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JOSM
28,2
284
Received 16 November 2015
Revised 20 April 2016
Accepted 25 June 2016
Journal of Service Management
Vol. 28 No. 2, 2017
pp. 284-304
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1757-5818
DOI 10.1108/JOSM-11-2015-0372
Smile for a while: the effect of
employee-displayed smiling on
customer affect and satisfaction
Tobias Otterbring
Department of Psychology and CTF, Service Research Center,
Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden and
Department of Management/MAPP, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customers’
affective states (pleasure, arousal, and dominance) and satisfaction. Building on the stimulus-organism-
response framework and theories of emotional contagion and feelings-as-information, the main hypothesis
was that a smiling (vs non-smiling) employee significantly increases customer satisfaction through the
mediating influence of pleasure.
Design/methodology/approach – The study used a quasi-experimental two-group between-subjects
design. A total of 210 customers at a large retail bank had a brief service encounter at the store entrance with
a smiling (vs non-smiling) bank teller. Customers then went into the bank to do what they came to do.
Before leaving the bank, customers completed a survey that included demographic information, affect
(pleasure, arousal, and dominance), and measures of customer satisfaction.
Findings – A smiling (vs non-smiling) employee had a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. This
effect was mediated by pleasure, but also, to a weaker extent, by dominance. These results contradict previous
claims that smiling-induced emotional contagion does not remain throughout the completion of a service encounter.
Practical implications – Managers should encourage, and potentially train, employees to act in ways
associated with positive emotions. Managers could also hire employees based on how good they are at acting
and expressing themselves in a genuinely positive manner and create a pleasant store atmosphere so that the
feelings and behaviors displayed by frontline employees are genuine rather than inauthentic.
Originality/value – This is the first experimental field study to examine the isolated effect that
employee-displayed smiling has on customers’ affective states and satisfaction. The results provide more direct
evidence for the psychological processes justified by emotional contagion and feelings-as-information theories.
Furthermore, the finding that dominance mediates the smiling-satisfaction link has never been shown before.
Keywords Affect, Customer satisfaction, Emotional contagion, Feelings-as-information,
Field study, Smiling
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The face is believed to be the primary non-verbal channel for the communication of
emotions (Small and Verrochi, 2009), with smiling being the most direct sign of positive
emotions (Ekman, 1992). Smiling is a universal display (Darwin, 1872/1965; Ekman and
Friesen, 1969; Lau, 1982) and is cross-culturally understood as a sign of happiness and joy
(Ekman, 1992). Therefore, there is a very strong agreement (typically above 90 percent)
between people from western and eastern cultures, independent of their age and gender, in
determining whether an individual is happy or not, solely by looking at the individual’s face
(e.g. Ekman and Friesen, 1971; Ekman et al., 1987). Research also shows that all positive
emotions share one single facial expression: a particular type of smile (Ekman, 1993).
Thus, unlike many other expressions, smiling represents one of our few basic emotions
(Ekman, 1992) and is collectively understood as a sign of friendliness, generosity, and other
altruistic behaviors (Brown et al., 2003; Gabriel et al., 2015; Grandey and Gabriel, 2015;
Lau, 1982; Mehu et al., 2008).
The author is grateful to Robert Wennersten and Reving Chalabi for help with data collection.
 Applied to a consumer context, many retail and service settings explicitly require their Smile for
employees to offer “service with a smile” (Barger and Grandey, 2006; Beal et al., 2006; a while
Grandey and Gabriel, 2015) and customers associate such behavior with high-quality service
(Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987). In their conceptual framework of emotions as part of the work
role, Rafaeli and Sutton (1987) argued that positive employee-displayed emotions should result
in three different classes of positive outcomes from the organization’s perspective: immediate
gains (short-term effects such as sales), encore gains (long-term effects such as store loyalty), 285
and contagion gains (long-term effects such as positive word-of-mouth). In support of these
claims, positive employee-displayed emotions and behaviors (such as smiling, greeting,
expressing gratitude, and establishing eye contact with customers) increase customers’ positive
affect (Pugh, 2001; Trougakos et al., 2011), time spent in the store (Tsai and Huang, 2002), and
actual consumption or tipping behavior (Otterbring, Ringler, Sirianni and Gustafsson, 2013;
Tidd and Lockard, 1978). Furthermore, positive employee-displayed emotions and behaviors
increase customers’ willingness to return to a store, positive word-of-mouth, and future
purchase intentions (Tsai, 2001; Tsai and Huang, 2002). Employees who manage to transfer
positive emotions to customers positively influence customer satisfaction and future loyalty
intentions (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006).
Despite these established positive effects on the above key customer outcomes, only one
field study (Barger and Grandey, 2006) seems to have investigated the unique association
between employee-displayed smiling and customer affect and satisfaction, respectively.
Most previous related studies in field settings (e.g. Gabriel et al., 2015; Keh et al., 2013;
Kim and Yoon, 2012; Pugh, 2001; Rafaeli, 1989; Sutton and Rafaeli, 1988; Tsai and
Huang, 2002) have used a combined measure of employee-displayed positive emotions
and behaviors (including, but not restricted to, smiling). This measure has then been used to
investigate the impact of such behaviors and emotions on customer affect and satisfaction.
However, the nature of this measure makes it impossible to ascertain that the isolated effect
of employee-displayed smiling has had any impact on these variables.
In addition, existing research into the effect that employee-displayed smiling has on
customer affect and satisfaction is inconsistent. Some studies have found that customers’
positive affect and satisfaction are both positively associated with employee-displayed
smiling (e.g. Söderlund and Rosengren, 2008). Other studies have found that
employee-displayed smiling is positively related to customer satisfaction, but not to
customers’ positive affect (e.g. Barger and Grandey, 2006). Yet other studies have shown
that the extent of employee-displayed smiling does not influence any of these variables
(e.g. Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006). These inconsistent results could be due to the different
affect measures used. Whereas some studies (e.g. Pugh, 2001; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006)
have relied on positive affect measures that almost exclusively relate to arousal-linked
emotional states (such as excited, enthusiastic, and active), other studies (e.g. Musgrove,
2011; Söderlund and Rosengren, 2008) have relied on positive affect measures that
completely relate to pleasure-linked emotional states (such as pleased, joyful, and happy).
Yet other studies (e.g. Barger and Grandey, 2006; Kim and Yoon, 2012; Small and
Verrochi, 2009; Tsai and Huang, 2002) have mixed pleasure and arousal-linked measures
and collapsed the responses into a single broad index of positive affect. Thus, despite the
argument raised by several scholars that certain positive emotions differ in their
physiology, evolutionary history, and effects on judgment and choice, many researchers
tend to disregard the psychometrically validated differences of these emotions and refer to
them simply as positive affect (Berg et al., 2015). Table I summarizes the studies that most
closely relate to the present research.
Furthermore, few if any studies have used experimental design in actual field settings to
address the association between employee-displayed smiling and customers’ emotional
reactions. This means that the theory of emotional contagion (i.e. the affective process in
 28,2

