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The effects of temperature on service employees’ customer orientation: an experimental approach

  • 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 primingNumerous 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.show moreshow less
Metadaten
Author: Peter Kolb, Prof. Dr. Christine Gockel, Lioba Werth
Parent Title (English):Ergonomics
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2014/06/13
Year of first Publication:2012
Publishing Institution:SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences
Release Date:2014/06/13
Tag:Customer orientation; Helping behaviour; Interpersonal performance
Volume:55
Issue:6
First Page:621
Last Page:635
Note:
Online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223135162_The_effects_of_temperature_on_service_employees'_customer_orientation_An_experimental_approach
Link author profile:https://www.srh-berlin.de/hochschule/hochschulteam/gockel-christine/
Peer-reviewed:Keine Angabe - No details
JEL-Classification:J Labor and Demographic Economics
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung
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