The influence of emotions displayed and personal selling on customer behaviour intention

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The influence of emotions displayedand personal selling on customerbehaviour intentionEdward Shih-Tse Wang a , Bi-Kun Tsai a , Tzy-Ling Chen a & Shu-Chun Chang aa Graduate Institute of Bio-industry Management , National ChungHsing University , no. 250, Kuo Kuang Rd, Taichung , 402 , Taiwan,Republic of ChinaPublished online: 07 Feb 2011.

To cite this article: Edward Shih-Tse Wang , Bi-Kun Tsai , Tzy-Ling Chen & Shu-Chun Chang (2012)The influence of emotions displayed and personal selling on customer behaviour intention, TheService Industries Journal, 32:3, 353-366, DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2010.545392

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The influence of emotions displayed and personal selling on customerbehaviour intention

Edward Shih-Tse Wang∗, Bi-Kun Tsai, Tzy-Ling Chen and Shu-Chun Chang

Graduate Institute of Bio-industry Management, National Chung Hsing University, no. 250,Kuo Kuang Rd, Taichung 402, Taiwan, Republic of China

(Received 30 November 2009; final version received 20 October 2010)

The impact of employee performance on customer behavioural intentions andconsumption behaviour is important to service marketers. In many service settings,service organizations require emotional display and personal selling to staycompetitive in todays market. Based on a review of service literature, this studyinvestigates the effect of emotions displayed and personal selling on customerpurchase amount and re-patronage intention in convenience-goods retail servicesettings. This work applies mystery shopper methods to data collected from aTaiwan bakery chain. Analysis of the results from 519 responded questionnaires inthis study reveal that positive emotions displayed by contact personnel are unrelatedto consumption expenditure, but do affect re-patronage intention. Further, the resultsshow that personal selling negatively influences consumption amount. This studysuggests that service managers consider enhancing their emotional displayperspective in human resource practices, and focus on performing personal selling asa consumer need, in different service industries.

Keywords: emotional labour; personal selling; purchase intention

Introduction

Gaining competitive advantage in today’s competitive marketplace necessitates delivering

service excellence and sustaining satisfied customers (Quader, 2009). Many services are

heavily people-based (Vazquez-Casielles, del Rıo-Lanza, & Dıaz-Martın, 2007) and

most service delivery depends on frontline employees to provide a link between the

service organization and customers. Research has traditionally considered good customer

service as essential for relationship retention between the customer and the retail business

(Julian & Ramaseshan, 1994), and has considered consumer perceptions of face-to-face

interaction with contact personnel as one of the most important determinants for service

quality, satisfaction, and loyalty (Wang, 2009). Service marketing literature clearly

acknowledges the importance of personal interaction in the service encounter (Constanti

& Gibbs, 2005). Studies have recognized employee performance as vitally important to

service marketers, and that the service employee plays a critical role in the service

encounter (Voon, Hamali, & Tangkau, 2009; Wieseke, Ullrich, Christ, & Van Dick,

2007). Service marketers generally believe that organizational display rules are important

to achieve organizational objectives (Van Dijk & Brown, 2006). Since service firms

specify behavioural-display rules that identify appropriate behaviour in the service

ISSN 0264-2069 print/ISSN 1743-9507 online

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∗Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

The Service Industries Journal

Vol. 32, No. 3, February 2012, 353–366

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process for training and education purposes, service industry practitioners are attempting

to understand and improve service achievement through personal interaction. How

contact personnel interact with the customer has therefore become a much more salient

management concern.

This study focuses on two behavioural displays, namely, displaying positive emotions,

and personal selling. The service and marketing literature has addressed the issues of

displaying employee positive emotions (Hennig-Thurau, Groth, Paul, & Gremler, 2006;

Luong, 2005; Mattila, Grandey, & Fisk, 2003; Pugh, 2001; Tan, Foo, & Kwek, 2004;

Wang, 2009) and personal selling (Dwyer, Hill, & Martin, 2000; Jaramillo & Marshall,

2004; Verbeke & Bagozzi, 2002; Yang, Jozsa, Chung, Dai, & Fam, 2008). Most research

has measured the outcomes of contact personnel displaying positive emotions with cogni-

tive evaluations such as cognitive emotions (Luong, 2005; Mattila et al., 2003; Wang,

2009), service quality perception (Pugh, 2001), and purchase intent (Tsai & Huang, 2002).