286
JOSM

Table I.

the impact of

and satisfaction
positive employee-

on customer affect
together with other
employee-displayed

displayed behaviors)
Studies investigating

smiling (in isolation or

Retail/service Positive affect (PA)
Study Type of study context Sample Independent variable index Result, PA Result, satisfaction

Pugh (2001) Field study Retail banks 220 customers Employee-displayed Six items: most Employee-displayed Not measured
(gender not emotions index associated with emotions positively
reported) (smiling, greeting, eye arousal influenced PA
contact, thanking)
Tsai and Field study Footwear stores 352 customers Employee affective Four items: most Employee affective Not measured explicitly, but
Huang (75% male) delivery index associated with delivery positively employee affective delivery
(2002) (smiling, greeting, eye pleasure influenced PA positively influenced word-of-
contact, thanking, mouth and future purchase
speaking intentions, with PA acting as a
rhythmically) mediator
Barger and Field study Food/coffee services 173 customers Employee-displayed Three items: most No effect, but employee- Employee-displayed smile
Grandey (60% female) smile strength (no associated with displayed smile strength strength had a positive impact
(2006) smile, minimal smile, pleasure positively influenced on encounter satisfaction
maximal smile) customers’ smile strength
Hennig- Lab-based Movie rental service 223 university Employee-displayed Four items: most No effect No effect
Thurau et simulated students (47% smile strength (weak, associated with
al. (2006) service female) strong) arousal
encounters
Söderlund Lab-based Travel agency 220 Employee-displayed Three items: all Employee-displayed Employee-displayed smiling
and scenarios of undergraduates smiling (smiling, non- associated with smiling positively positively influenced customer
Rosengren service and adult smiling) pleasure influenced PA satisfaction, with PA acting as a
(2008) encounters decision makers mediator
(46% female)
Musgrove Computer- Gifts, collectibles, 547 participants: Employee-displayed Seven items: all Employee-displayed Not measured explicitly, but
(2011) based footwear, and hat 265 online survey smiling (smiling, non- associated with smiling positively employee-displayed smiling
scenarios of stores panel smiling) pleasure (Also influenced PA (No effect positively influenced approach
service participants, 282 included seven on dominance) behaviors and store patronage
encounters university dominance items) intentions, with PA acting as a
students (57% mediator
female)

(continued )
 Retail/service Positive affect (PA)
Study Type of study context Sample Independent variable index Result, PA Result, satisfaction

Trougakos Field-based Campus 140 university Display rule (positive, One item: very A positive display rule Not measured explicitly, but a
et al. (2011) surveys with organizations students included neutral) negative/positive positively influenced PA positive display rule positively
students acting in the analyses influenced overall attitudes
as poll workers (gender not toward the organizations (partly
reported) measured with satisfaction),
with PA acting as a mediator
Kim and Field study Clothing and 117 customers Employee-displayed Four items: most Employee-displayed Not measured
Yoon (2012) accessories stores (66% female) and customer- associated with emotions positively
displayed emotions pleasure influenced customer-
index (smiling, displayed emotions and
greeting, eye contact, customers’ PA
thanking,
pleasantness)
Keh et al. Field study Supermarket 223 customers Employee-displayed Three items: one Employee-displayed Employee-displayed emotions
(2013) (Experiment 2) included in the emotions index associated with emotions positively positively influenced customer
analyses (67% (smiling, greeting, eye pleasure ( joy), the influenced PA satisfaction, with PA acting as a
female) contact, thanking, other being hard to suggested mediator
being pleasant) classify (acceptance,
expectancy)
Wang and Field study Specialty stores, 243 customers Employee emotional 10-item short form Not reported Real (vs fake) emotional labor
Groth department and included in the labor strategy (real vs of the positive and strategy positively influenced
(2014) convenience stores, analyses (68% faked displays of negative affect service satisfaction
restaurants, female) happiness) scales (only used as
supermarkets, and a control variable)
professional
services
Gabriel Field study Counter-only stores 164 customers Employee positive Not measured, but Not measured, but Employee positive emotional
et al. (2015) (Experiment 2) (e.g. coffee shops) included in the emotional display two of the four employee positive displays positively influenced
analyses (gender index (smile strength, encounter emotional displays encounter satisfaction and
not reported) eye contact, satisfaction items positively influenced employee friendliness
pleasantness of voice) (content, pleased) encounter satisfaction
directly relate to (measured with pleasure-
pleasure related items)
Note: Some studies had additional independent variables
287
a while
Smile for

Table I.
JOSM which an individual mimic and converges to another person’s emotions and expressions;
28,2 Hatfield et al., 1994) has never been explicitly tested as the underlying mechanism of why a
smiling employee would increase customers’ positive affect. As Pugh (2001) noted, “in the
absence of a true experimental design it is not possible to conclude that emotional contagion
alone is responsible for this association” (p. 1026).
Using a quasi-experimental design, the main objective of the present field study was to
288 examine whether a smiling (vs non-smiling) employee positively influences customer
satisfaction and, if so, whether any of the affective states of pleasure, arousal, and dominance
would mediate this effect. In so doing, this study addresses the recent call for research
investigating the impact of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction
under ecologically valid conditions (e.g. Bujisic et al., 2014). As far as can be ascertained, this
study is the first to show direct experimental evidence for a smiling-induced emotional
contagion effect in real-world settings. It therefore makes a significant contribution to
emotional contagion theory, as well as other affect-based theories in psychology, marketing,
and service research. Apart from experimentally demonstrating that pleasure is the main
driver for the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction, the present
research contributes to the literature by showing, for the first time, that customers’ feelings of
dominance act as an additional mediator for the smiling-satisfaction link. Lastly, given that
examining the relationship between service and well-being was recently viewed as the top
priority in a large interdisciplinary study (Ostrom et al., 2015), the well-being-related outcomes
of the present study contribute to the growing stream of transformative service research.

