TY - JOUR A1 - Kolb, Peter A1 - Gockel, Christine A1 - Werth, Lioba T1 - The effects of temperature on service employees’ customer orientation: an experimental approach JF - Ergonomics N2 - Numerous studies have demonstrated how temperature can affect perceptual, cognitive and psychomotor performance (e.g. Hancock, P.A., Ross, J., and Szalma, J., 2007. A meta-analysis of performance response under thermal stressors. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 49 (5), 851–877). We extend this research to interpersonal aspects of performance, namely service employees' and salespeople's customer orientation. We combine ergonomics with recent research on social cognition linking physical with interpersonal warmth/coldness. In Experiment 1, a scenario study in the lab, we demonstrate that student participants in rooms with a low temperature showed more customer-oriented behaviour and gave higher customer discounts than participants in rooms with a high temperature – even in zones of thermal comfort. In Experiment 2, we show the existence of alternative possibilities to evoke positive temperature effects on customer orientation in a sample of 126 service and sales employees using a semantic priming procedure. Overall, our results confirm the existence of temperature effects on customer orientation. Furthermore, important implications for services, retail and other settings of interpersonal interactions are discussed. Practitioner Summary: Temperature effects on performance have emerged as a vital research topic. Owing to services' increasing economic importance, we transferred this research to the construct of customer orientation, focusing on performance in service and retail settings. The demonstrated temperature effects are transferable to services, retail and other settings of interpersonal interactions. KW - Helping behaviour KW - Interpersonal performance KW - Customer orientation Y1 - 2012 N1 - Online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223135162_The_effects_of_temperature_on_service_employees'_customer_orientation_An_experimental_approach VL - 55 IS - 6 SP - 621 EP - 635 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Gockel, Christine A1 - Kolb, Peter A1 - Werth, Lioba T1 - Room temperature affects customer orientation in service encounters T2 - 7th Meeting of the Work, Organizational and Business Psychology Division, Rostock N2 - Keine Angabe - No details KW - Psychology KW - Temperature KW - Customer orientation KW - Service encounters Y1 - 2011 N1 - Volltext aus urheberrechtlichen Gründen nicht verfügbar. Fulltext due to copyright not available. ER -