the customer. In testing the aforementioned hypothesis, the article uses two distinct studies. In the first study, a field study is conducted to examine the effect of employee authenticity and intensity on loyalty through affective reactions as well as appraisals concerning employee service performance. The study also investigates the moderating role played by self-reported motivation in processing employee behavior. EASI model maintains that customers tend to relate to emotions when determining behavioral intentions if they have a low epistemic motivation implying that the effect emanating from authenticity through cognitive appraisals ought to increase as epistemic motivation rises. In the second study, the researchers try to replicate study one results using a video simulation methodology which is expected to yield better results since it is controlled. This part of the study also applies a more established difference measure for epistemic motivation.

For the first study, the participants were located in different jobs that require a lot of customer-employee interactions. Particularly, employees in 36 different stores dealing with different services like dining, grocery, and fashion were observed. Five research assistants were included in the observation with adequate background information on emotion detection so as to minimize the occurrence of errors related to observer heterogeneity. The observation took place during normal business hours over the course of three months. The intensity and authenticity of employees was rated independently after dynamic interactions had been observed for an adequate period by some of the research assistants. Other research assistants interviewed the customers as they left the stores. Using the research assistants also helped in eliminating the possibility of obstructions and biases. During the observation, 326 transactions were recorded, and 122 employees were observed. The strength of the smile was rated on a scale of 0-100 while the frequency was measured by the smiles per minute with 1 being no smile and 6 being a continuous smile. To test the loyalty part, the researchers questioned the customers directly asking them to rate the performance of individual employees on a scale of 1 to 5 where one is poor with 5 being the best or they strongly agree that they enjoyed interacting with a said employee. This was useful in determining loyalty. The second study incorporated recorded service interactions that were supposed to act as stimuli because of the realism and flexibility that comes from videotapes in controlling confounds as well as managing manipulations. The study used six female actors from local stores that allowed filming, who auditioned and practiced for 3 weeks. The best were then selected where some acted as service employees while others acted as customers. The videos were intended to show manipulation of employee emotional authenticity and intensity so as to explain the effect. Deep acting was used to enable the employee to manipulate their own internal feelings to match what they display. The videos were then shown to 131 participants who were supposed to rate the authenticity of the actions and found that intensity manipulation does not have an impact on perceived authenticity. The same scales as study one were re-used in measuring epistemic motivation and customers’ responses.

At the end of the studies, the results were found to concur with the hypotheses. Particularly, the intensity had a positive impact on the affective reactions of the customers. Authenticity also enabled the positive prediction of customer cognitive appraisals. The customer’s positive affective responses in addition to favorable cognitive appraisals improved loyalty intentions even further. There was also a two-way reaction between epistemic motivation and affective reactions. The same was experienced between epistemic motivations and affective reaction on loyalty. Furthermore, there were indirect effects. It was noted that intensity’s indirect effect on loyalty intentions through the affective reactions was considerably weaker on customers experiencing high epistemic motivation than those with low motivation. In addition, the customers with higher epistemic motivation experienced a stronger indirect effect of authenticity with regard to loyalty intentions as indicated by appraisals of employee service performance.

The conclusions of the research are consistent with the hypotheses. Its main intent was to enhance the understanding of positive affective displays that employees exhibit when serving customers as well as how this is related to customer loyalty. While intensity may have a similar effect on customers as authenticity, it was indicated in the research that authentic displays have a far-reaching effect, especially when considering loyalty. The research extended the EASI model while certifying its authenticity with regard to the emotional effect on favorable customer responses. From the results, it is clear that affective display intensity majorly influences customer outcomes and response by affective reactions. On the other hand, authenticity accomplishes the same through cognitive appraisals. Moreover, the results also indicate that employees’ affective display authenticity and intensity on the customer outcomes vary as the customer’s epistemic motivation varies. Employee display authenticity, additionally, affects the customer loyalty through the concept of appraisals concerning employee performance. This pathway is, as such, more influential for the customers experiencing high epistemic motivation. While these findings cement the hypothesis of the research, it is important to consider the implications of the research. The research answers many questions concerning emotional response in a way that very few, if any, researchers have tried to. However, to transform the results into actual output, one must understand the dimensions of the display as well as the context within which they occur. The affective displays are particularly effective when the customer is not familiar with a product or does not have certain information. This is because they become motivated to learn where they acquire information not only verbally but also through the gestures that also improve confidence thus boosting their level of satisfaction with the performance of the employee. It should also be noted that while organizations invest in recruitment and training, the employees who are required to display certain emotions are easier to train, monitor and recruit than those that are trained to actually exhibit certain emotions authentically. However, some customers can see through the fake displays and only respond to authentic displays. As such, managers must understand when and how to apply certain displays to maximize outcomes. Therefore, customer reactions are predictable and manipulatable with the correct procedures in place.