Theoretical framework
Emotional contagion theory
Emotional contagion is the affective process by which individuals converge to others’ emotions
and expressions (Hatfield et al., 1994). Individuals tend to subconsciously mimic or “catch” the
facial expressions and emotional displays shown by the people with whom they interact.
This act of imitation, which is sometimes called the chameleon effect (Chartrand and
Bargh, 1999), leads people to become emotionally influenced in a way that is feeling-congruent
with the emotions and expressions they have just mimicked (De Gelder, 2006; Moody et al., 2007;
Small and Verrochi, 2009). For instance, Strack et al. (1988) found that participants rated
cartoons as significantly funnier after holding a pencil in their mouths in a way that resembled,
rather than prevented, a smile (i.e. between the front teeth). Theories on embodied cognition have
also suggested that the perception of emotional meaning (for instance, recognizing the emotion
associated with a particular facial expression) includes the embodiment of the emotion itself
(Niedenthal, 2007). Research in neuroscience has even indicated that the human brain contains
“mirror neurons” for the motor and emotional components of facial expressions that
could explain why the brain regions that are activated when passively viewing others’ actions
(such as observing another person’s smile) are the same as those that are involved when
individuals execute these same actions themselves (Mukamel et al., 2010; Rizzolatti et al., 2006;
Van der Gaag et al., 2007).
Emotional contagion is said to be most influential in the early stages of a service
encounter (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006); for example, the point at which a smiling employee
greets a customer as he or she enters the store. Therefore, it is likely that the customer,
through facial mimicry effects, will experience more positive emotions in the presence of a
smiling (vs non-smiling) employee. In other words, if the employee appears to be happy, the
customer should also become happy (Musgrove, 2011). This is reasonable since positive
displays have been shown to transfer positive emotions more than neutral displays
(Berg et al., 2015; Kim and Yoon, 2012; Trougakos et al., 2011). Thus, whereas emotional
contagion theory postulates that a smiling employee will transfer more positive emotions to
customers, the same theory also predicts that a non-smiling employee should generate less
positive emotions in customers, either because the employee’s neutral facial expression Smile for
transfers cues of neutrality (such as being unemotional) or because it does not convey any a while
emotions at all (Trougakos et al., 2011).
Positive emotions, such as those that are transferred when viewing an interaction
partner’s smile, tend to influence individuals’ subsequent judgments in a way that resembles
these emotions. This applies not only to judgments related to the source that initially
generated the emotions (e.g. the interaction partner), but also to unrelated objects and 289
phenomena (Grandey and Gabriel, 2015; Trougakos et al., 2011).

Feelings-as-information theory
In their seminal article on mood, misattribution, and well-being, Schwarz and Clore (1983)
found that global judgments of happiness and satisfaction are influenced by mood at the
time of judgment. Their two experiments showed that global judgments of happiness and
satisfaction increased when participants were in a good mood rather than a bad mood.
In fact, merely interviewing participants on a sunny (vs rainy) day was sufficient for these
effects to occur. Schwarz and Clore (1983) concluded that “people use their momentary
affective states as information in making judgments of how happy and satisfied they are”
(p. 513). Therefore, evaluative judgments implicitly make people ask themselves, “How do I
feel about this?” (Schwarz, 2000). Thus, people’s current affective state often guides their
response to the object of judgment, resulting in more positive evaluations when they are in a
happy mood than a sad mood (Schwarz, 1990; Schwarz and Clore, 2003).
If customers are greeted by a smiling (vs non-smiling) employee, emotional contagion
theory suggests an increase in customers’ positive emotions. As a direct consequence of this
change in affect, feelings-as-information theory predicts that these customers should be
more satisfied. However, some affective states are more strongly associated with positive
emotions than others, which means they should be better predictors of customers’ emotional
reactions and subsequent satisfaction judgments after a greeting by a smiling employee.

The stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model

Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974) S-O-R model identifies three general affective
dimensions – pleasure, arousal, and dominance – that summarize people’s emotional
reactions to environmental stimuli. These dimensions are conceptually similar to the
dimensions of evaluation, activity, and potency proposed by Osgood et al. (1957), and
describe virtually all emotional reactions to an environment and the stimuli located within it
(Mehrabian, 1976). Pleasure describes the extent to which an individual feels pleased, joyful,
and happy; arousal corresponds to feelings of excitement, stimulation, and activity; and
dominance represents whether the individual feels influential, in control of, and free to act in
a given situation (Donovan and Rossiter, 1982; Mehrabian and Russell, 1974; Musgrove,
2011; Russell and Mehrabian, 1978).
Whereas pleasure and arousal have received a great deal of scholarly attention,
dominance has typically been downplayed (Bakker et al., 2014), especially in retail and
service research (Yani-de-Soriano and Foxall, 2006). In fact, several studies have overlooked
this affective dimension entirely (e.g. Chebat and Michon, 2003; Donovan et al., 1994; Mattila
and Wirtz, 2001, 2006; Sherman et al., 1997; Wirtz et al., 2000), often without justification
(cf. Yani-de-Soriano and Foxall, 2006). This is problematic, as a critical review by
Yani-de-Soriano and Foxall (2006) showed that dominance was as legitimate as pleasure and
arousal for explaining individuals’ emotional reactions toward various environmental
stimuli. Those authors warned of the negative consequences of ignoring this distinct
affective dimension in retail and service research.
According to the S-O-R model, pleasure, arousal, and dominance should, to various degrees,
mediate the effect of environmental stimuli (e.g. a smiling employee) on individuals’ behavioral
JOSM responses, and should therefore result in either approach or avoidance behaviors. Although
28,2 these responses are referred to as behaviors, approach-avoidance behaviors also include
(un-) favorable attitudes (dis-) liking, and (dis-) satisfaction (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974).
A smiling employee should primarily influence the affective state that most typically
resembles a smile in the customer (emotional contagion theory). Therefore, pleasure
should be a better predictor of customers’ subsequent satisfaction judgments than
290 other affective dimensions that are less characteristic of a smile (feelings-as-information
theory). Figure 1 provides a graphical representation of the conceptual model that
corresponds to the current research.

