Is this smile for real? The role of affect and thinking style in customer perceptions of frontline employee emotion authenticity

Andreas T. Lechner and Michael Paul

Journal of Business Research, 2019, vol. 94, issue C, 195-208

Abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that authentic positive emotion displays from frontline employees outperform inauthentic displays with respect to important customer outcomes. Recent evidence, however, indicates variability in customer authenticity perceptions, which, to date, is poorly understood. This study jointly investigates two factors influencing customer authenticity perceptions, customer affect and thinking style, which represent feeling and thinking, two key domains of the human mind. The results of two experiments reveal that customers who experience positive affect perceive positive emotion displays of frontline employees as more authentic, regardless of its objective extent of authenticity. Likewise, customer thinking style of combined processing (highly rational and highly experiential) is found to create upward bias on authenticity perceptions. This study contributes to research on frontline employee-customer interactions by advancing the understanding of variability in customer perceptions of frontline employee emotion authenticity. Managers are advised to incorporate these findings into frontline employee management and service design.

Keywords: Emotional labor; Authenticity; Authenticity perceptions; Affect; Thinking style (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:94:y:2019:i:c:p:195-208

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.06.009

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