Sutton and Rafaeli (1988) tested the emotional display–consumer behaviour relation-

ship used in actual field data in a chain of convenience stores, and used annual total store

sales for examining the relationship. Their study result revealed a negative relationship

between emotional display and store sales. These authors suggested that store sales reflect

the amount of time pressure on contact personnel, which diminishes displayed positive

emotions. In their study, store-sales were a causal factor rather than a result of displayed

emotions by contact personnel. Thus, the effect of contact personnel’s expression of positive

emotions on consequent consumer behaviour remains under-researched.

Several sources have specifically suggested personal selling as an effective marketing

approach (MacLeod et al., 1999; Quinn, 1993). Personal selling research has traditionally

focused on success factors for homogenous goods (Dwyer et al., 2000), the banking

industry (Jaramillo & Marshall, 2004), personnel characteristics, and skill (Castleberry,

Shepherd, & Ridnour, 1999; Comer & Drollinger, 1999; Plank & Greene, 1996;

Verbeke & Bagozzi, 2002), as well as retailers’ adoption of factors such as size (Smith

& Sparks, 2000) and culture values (Fam & Merrilees, 1998; Yang et al., 2008) from

the firm’s perspective. Relatively few academic studies have assessed personal selling

from a retail customer’s perspective (Finn, 2001). Research is scant in empirically docu-

menting the effect of personal selling on consumer consumption.

Customer needs and expectations determine how they interpret what happens to them, as

well as how they will behave in response to situations they encounter, and consumer needs

and expectations tend to be different for different industries (Chung-Herrera, 2007). Hence,

although service organizations require emotional display and personal selling in a variety of

services industries, consumer response may be different in different service contexts, such as

convenience goods (e.g. gasoline eggs, milk, and bread) and durable goods (e.g. electronics,

automobiles, furniture, and appliance items) retail services. As such, it is important to

identify the effects of these employee performances on consumer intention and behaviour.

In an effort to fill the above research gap, this study investigates the effect of displaying

emotions and personal selling on actual behaviour and behavioural intention, and focuses

on the role of displaying emotions and personal selling in a convenience-goods retail

setting. With increased attention paid to retail performance (Finn, 2001), we hope to

provide academics and practitioners a better understanding of how positive emotions and

personal selling influences consumer’s purchase amount and re-patronage intention in the

context of convenience-goods shopping. The following section briefly reviews displaying

emotions and personal selling, followed by the research hypotheses and methodology of

mystery shopper methods. The last two sections present data analysis and research

results, followed by a discussion of this research contribution and future research.

354 E.S.-T. Wang et al.

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Literature review and research hypotheses

Emotions displayed by contact personnel

Bickart and Schwarz (2001) highlighted the issue of emotional display and its importance

to customer contact personnel and marketing, recognizing the role of contact personnel

displaying positive emotions in the service encounter. Previous studies have suggested

that exposure to a person displaying emotions results in a corresponding change in the

observer’s emotional state (Tan et al., 2004). Emotional contagion, the extent to which

one person ‘catches’ and ‘feels’ the emotion displayed by another person with whom

she/he interacts, explains the phenomenon (Luong, 2005; Neumann & Strack, 2000;

Soderlund & Rosengren, 2008). Based on the emotional contagion effect, recent research

has further identified contact personnel displaying positive emotion as a phenomenon

which influences consumer’s positive response (Luong, 2005; Mattila et al., 2003;

Pugh, 2001; Tsai & Huang, 2002; Wang, 2009). Service marketers have therefore

recognized emotions displayed by service employees when interacting with customers

as a key factor in determining customer evaluations of the service encounter.

For inducing consumer’s positive response, service organizations require service

employees to regulate their emotions (Bickart & Schwarz, 2001). Research has defined

the necessity to regulate organizationally desired emotions as part of an employee’s job

as emotional labour (Yagil, Luria, & Gal, 2008). Hochschild (1983, p. 7) first defined

emotional labour as, ‘labour that requires one to induce or suppress a feeling in order to

sustain an outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others’.

Researchers have also conceptualized emotional labour as a duty of frontline service

employees who interact with others face-to-face (Van Dijk & Brown, 2006), requiring

‘service with a smile’ (Humphrey, Pollack, & Hawver, 2008). Expressing an organization-

ally desired emotion during interpersonal transactions requires emotional labour in the

form of effort, planning, and control (Morris & Feldman, 1996).