Hypothesis development
A few studies (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006; Shaw Brown and Sulzer-Azaroff, 1994) have failed to
establish a relationship between employee-displayed smiling and customer satisfaction.
However, there is both direct (Söderlund and Rosengren, 2008) and indirect evidence
(Barger and Grandey, 2006; Gabriel et al., 2015; Keh et al., 2013; Musgrove, 2011; Trougakos
et al., 2011; Tsai and Huang, 2002) that employee-displayed smiling should positively influence
customers’ levels of satisfaction. A non-experimental field study by Barger and Grandey (2006)
found that employee-displayed smiling (both in isolation and together with other positive
employee-displayed behaviors) was positively associated with customers’ encounter
satisfaction in food and coffee services. A more recent field study by Gabriel et al. (2015)
found that a combined index of employee positive emotional displays (including smiling) was
positively related to customers’ encounter satisfaction and to their ratings of employee
friendliness in counter-only stores such as coffee and sandwich shops. Using a similar index of
employee-displayed positive emotions, Keh et al. (2013) found that the extent to which
employees displayed such positive emotions was positively associated with customer
satisfaction, both in a scenario-based experiment on university students and in a subsequent
field study on grocery shoppers. Mirroring these findings, Söderlund and Rosengren (2008)
found that service workers’ smiles had a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction in a
scenario-based experiment with pictures of smiling (vs non-smiling) service workers at a travel
agency. A bit later, Trougakos et al. (2011) conducted an experimental study in which
undergraduate business students were trained to act as poll workers and survey other students
about one of two campus organizations. The poll workers in one condition were instructed to
act positively, whereas those in the other condition were instructed to act as neutral as possible.
Respondents surveyed by the positive poll workers reported more favorable attitudes toward
the campus organization, and this was partly measured by their overall satisfaction. Based on
these studies, the author hypothesizes:
H1. Employee-displayed smiling positively influences customer satisfaction.

Feelings-as-
Emotional Contagion
Information

Customer Affect

H2a-H2c H3a-H3c

Figure 1. Employee-Displayed H1
Conceptual model Smiling
Customer Satisfaction
Most of the reviewed literature (e.g. Berg et al., 2015; Gabriel et al., 2015; Kulczynski Smile for
et al., 2016; Musgrove, 2011; Small and Verrochi, 2009; Söderlund and Rosengren, 2008; a while
Trougakos et al., 2011; Tsai and Huang, 2002) has also suggested a link between employee-
displayed smiling (either in isolation or together with other positive employee-displayed
behaviors) and customers’ positive affect – at least when the affect measures used relate to
the pleasure dimension in the S-O-R model. Moreover, extant research has documented a
positive relation between employee-displayed smiling and customers’ smile strength 291
(Barger and Grandey, 2006), as well as between customers’ emotional displays during a
service encounter and their subsequent levels of pleasurable feelings (Kim and Yoon, 2012;
Mattila and Enz, 2002). Therefore, with emotional contagion as the underlying mechanism
motivating these findings, the author hypothesizes:
H2a. Employee-displayed smiling positively influences customers’ levels of pleasure.
There is weaker support for the relationship between employee-displayed smiling and
customers’ levels of arousal. Barger and Grandey (2006) and Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006) both
used a positive affect index comprising one or many arousal-related items, but neither study
found that employee-displayed smile strength had an effect on customers’ positive affect.
Similarly, Small and Verrochi (2009) used a happiness index containing two arousal items
(excited, enthusiastic) and one pleasure item (happy) to measure participants’ affect when
viewing pictures of either sad (such as frowning or crying) or happy (smiling) children. When
they compared participants’ affect using this overall happiness index, they did not find a
significant difference between the happy and the sad condition. However, a separate analysis on
the happy item revealed a statistically significant difference between conditions, indicating that
ratings on the arousal-related items did not differ between the happy and the sad condition.
A non-experimental field study by Pugh (2001) in the same retail/service context as in the
present research (a retail bank) found that employee-displayed positive behaviors were
positively associated with arousal-based items (e.g. active, excited, enthusiastic, and peppy).
However, Pugh (2001) did not manipulate the facial expression of an employee (smiling vs
non-smiling), but instead measured employee-displayed positive behaviors by averaging the
extent to which different bank tellers were greeting, smiling, thanking, and establishing eye
contact with customers. Therefore, is not possible to conclude that the isolated impact of
employee-displayed smiling had any impact on arousal. Hence, given the lack of direct
support for the claim that employee-displayed smiling should increase customers’ feelings of
arousal, the author hypothesizes:
H2b. Employee-displayed smiling does not influence customers’ levels of arousal.
Recently, scholars have called for research into the effects that smiling may have on
individuals’ perceptions and feelings of dominance (e.g. Kim and Yoon, 2012). To date, only
one study (Musgrove, 2011) has examined the impact that employee-displayed smiling has
on customers’ levels of dominance, and it did not find any effect. However, research from
other fields indicates that there may be a link between the presence (vs absence) of a smile
and perceivers’ feelings of dominance. Specifically, a large body of research has shown that
a neutral facial expression is a non-verbal marker of status and dominance, whereas smiling
signals submissiveness and subordinate status (e.g. Deutsch, 1990; Kraus and Chen, 2013;
Keating et al., 1977, 1981). These findings suggest that customers should feel more dominant
if they are greeted by a smiling employee, given that smiling has been shown to act as a
submissiveness signal. On the other hand, customers should feel less dominant if they are
greeted by a non-smiling employee, because a neutral facial expression signals dominance.
Accordingly, the author hypothesizes:
H2c. Employee-displayed smiling positively influences customers’ levels of dominance.
JOSM If customers are greeted by a smiling (vs non-smiling) employee, emotional contagion theory
28,2 postulates an increase in customer positive affect – especially concerning the emotional
state of pleasure, which is most strongly associated with feelings of happiness and joy.
As a direct result of this hypothesized affect change, feelings-as-information theory predicts
an increase in customer satisfaction. Supporting this notion, scenario-based research
suggests that pleasure should mediate the effect of employee-displayed smiling on
292 customer satisfaction (Musgrove, 2011; Söderlund and Rosengren, 2008). Although no field
studies have explicitly addressed this issue using experimental design, there is indirect
evidence for such a process explanation (e.g. Keh et al., 2013; Mattila and Enz, 2002;
Trougakos et al., 2011; Tsai and Huang, 2002).
Although Barger and Grandey (2006) found no support for the hypothesis that
employee-displayed smiling should positively influence customers’ positive affect,
they did demonstrate that the isolated effect of an employee’s smile strength and the
combined effect of the employee smiling and displaying other positive behaviors were
both positively associated with customers’ smile strength and encounter satisfaction.
However, the positive affect index that they used was a combination of both
pleasure-related (pleased, contended) and arousal-related items (excited). As such, despite
Barger and Grandey’s (2006) claim that their study is “the first known study to examine
whether mimicry occurs in a service context and whether it explains why service with a
smile predicts customer mood” (p. 1231), the validity of their positive affect index can
questioned because it taps two distinct affective dimensions in the S-O-R model.
Therefore, given that most studies have suggested that pleasure should mediate the
effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction, and that such a
relationship would be justified by emotional contagion and feelings-as-information
theory, the author hypothesizes:
H3a. Pleasure mediates the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction.
Just as the effect of employee-displayed smiling seems to be less evident for arousal than for
pleasure, the mediating influence of arousal on customer satisfaction is likely to be weaker
than the effect of pleasure. The author bases this reasoning on the fact that pleasure more
directly taps feelings of happiness and joy, which are the typical feelings involved when
smiling. Thus, customers’ levels of pleasure should be more strongly influenced by the
employee’s smile through the facial mimicry effects explained by emotional contagion
theory. Therefore, pleasure should be a stronger predictor of subsequent feeling-congruent
satisfaction judgments, in line with feelings-as-information theory. Although arousal can be
experienced as a positive affective state, feelings of arousal are less characteristic for
smiling. Hence, arousal should have a weaker overall impact on customer satisfaction.
In fact, neither of the two smiling studies in which positive affect was measured partially
(Barger and Grandey, 2006) or mainly (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006) with arousal-related
items found any mediating influence of positive affect on customers’ levels of satisfaction.
Accordingly, the author hypothesizes:
H3b. Arousal does not mediate the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer
satisfaction.
Given the presumed increase in customers’ levels of dominance in the presence of a smiling
(vs non-smiling) employee, and research demonstrating that feelings associated with
dominance (such as sense of control) have a positive impact on well-being outcomes
(De Lange et al., 2003; Langer and Rodin, 1976; Rodin and Langer, 1977, 1980;
Seligman, 1975), the author predicts that customers’ levels of dominance should mediate the
effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction. However, given that
feelings of dominance are less characteristic of a smile than feelings associated with
pleasure, dominance should have a weaker influence on customers’ subsequent satisfaction Smile for
judgments compared to pleasure. Therefore, the more formal hypothesis is as follows: a while
H3c. Dominance mediates the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction,
but is a weaker predictor of customers’ levels of satisfaction compared to pleasure.

Methodology 293
Participants
A total of 210 customers (48 percent male; Mage ¼ 49.91; SD ¼ 20.09) participated in the
study, which was conducted at a large Scandinavian retail bank. Participants with z-scores
exceeding an absolute value of three standard deviations from the mean on the main
dependent variables (n ¼ 8) were treated as outliers, and were therefore removed from the
analyses (cf. Hansen et al., 2013; Otterbring, 2016). The bank branch is one of the largest in
Scandinavia, with an annual turnover of more than €40 billion, approximately eight million
private clients and 600,000 business clients, 500 bank offices, and 15,000 employees.

Design, procedure, and measures

The study used a quasi-experimental two-group factorial design, with employee condition
(smiling, non-smiling) as the between-subjects factor[1]. Data collection took place during
four consecutive weekdays (Monday-Thursday), with the order of conditions
counterbalanced. Upon arrival at the bank, customers in the smiling employee condition
were greeted at the entrance by a male bank teller who said, “Hello, welcome to [name of the
bank]!” while smiling and looking into the eyes of the customers. The bank teller then briefly
explained how the bank’s queue system worked, after which the customers entered the bank
to do what they came to do. Customers in the non-smiling employee condition were greeted
in the same way, by the same bank teller, but the teller had a neutral facial expression.
Each service encounter lasted for approximately 15-30 seconds. Because the teller usually
had the primary responsibility for greeting customers upon entry to the bank office, and
based on his knowledge and expertise of the particular bank setting, as well as his ability to
properly address brief questions from incoming customers, he was considered the best
candidate for inclusion in the field study.
Prior to the study, the bank teller was trained for several hours to behave in accordance
with the experimental conditions being manipulated. This was deemed important
because it can take an effort to consciously prevent a smile if the initial facial impression
from an approaching customer resembles a smile. At the actual execution of the study, a
research assistant observed the teller’s facial expression during each service encounter to
ensure that his facial expression was consistent with the experimental condition, which was
found to be the case.
Before customers left the bank, the research assistant asked them to fill out a paper-and-
pencil survey that included demographic information, items linked to the affective
dimensions in the S-O-R model, and measures of customer satisfaction. Pleasure, arousal,
and dominance were measured with semantic differentials from Mehrabian and
Russell (1974). Items were rated on a nine-point scale ranging from −4 to 4, with the
endpoints representing opposite emotions, and were averaged to form three composite
indexes; one for each affective state. The pleasure index (α ¼ 0.93) comprised five pairs of
opposites (e.g. unhappy-happy, not joyful-joyful); the arousal index (α ¼ 0.87) comprised
four pairs of opposites (e.g. calm-excited, sleepy-wide-awake); and the dominance
index (α ¼ 0.86) comprised three pairs of opposites (e.g. submissive-dominant, influenced-
influential). Customers responded to these items by indicating how they felt while they were
in the bank office. To measure customer satisfaction, four widely used semantic differentials
(e.g. dissatisfied-satisfied, unfavorable-favorable) from Wirtz and Lee (2003) were collapsed
JOSM to form a satisfaction index (α ¼ 0.89) using the same bipolar response format. Given that
28,2 feelings-as-information theory primarily focuses on global judgments (as a consequence of
an individual’s current affective state), the satisfaction items concerned customers’ overall
satisfaction with their stay at the bank. Thus, the satisfaction judgments did not concern the
particular bank teller or the specific bank office, but rather reflected customers’ global
ratings of satisfaction while being in the bank that particular day. Such global judgments
294 have been used in previous related research (e.g. Trougakos et al., 2011).
In addition to the above measures, customers were asked to state the amount of time they
had spent at the bank office (in minutes) and to rate the service quality they had received.
Service quality was measured with seven items (e.g. “Customers are treated well at this bank
office”; “This bank offers high-quality service”) on a scale anchored at 1 (strongly disagree)
and 7 (strongly agree). Items were adapted from Baker et al. (1994) and were averaged to
form a composite index of service quality (α ¼ 0.90). These measures were collected in an
attempt to increase the internal validity of the experiment. Thus, in order to justify that the
results should primarily be an effect of employee-displayed smiling rather than any of
these other potentially confounding variables, time spent in the bank office and ratings of
service quality should not, optimally, differ between conditions. Given that the smiling
(vs non-smiling) bank teller only had a very brief encounter with the customers upon store
entry, ratings of service quality should arguably be more heavily influenced by the other
employee(s) with whom customers had their primary interaction while in the bank. Hence, it
is likely that a service failure during the customer’s primary employee interaction would be
reflected in the service quality ratings, and could therefore be controlled for.