Service operators believe that positive emotions displayed by an employee can induce

consumer’s positive emotions and consequently increase consumer’s positive behaviour

response (Wang, 2009). However, Sutton and Rafaeli (1988) suggested that consumer’s

demand for a greeting or a smile from contact personnel selectively decreases in a conven-

ience store context, as purchasing low-involvement products typically relates to habitual

behaviour (Lin & Chang, 2003). Previous studies indicate that consumer involvement

is highest for specialty goods and lowest for convenience goods (Kaltcheva, Winsor, &

Parasuraman, 2010). Pan and Zinkhan (2006) further argued that consumer inertia often

characterizes shopping patterns for low involvement products (e.g. convenience goods).

Given the lower demand for employees displaying positive emotions in the convenience

goods service setting, and the consumption inertia for convenience-goods, this study

offers the following hypothesis:

H1a: Displayed positive emotion by service employees in a convenience-goods retail settingwill not motivate customer consumption.

Sutton and Rafaeli (1988) suggested that what customers want most from convenience

stores is speed. Customers prefer to quickly buy and leave in a convenience-store setting,

and the demand for employee displayed positive emotions is low. However, displaying

positive emotions consists of polite or friendly behaviours such as a polite gaze, greeting,

smiling, and thanking (Pugh, 2001). Scholars have further noted that perceived friendli-

ness increases customers’ intention to return to the store (Collishaw, Dyer, & Boies,

2008). The results of Wang’s (2009) study provide academic evidence for a positive

impact of personnel emotions on consumer positive emotions and consumer satisfaction

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with contact personnel, which consequently affects patronage intention in the convenience

store setting. Therefore, even though a lower demand exists for such service behaviour,

employee displayed positive emotions can still induce positive behavioural intention.

The current study assumes:

H1b: Emotional display by service employees has a significant positive influence on customerre-patronage intention in a convenience-goods retail setting.

Personal selling

Fashion merchandise retailers have traditionally relied heavily on personal selling to

promote their stores and their product or service (Kim & Merrilees, 2001). Personal

selling is an oral presentation in a conversational form with one or more prospective pur-

chasers to encourage purchase of a good or service (Kitchen, 1993). Personal selling

involves direct personal communications between a frontline employee and a consumer,

with the former conveying the product or service benefits to the latter (Fam & Merrilees,

1998). Personal selling is therefore an interpersonal activity (Aspara & Tikkanen, 2008)

involving face-to-face interactions between the seller and a potential consumer (Hara,

1993; Schaefer & Pettijohn, 2006) to persuade a prospective customer to buy something

(Fam & Merrilees, 1998).

Previous studies suggest that personal selling represents the most important (Bond-

Mendel & Simintiras, 1995) and effective means (MacLeod, Garber, Dotson, &

Chambers, 1999) of marketing communication, and is a critical component of marketing

success (Brooksbank, 1995; Yang et al., 2008) in directly connecting a consumer with a

company’s products and services (Mallin & Finkle, 2007). Personal selling is important

in the business environment, as it plays a two-way communication role between the

consumer and service providers (Wilson, 2008), and stimulates the demand for products

or services using aggressive selling techniques to persuade customers to buy (Yang et al.,

2008). Such face-to-face interaction is important because the service employee can tailor

it to an individual consumer, delivering a complex message to potential customers. Personal

selling provides the customer with an understanding of the product or service offered and

the opportunity to request further information from the contact personnel (Yang et al.,

2008). Personal selling may also provide an opportunity for service providers to learn

about consumer expectations for making appropriate recommendations for an individual-

specific consumer. Hence, personal selling activities involve a complex interaction

between the service employee and the customer (Plank & Greene, 1996).

Personal selling should also incorporate changes in traditional activities and focus on

customer orientations. Brooksbank (1995) suggested that personal selling should position

goods or services in the mind of a particular prospective customer. While each customer

will act differently in various purchasing situations, the trained contact personnel will

recognize relevant variables when the customer is making a purchasing decision

(Manske & Cordua, 2005). Hence, studies have regarded personal selling as an effective

communication vehicle that allows adapting a marketing message to the specific needs of

each customer (Yang et al., 2008). Such a customer communication process must satisfy

customer’s needs, answer customer’s questions, and present the most suitable options. In

addition, personal selling shifts from a focus on influencing buyer behaviour to enhancing

relationships between the service provider and the consumer (Weitz & Bradford, 1999). A

previous study suggests that personal selling is an important promotional tool from a

relationship marketing perspective, leading to a better relationship between the consumer

and contact personnel (Fam & Merrilees, 1998).