Results
A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on customer satisfaction revealed a statistically
significant effect of employee condition; F(1, 200) ¼ 7.21, p ¼ 0.008, r ¼ 0.19[2]. In support
of H1, customers in the smiling employee condition (M ¼ 3.12; SD ¼ 0.87) reported
higher levels of satisfaction than customers in the non-smiling employee condition
(M ¼ 2.73; SD ¼ 1.16).
The author conducted similar analyses on pleasure, arousal, and dominance. A one-way
ANOVA on pleasure produced a statistically significant effect of employee condition;
F(1, 200) ¼ 4.57, p ¼ 0.034, r ¼ 0.15. Corroborating H2a, participants in the smiling employee
condition (M ¼ 3.44; SD ¼ 0.78) experienced more pleasurable feelings than participants in
the non-smiling employee condition (M ¼ 3.15; SD ¼ 1.16). On the contrary, customers’ levels
of arousal did not differ between the smiling (M ¼ 3.13; SD ¼ 1.05) and the non-smiling
employee condition (M ¼ 2.96; SD ¼ 1.17; F(1, 200) ¼ 1.16, p ¼ 0.28, r ¼ 0.08). Thus, H2b was
supported, and arousal did not mediate the effect of employee-displayed smiling on
customer satisfaction, in support of H3b. However, a one-way ANOVA on dominance found
a marginally significant effect of employee condition, F(1, 200) ¼ 3.64, p ¼ 0.058, r ¼ 0.13.
In line with H2c, customers in the smiling employee condition (M ¼ 2.32; SD ¼ 1.43) felt
more dominant than customers in the non-smiling employee condition (M ¼ 1.92; SD ¼ 1.59).
Because the effect of employee condition produced the same results for pleasure,
dominance, and customer satisfaction, the author further examined whether pleasure and
dominance mediated the effect of employee condition on customer satisfaction (H3a and
H3c). Mediation is established when: the independent variable significantly influences the
dependent variable; the independent variable significantly influences the potential mediator
in the same way as the dependent variable; and the mediator, included as a covariate,
significantly influences the dependent variable, while the effect of the independent variable
is reduced (Baron and Kenny, 1986). It is clear from the above analyses that employee
condition influenced pleasure and dominance in the same way as customer satisfaction.
In terms of the third step, an ANCOVA on customer satisfaction with pleasure as the
covariate produced a statistically significant effect of the covariate; F(1, 199) ¼ 123.93, Smile for
p o0.001, r ¼ 0.62. Moreover, the previously significant effect of employee condition was a while
reduced and did not reach statistical significance; F(1, 199) ¼ 2.93, p ¼ 0.089, r ¼ 0.12.
Thus, consistent with H3a, pleasure mediated the effect of employee-displayed smiling on
customer satisfaction. A similar ANCOVA with dominance as the covariate revealed that
dominance was significantly associated with customer satisfaction; F(1, 199) ¼ 37.42,
p o0.001, r ¼ 0.40. Central to H3c, the effect of employee condition was reduced in 295
significance; F(1, 199) ¼ 4.31, p ¼ 0.039, r ¼ 0.14. Therefore, dominance also mediated the
effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction[3]; hence, H3c was supported.
Following the guidelines laid out by Rucker et al. (2011), the author investigated the
magnitude of each mediator by comparing their effect sizes. Using Fisher’s r-to-z
transformation on the effect sizes obtained for pleasure and dominance in the ANCOVAs,
the effect size for pleasure was found to be significantly larger than for dominance (z ¼ 3.03,
p ¼ 0.002). Thus, pleasure is most likely to be the primary mediator for the relationship
between employee-displayed smiling and customer satisfaction, although it seems to have
spillover effects on other affective states associated with positive emotions. Supporting this
notion, a one-way ANCOVA on customer satisfaction with pleasure and dominance as
covariates showed that both pleasure and dominance were significantly associated with
customer satisfaction, whereas the previously significant main effect of employee condition
was reduced to non-significance; F(1, 198) ¼ 2.45, p ¼ 0.119, r ¼ 0.11. However, the link
between pleasure and customer satisfaction (F(1, 198) ¼ 79.08, po 0.001, r ¼ 0.53) was
larger than the link between dominance and customer satisfaction (F(1, 198) ¼ 4.85,
p ¼ 0.029, r ¼ 0.15). Fisher’s r-to-z transformations on the effect sizes obtained for pleasure
and dominance in this ANCOVA again revealed that the effect size for pleasure was
significantly larger than for dominance (z ¼ 4.38, p o0.001); this is in line with H3c.
To ascertain that the results would not be confounded by perceived service quality or
time spent at the bank office, the author conducted two one-way ANOVAs on these
measures, with employee condition (smiling, non-smiling) as the between-subjects factor.
The analysis on service quality was non-significant; F o1, p ¼ 0.33. Thus, ratings of
service quality did not differ between customers in the smiling (M ¼ 6.59; SD ¼ 0.58) and
non-smiling (M ¼ 6.48; SD ¼ 0.91) employee condition. A similar analysis on time spent at
the bank office also failed to reach significance; F(1, 200) ¼ 1.98, p ¼ 0.16. If anything,
customers in the smiling employee condition (M ¼ 18.81 minutes; SD ¼ 15.56) reported
spending a slightly longer time at the bank office than customers in the non-smiling
employee condition (M ¼ 16.32; SD ¼ 8.04), which makes this account unlikely to have been
the main driver of the results. Likewise, the high mean values on service quality (as well as
on pleasure and customer satisfaction) contradict the claim that service failures would
have been a frequent issue in the current investigation. In addition, controlling for
customers’ service quality and time spent at the bank in the main analyses did not
change the nature and significance of the results corresponding to affect and customer
satisfaction. This supports the author’s argument that the results are primarily an effect of
employee-displayed smiling.

Discussion
The present field study has shown that employee-displayed smiling during brief service
encounters has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. This effect is mediated
by customers’ levels of pleasure and, to a weaker extent, by dominance. By showing this, the
current study conceptually corroborates previous related research (Gabriel et al., 2015;
Keh et al., 2013; Kim and Yoon, 2012; Mattila and Enz, 2002; Musgrove, 2011; Pugh, 2001;
Söderlund and Rosengren, 2008; Trougakos et al., 2011; Tsai and Huang, 2002). However, it
also contradicts a number of studies (Barger and Grandey, 2006; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006;
JOSM Shaw Brown and Sulzer-Azaroff, 1994), in which employee-displayed smiling was not found
28,2 to influence customers’ affective states and/or satisfaction. The findings of the present study
have several important implications for both theory and practice.

Theoretical implications
From a theoretical standpoint, the present research has at least three central contributions.
296 First, as far as can be ascertained, this is the first experimental field study to examine the
isolated effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction. Whereas
previous research in field settings (e.g. Gabriel et al., 2015; Keh et al., 2013; Kim and Yoon, 2012;
Pugh, 2001; Rafaeli, 1989; Sutton and Rafaeli, 1988; Tsai and Huang, 2002) has typically relied
on a combined measure of employee-displayed positive behaviors (including, but not
restricted to, smiling), the present study investigated the unique impact of an employee’s
smile. Given the finding that employee-displayed smiling positively influenced customers’
levels of pleasure and satisfaction, this provides more direct evidence for the psychological
processes justified by emotional contagion and feelings-as-information theories.
Second, in an attempt to address inconsistencies in previous related research, the present
study suggested that one reason for these inconsistencies could be the different affect measures
that were used. Some studies (e.g. Pugh, 2001; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006) have relied on affect
measures that almost exclusively relate to arousal, while others (e.g. Musgrove, 2011;
Söderlund and Rosengren, 2008) have relied on measures completely associated with pleasure.
Yet others (e.g. Barger and Grandey, 2006; Kim and Yoon, 2012; Small and Verrochi, 2009;
Tsai and Huang, 2002) have mixed pleasure and arousal-linked measures and collapsed the
responses into a single broad affect index. The present study differs from most other studies in
that it measured all affective dimensions (i.e. pleasure, arousal, and dominance) in the S-O-R
model, rather than one or a mixture of two dimensions.
The findings of the current study indicate that employee-displayed smiling has the
strongest impact on customers’ levels of pleasure, and that pleasure is the strongest
predictor for customer satisfaction. Thus, in line with emotional contagion, an employee’s
smile particularly triggers those feelings that are most typical for a smile (happiness and
joy) in the customer. Due to the resulting increased pleasure, the customer will then make
feeling-congruent (positive) satisfaction judgments, as postulated by feelings-as-information
theory. However, dominance also has a non-trivial effect on customers’ satisfaction
judgments. The fact that employee-displayed smiling had a positive impact on customers’
levels of dominance, and that dominance influenced customer satisfaction (although to a
significantly lower degree than pleasure), suggests that pleasure is the driving mechanism
for the smiling-satisfaction link (cf. Rucker et al., 2011). However, this mechanism seems to
have spillover effects on other affective states associated with positive emotions, such as
feelings related to dominance. Nonetheless, given that dominance is less typical for the
feelings experienced when smiling, this affective state will have a weaker impact on overall
satisfaction judgments.
A final important contribution of the present study stems from the fact that few previous
studies have used experimental design to investigate the effect that employee-displayed
positive behaviors in general, and smiling in particular, has on customers’ affective states.
Consequently, although previous research has indicated that emotional contagion should be
the underlying reason why a smiling employee would increase customers’ positive affect,
few studies have tested this experimentally. Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006) investigated the
effect of employee-displayed smile strength on participants’ affect and satisfaction, and used
an experimental research design that enabled them “to assess the cause-effect nature of
emotional contagion more precisely” (p. 59). However, their study was conducted as a
simulated service encounter in which actors played the roles of service employees.
Moreover, the participants were university students, and their positive affect measures
mainly comprised items corresponding to one affective dimension (arousal). The present Smile for
field study, by contrast, was conducted in a real retail/service environment with actual a while
customers, a real employee, and with measures of all affective dimensions in the S-O-R
model. It is important to note that the affect-based findings of the present study do not
necessarily contradict the results by Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006). However, the current
research reasonably paints a more complete picture. Primarily using arousal-related items,
Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006) found that employee-displayed smile strength during a service 297
encounter did not influence participants’ ratings on these arousal-related measures.
This finding led the authors to conclude that emotional contagion “does not remain
throughout the completion of the encounter, because post-encounter emotions do not appear
to be influenced by mimicry effects” (p. 68). A more plausible explanation could be that
Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006) did not measure the affective dimension of pleasure, which more
directly taps the feelings associated with smiling, and therefore found no support for the
emotional contagion explanation. However, the present study did support such an
explanation, with employee-displayed smiling found to have a particularly strong influence
on customers’ levels of pleasure and an additional, albeit weaker, influence on their
dominance levels, as measured several minutes after the actual service encounter had taken
place. Thus, the present research challenges the view that smiling-induced emotional
contagion does not remain throughout the completion of the service encounter. Still, similar
to Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006), the present study failed to find that employee-displayed
smiling had any influence on customers’ feelings of arousal.

Practical implications
The findings reported herein suggest that “service with a smile” may have far-reaching
consequences. Even though the service encounters in the present study lasted less than a
minute, customers who were greeted by the smiling (vs non-smiling) employee felt more
pleased and reported significantly higher levels of customer satisfaction. Research also
shows that smiling is related to customer outcomes with demonstrated financial
consequences. For example, Tidd and Lockard (1978) found that a waitress who served
customers with a strong smile not only increased the extent to which the customers smiled,
but also attracted significantly larger tips, both from male and female customers. More
recently, Kulczynski et al. (2016) found that advertisements featuring celebrities with a
smiling facial expression resulted in higher levels of pleasurable feelings among raters, with
this positive affective state mediating the link between the facial expression of the ad source
and the ad attitudes, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions of the raters. With these
findings in mind, the results of this study indicate that employee-displayed smiling should
play a key role in the long-term success of various retail and service firms. Customer
satisfaction is inextricably linked to consumer loyalty (Oliver, 1999), and is a key factor in
determining customers’ purchase decisions (Taylor and Baker, 1994) and predicting a
variety of financial outcomes (Gupta and Zeithaml, 2006). Hence, satisfied customers should
be more likely to return to a store (Tsai and Huang, 2002) and pass on positive word-of-
mouth about the store (Tsai, 2001). Therefore, the obvious managerial implication from the
current research is that managers should encourage, and potentially train, employees to act
in ways associated with positive emotions. Moreover, it should be easier for firms to justify
the employment of service workers who are good at displaying positive emotions through
smiling than to use other non-verbal factors as recruitment criteria. For instance, many
countries prohibit the use of physical attractiveness as a recruitment criterion, but it is
rarely illegal to select employees based on their ability to convey positive emotions
(Berg et al., 2015; Keh et al., 2013). In addition, recent research shows that employees who are
rated as low (vs high) in attractiveness can compensate for their appearance by displaying
positive emotions, which means that attractive and less attractive employees produce the
JOSM same levels of customer satisfaction if the employees display positive emotions
28,2 (Keh et al., 2013). This finding suggests that managers could also hire employees based
on how good they are at acting and expressing themselves in a genuinely positive manner
(Barger and Grandey, 2006; Grandey, 2015).
However, a note of caution should be raised regarding the authenticity of the employees’
smile and other positive displayed behaviors. Although not examined in the present study, a
298 required and therefore “faked” smile may have negative effects on customer affect and
satisfaction, as inauthentic displays of positive emotions have been shown to reduce
employee friendliness as well as customer satisfaction (Chi et al., 2011; Grandey et al., 2005;
Groth et al., 2009; Wang and Groth, 2014). Such “surface acting” has also been found to
negatively influence service workers’ job satisfaction, job attitudes, well-being, and the
service they give to customers (Hülsheger and Schewe, 2011; Whiting, 2014). Hennig-Thurau
et al. (2006) suggested that “the authenticity of the emotional display by frontline staff and
the sincerity with which staff interacts with customers may be much stronger drivers of
service outcomes than policies that require people to smile at any cost” (p. 70). People’s true
feelings are often displayed through postures, facial expressions, and other non-verbal and
verbal cues during interpersonal communication situations (Ambady and Rosenthal, 1992;
Ekman et al., 1988). This point indicates that managers should also make an effort to create
a pleasant store atmosphere for the employees so that the feelings and behaviors displayed
by frontline employees are genuine. Such a strategy should create a win-win situation, in
which well-being is improved, employees and customers feel happier and more satisfied, and
the firm is more successful financially (Bujisic et al., 2014; Chi et al., 2011; Grandey, 2015;
Groth et al., 2009; Hülsheger and Schewe, 2011; Wang and Groth, 2014).
From a broader perspective, the current research suggests that interpersonal
communication situations in which a “sender” transmits facial expressions associated
with happiness to a “recipient” should positively influence the recipient’s levels of pleasure
and result in more positive impressions, both of the sender and the surrounding
environment. This, in turn, should have a positive impact on how the sender evaluates the
recipient (cf. Chartrand and Bargh, 1999).