356 E.S.-T. Wang et al.

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Service businesses and researchers believe that personal selling increases store sales,

and therefore place more emphasis on personal selling activities. However, the importance

of personal selling varies in different industries. While consumers want concrete infor-

mation about durable goods, they appreciate lighthearted or superficial product cues for

convenience goods (Puccinelli et al., 2009). Hence, in convenience-goods retail sectors,

personal selling plays a less important role than in durable goods retailer sectors (Finn

& Kayande, 1997). Because convenience goods are inconspicuous items and are pur-

chased frequently with little concern for product performance (Ndubisi & Moi, 2006;

Rahman, Zhu, & Liu, 2008), shoppers spend minimal time and effort obtaining related

product information for these items (Miranda, 2008; Pan & Zinkhan, 2006). In addition,

convenience goods shoppers are familiar with the product’s performance (Miranda,

2009), and prefer making purchase decisions based on their previous experience (Vahie

& Paswan, 2006). Consumers may therefore not be interested in shopping options

carried by the convenience goods retailer.

Personal selling behaviour refers to an employee actively promoting a product or

service. The consumer might regard this as unwanted or unnecessary service attention.

Thus, when personal selling behaviour appears during consumers’ routine shopping for

daily necessities, the employee’s interruption hinders the flow of the shopping process

for the consumer, and may lead customers to leave the store early, reducing consumption.

H2a: Personal selling has a significant negative influence on customer consumption amount inthe convenience-goods retail setting.

While the consumer frequently purchases convenience-goods with little search or

effort (Miranda, 2009), the consumer lacks the motivation to consider convenience-

good alternatives (Lin & Chang, 2003). The tendency to minimum shopping effort for

convenience goods makes consumers prefer consistency that encourages making

choices in line with previous behaviour. A previous study has suggested including

repeat purchase decisions as a substantive predictor of future behavioural intentions

because inertia behaviour results in a habit (Wang, 2010). Haelsig, Swoboda, Morschett,

and Schramm-Klein (2007) further suggested that inertia might lead shoppers to ignore the

service quality provided. Folkes and Patrick (2003) indicated that a consumer is less likely

to perceive contact personnel’s negative behaviour as typical of the service firms’ other

contact personnel than positive behaviour, and a contact personnel’s negative behaviour

does not influence perceptions of the service firm. In addition, due to low-involvement

consumption, consumer’s service performance evaluations are unlikely to factor into

these disconfirmation judgments (Prenshaw, Kovar, & Burke, 2006). Thus, consumers

may perceive personal selling as an unnecessary, unneeded service behaviour in the

convenience-goods setting, and such service behaviour may not affect consumer patronage

intentions.

H2b: Personal selling in a convenience-goods retail setting will not motivate customer re-patronage intentions.

Research methods

The current study selected a bakery store as the research subject because consumers often

purchase breads as convenience-goods (Ahmed et al., 2004; d’Astous & Gargouri, 2001;

Schneider, 1996).This study applied mystery shopper methods to collected data to provide

detailed evaluations by hired and trained shoppers instructed in advance on what and how

to observe and record service information (Roberts & Campbell, 2007). While actual

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consumers, who are not normally trained and instructed to observe service employees,

may not be able to attend to the details of service performance and cannot complete an

assessment form during the service encounter (Wilson, 2001), participant observers can

search out various service indicators that customers might miss (O’Neill, Getz, &

Carlsen, 1999). A previous study further confirmed that data obtained by mystery shoppers

are of higher quality than data collected from customer surveys (Finn & Kayande, 1997),

and suggested that mystery shopping closely simulates actual customer experience

(O’Neill et al., 1999). Numerous researches have therefore used mystery shopper

methods to inspect customer service levels in hotel restaurants (Neale & Murphy,

2007), retail shops (Boothby, 2007), retail banking (Roberts & Campbell, 2007) and

winery visitor centres (Olsen & Thach, 2008).

In the current study, ‘mystery shoppers’ were professional consultants, and employees of

the Capital Marketing Consultant Corp (hereafter CMC), trained as observers visiting stores.

CMC is the leading mystery shopping company in Taiwan, providing outsourced service

audit, inspection, and feedback services. Observation training and data-collection skills

focus on identifying service indicators for observing and recording. Observers were asked

to visit bakery chain stores located in Taiwan several times a year and measure the service

they received according to instruction. This research instruction is the intellectual property

of CMC, and may not be presented in this paper. To complete transactions, shoppers received

a four-dollar quota each time they shopped and could use the money to buy bread at the stores.

The observers were assigned different stores to study, asked to complete a transaction at the

bakery, and then complete a survey after each visit about experiences at the store visited. A

number of other questions, including product display, product quality, and store environ-

ments, were also presented that are not reported in the present study. Data were collected

from January 2004 to June 2005, totalling 519 responded questionnaires for analysis.

Measures and measurements

The current study measured displayed emotions by contact personnel with two verbal

and two non-verbal service-employee behaviours, taken from the work of Pugh (2001).

These included (1) an opening statement and (2) a smile by the service personnel to the

consumer, (3) a polite gaze from the contact personnel towards the consumer, and (4) a

separation comment at the end of the transaction. The study assigned a score of 0 if all

behaviour was absent, and 1 if one of four behaviours was present. The results ranged

from 0 to 4. Personal selling was measured with one item. Participants were asked to

respond to the following, ‘When I wander into the store, the contact personnel take the

initiative to ask me if I need their assistance by introducing a product or service’, using

a five point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).

The re-patronage intention was measured with one item adopted from the work of

Bendall-Lyon and Powers (2004) and Wang, Wei, and Yu, (2008), that asked participants

to indicate, ‘Are you willing to re-purchase?’ (0 ¼ no and 1 ¼ yes). For examining the

causal effect of displayed positive emotions, the second dependent variable, one open-

ended question that related to purchase amount, asked participants, ‘How much money

did you spend on this visit?’.

Data analysis and results

Basic data indicated that one-fifth of the participants (19.5%) were not willing to repurch-

ase in the store and the consumption amounts of participants ranged from $3 to $9.3 with

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an average of $1.44. The current work adopted the regression approach to examine

whether displayed positive emotions and personal selling impact purchase amount (H1a

and H2a). The correlation coefficient between displayed positive emotions and personal

selling was 0.23 (p , 0.01). To determine the potential threats of multi-collinearity, the

current study employed the variance inflation factor (VIF) to check the regression analysis.

A previous study suggested considering the VIF value below ten (10) and tolerance

values more than 0.1 as acceptable (Koksal, 2008). The results showed that the VIF

value was 1.052 and the tolerance value was 0.95, concluding an absence of serious

multi-collinearity effect. The results (Table 1) conducted in this research showed that

while displayed positive emotions did not relate to consumption amount (p . 0.05),

personal selling had significant negative effect on purchase amount (p , 0.005). These

results provide support for hypotheses H1a and H2a.

This work performed logistic regression analysis to examine predictors of re-patronage

intention (H1b and H2b). Logistic regression analyses the data of dependent variables as

binary or dichotomous (Abdul-Muhmin & Umar, 2007; Kattiyapornpong & Miller, 2008)

and the independents as continuous variables and/or categorical variables (Akinci,

Kaynak, Atilgan, & Aksoy, 2007). The current study controlled for the influence of

purchase amount, because consumers have a strong preference for making decisions in

line with their previous choices (Jackson, Chow, & Leiten, 1997; Ouellette & Wood,

1998). The level of consumer’s current consumption behaviour (i.e. actual purchase

level at the current trip) might influence consumer’s re-patronage intention. Thus, the

current study included the purchase amount as a control variable in model 1, to serve as

a base model, and included only the control variable. Model 2 introduced displayed

emotion and personal selling.