Limitations and future research

This study has certain limitations. As the authenticity of the employee’s smile was not
manipulated or measured, it cannot be ascertained that all customers in the smiling employee
condition inferred that the employee’s smile was genuine. However, this would have reduced
(rather than magnified) the likelihood of obtaining significant differences between conditions.
In line with most related research (e.g. Musgrove, 2011; Pugh, 2001; Söderlund and
Rosengren, 2008; Trougakos et al., 2011), but unlike some studies, the author did not
measure customers’ affective states before the service encounter (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006;
Tsai and Huang, 2002) or their initial smile strength before the encounter (Barger and
Grandey, 2006). However, given the quasi-experimental design, this is unlikely to have had a
strong impact on the results.
Attrition could, to some extent, be systematic in the current study, with customers
feeling positive being more likely to participate. However, as with the authenticity issue, this
would have reduced rather than amplified the obtained results (cf. Tsai, 2001).
An interesting avenue for future research would be to investigate the impact of employee-
displayed smiling on customers’ affective states and satisfaction in both utilitarian and
hedonic service settings. Using self-administered questionnaires on undergraduate students,
Jiang and Wang (2006) showed that the importance of pleasure for customer satisfaction was
weaker (but still statistically significant) in the case of a utilitarian service (a banking setting)
than in the case of a hedonic service (a karaoke setting). They also showed that arousal had no
effect on customer satisfaction in the utilitarian case, but had a significant positive impact in
the hedonic case. The fact that the present study was conducted in a utilitarian (banking) Smile for
context suggests that the author’s test of emotional contagion within this context should be a while
conservative, and that the effects obtained could be larger in more hedonic-oriented service
and retail settings. Indeed, it has been claimed that “the interaction modes between bank
tellers and customers are more mechanical” (Tsai and Huang, 2002, p. 1002), which could
make it difficult to obtain affect-related differences on customers within such a utilitarian
context. This point deserves attention in future studies that build on emotional contagion and 299
feelings-as-information theory and is an opportunity for future research.
Another fruitful avenue for future research would be to examine how other employee-
displayed cues can influence customers’ affect, satisfaction, and actual purchase behavior.
For instance, instead of focusing on cues signaling submissiveness (such as smiling), it
would be interesting to examine whether the opposite of submissiveness signals
(i.e. dominance cues) can impact customers. Indeed, ongoing research shows that
employee-displayed physical dominance (e.g. a muscular and physically fit employee)
induces a status threat in male customers, which motivates them to spend more
money – particularly on products that signal status through price or size – as a
compensatory consumption response (Otterbring et al., 2016). Scholars could continue this
line of research by investigating whether other markers of dominance, such as a deep voice,
can influence customers’ affective states and purchase decisions.

Conclusion
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first experimental evidence from
actual field settings for a smiling-induced emotional contagion effect. The present research
therefore makes a significant contribution to emotional contagion theory as well as other
affect-based theories in psychology, marketing, and service research. Furthermore, in
addition to the experimental demonstration that pleasure is the main driver for the effect of
employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction (shown for the first time under
ecologically valid conditions), the current work reveals that customers’ feelings of
dominance act as an additional mediator for the smiling-satisfaction link. This has never
been reported before in the literature on smiling. Taken together, these findings contribute
to the growing stream of transformative service research focusing on how well-being can be
achieved in service settings to improve happiness, joy, and emotional health in customers
and employees (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015; Anderson et al., 2013; Ostrom et al., 2015).

Notes
1. Similar to related research (e.g. Tsai and Huang, 2002) suggesting that the effect of positive
employee-displayed behaviors (including smiling) is not influenced by whether the gender
composition in the service encounter is congruent (e.g. female customer-female employee) or
incongruent (e.g. female customer-male employee), the inclusion of customer gender as an
additional between-subjects factor did not change the nature and significance of the results.
2. The correlation coefficient r represents a small, medium, and large effect size when r ¼ 0.10, 0.30,
and 0.50, respectively (Otterbring, Shams, Wästlund and Gustafsson, 2013; Otterbring, Löfgren
and Lestelius, 2014; Otterbring, Wästlund, Gustafsson and Shams, 2014).
3. Following Hayes (2009), Zhao et al. (2010), and Rucker et al. (2011), the author questions the use of terms
such as “full” vs “partial” mediation, for at least two important reasons. First, the proportion of
significant mediation effects that could be described as full decreases as the sample size increases. This
means that a sample size of n ¼ 200 would make it more difficult to obtain “full” mediation than it
would with a smaller sample (Rucker et al., 2011). Second, if the total effect (in this case, the effect of
employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction) is highly significant, which was the case in the
current study (p ¼ 0.008), then “even a well-measured mediator and an objectively strong intervening
process might yield claims of only partial mediation” (Rucker et al., 2011, p. 366).
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Corresponding author
Tobias Otterbring can be contacted at: tobias.otterbring@kau.se; toot@mgmt.au.dk

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