Table 2 shows the analysis results, including the regression coefficient (b), standard

error (SE), and odds multiplier (Exp b). An examination of the results for the base

model (Model 1) reveals that the model chi-square (df ¼ 1) of 8.272 is significant at

p , 0.01, suggesting that the model coefficients provide a good fit for this analysis

(Clugston, 1997). The path coefficient from consumption amount to re-patronage intention

is significant (b ¼ 0.014, p , 0.05), indicating that the level of current consumption

amount has positive influence on re-patronage intention. The results of model 2 show

that the model chi-square (df ¼ 3) of 34.948 is significant at p , 0.001. The chi-square

went from 8.272 (model 1) to 34.948 (model 2), and the increment chi-square change

(x2 ¼ 26.68) was also significant (p , 0.001). The result indicates the overall explanatory

power of the hypotheses, explained by comparisons in the chi-square between the baseline

model and the fully specified model (Frost, Birkinshaw, & Ensign, 2002). The results

of model 2 indicate that displayed emotion by contact personnel significantly impacts

Table 1. Results of regression.

Exogenous construct b SE Standardized coefficients t Significance

Displayed emotions 2.336 1.755 0.060 1.331 0.184Personal selling 25.907 1.698 20.156 23.479 0.001Model summary

R 0.154R2 0.024p-Value 0.002

Note: Dependent variable: consumption amount.

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re-purchase intent (p , 0.001) and personal selling is significantly associated with

repurchase behavioural intention (p , 0.05). The results are consistent with H1b, but

do not support H2b.

Discussion

Theoretical implications and practical implications

This study empirically and theoretically examined whether displaying positive emotions

and personal selling increases service sales as marketers expect. The result reveals that

bakery store shoppers have a positive response to employee’s positive displayed

emotion, but avoid personal selling behaviour. As expected, the result shows that

employee displayed emotional behaviour does not influence consumer-consumption

behaviour. Even though displayed emotions do not benefit service providers with sales,

the result indicates that employee displayed emotion positively influences consumer

re-patronage intention. The findings of a positive relationship between displayed emotions

and re-patronage intention are in line with Tsai and Huang (2002). These results indicate

that, in a convenience-goods retailing context, performing displayed positive emotions

benefits retaining consumers for further revenue, although displaying positive emotions

does not increase sales immediately.

This study also examined the influence of personal selling on consumer’s behavioural

intention and behaviour. The results reveal that personal selling has a significant negative

influence on consumer consumption amount. The result may imply that bakery shop

customers do not expect personal selling while shopping. The other reason is probably

due to inappropriate personal selling behaviour in the chain store. The current study

measured personal selling with one item, asking participants about their observation

related to personal selling. Even though employees may perform personal selling

behaviours, employee’s inappropriate skill can induce a negative response. Therefore,

by either inappropriate place or inappropriate skill, consumers interrupted by personal

selling while bakery shopping may not prefer such an experience, and shorten their shop-

ping trips and time spent on bakery floors, reducing their consumption amount. However,

the results of this study are not consistent with our hypothesis regarding the irrelevance

of personal selling to repurchase intention. The discrepancy may be because of the

design of study. The current study asked mystery shoppers, who were professional

Table 2. Results of logistic regression.

Variables

Model 1 Model 2

b SE Exp(b) b SE Exp(b)

Consumption amount 0.014∗ 0.006 1.014 0.017∗∗ 0.006 1.018Displayed emotions 0.592∗∗∗ 0.146 1.807Personal selling 0.320∗ 0.143 1.37822 Log-likelihood 478.270 451.595Nagelkerke R2 0.027 0.111Model chi-square 8.272 (df ¼ 1) (p , 0.01) 34.948 (df ¼ 3) (p , 0.001)Chi-square change 26.68∗∗∗

Note: Dependent variable: re-patronage intention.∗p , 0.05.∗∗p , 0.01.∗∗∗p , 0.001.

360 E.S.-T. Wang et al.

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consultants, to focus on service indicators, such as personal selling, performed in every

store. Service employees performed personal selling behaviour on mystery shoppers

and these participants preferred personal selling behaviour more than actual consumers.

Therefore, mystery shoppers observing personal selling performed in a store had a more

positive evaluation of such service behaviour to induce positive behavioural intention to

revisit the store than actual consumers did.

Retail service firms can gain much from this research, and the findings have important

implications for practitioners. Firstly, despite the fact that displaying positive emotions

does not increase sales immediately, the results indicate that contact personnel’s displayed

positive emotions can predict consumers’ re-patronage intentions. To secure future

revenue, service firms must acknowledge the critical antecedent of customer retention.

As displayed positive emotions by a service employee can be a highly relevant factor to

retain consumers, service managers need to consider enhancing their emotional display

perspective in their human resource management practices. The findings suggest that

service managers should hire employees with positive personnel characteristics to

perform positive emotions toward the consumer as expected by organizations. Employee

training and education also ensure that contact personnel are capable of performing service

behaviours. Further, motivating employees to perform an organization’s expectation is

extremely important to managers.

Many services require various interactions with consumers. To improve competitive

advantage in today’s service market, service providers must understand what customers

do and do not want. Service industries should understand the role of personal selling in

different service contexts. Based on the current study finding, employee’s personal

selling behaviour in the bakery industry has negative impact on consumer’s consumption

amount. As discussed above, this may be due to a correct behaviour in the wrong place, for

instance, customers may not prefer personal selling while shopping at a bakery. This may

also be because of wrong behaviour in a correct place, that is, personal selling not

performed appropriately. This indicates that service retailers need to understand how

and when to use personal selling more appropriately in their service business.

Limitations and future research

Given the lack of research in this growing field, further research is necessary to

understand better the effect of employee performance in service encounters. Certain

limitations are present in the current study which future research needs to address.

First, one limitation of this study is that it measured personal selling behaviour and

re-patronage intention using a self-reported single item. Although single-item scales

possess high-face validity and are easier to understand (Tam, 2007), using multi-item

scales in future studies would increase reliability and decrease measurement error. For

instance, Dwyer et al. (2000) suggested seven stages in the personal selling process

(e.g. prospective, pre-approach, approach, sales presentation, handling objections and

overcoming resistance, closing, and post-sale follow-up). Research has widely discussed

interpersonal communication between the service provider and the customer as an

important part of successful sales interactions (Comer & Drollinger, 1999; Peterson,

Cannito, & Brown, 1995). Effective listening is crucial for salespeople to succeed in

today’s personal selling environment (Roman, Ruiz, & Munuera, 2005), and a previous

study confirms that interpersonal listening in the personal sales context positively relates

to sales performance (Castleberry et al., 1999). Hence, future research should consider

developing multiple attitudinal measurements of personal selling behaviour based on

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these stages and the consumer’s perspective (for instance, perceived effective listening

and customer-oriented focus).

Second, the current study conducted analysis on a bakery service business. Personal

selling plays only a minor role in the order-taking service, and in other retail sectors,

such as automobiles and fashion items, personal selling plays a much more important

role in a retailer’s performance (Finn, 2001). Further, personal selling is a high-involve-

ment situation, distinct from the typical low-involvement situation of social psychology

research (Sharma, 1996). Verifying the results in other service industries with different

consumer involvement levels is therefore desirable. Retesting these results in a variety

of service types would potentially provide more insights. Third, the current research

used the mystery shopping method. Since the participants were professional consultants

different from actual consumers, future research may use normally trained and instructed

shoppers to visit and observe specific service firms and complete certain transactions for

data collection. Fourth, the current study conducted its research in Taiwan. Researchers

have suggested that the complex and demanding global environment affects the personal

selling process (Herche, Swenson, & Verbeke, 1996; Macquin, Rouzies, & Prime, 2000),

and different cultural values affect personal selling preference (Jaramillo & Marshall,

2004) from a firm’s perspective. Future studies need to test the generalizability of the

results reported with other populations and customers belonging to different cultures

from the consumer’s perspective. Finally, to improve understanding of the service encoun-

ter, future research can introduce other variables that affect emotional display and personal

selling. This study provides valuable information for service firms in managing their

service performance and creating employee management strategies.

Conclusions

Despite these limitations, we believe that the present study provides meaningful insights

into service industries. Retaining consumers is becoming more important in an increas-

ingly competitive service business environment and contributes to the service literature

theoretically, managerially, and methodologically. Managerial implications enable

marketing and service managers to be more effective in designing frontline employee’s

behavioural rules, and may assist human resource developers to develop service encounter

skills for service business success. The current study suggests that differences in service

business may affect the focus of frontline employees in selecting, training, and motivating

aspects of displayed positive emotions and personal selling behaviour. To guide frontline

employee’s activities, a deeper understanding of the effect of employee performance

should make marketers more aware of consumer behavioural intention and behaviour

outcomes, thereby enabling them to take advantage of this insight.

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