How emotional displays and service quality impact satisfaction and loyalty: A gendered look

ABSTRACT

Success in the restaurant industry is, in part, determined by boundary spanning service providers’ ability to manage their emotions with the goal of providing excellent service while simultaneously authentically displaying the proper emotions to connect with the guest. How men and women respond to these displays of emotion is of interest, as previous scholars have demonstrated perceptions and reactions to service delivery differ across genders. This study utilized a between subject quasi-experimental design manipulating each one of the independent variables (gender, emotional labor, and service quality) in a dichotomous fashion for each scenario. The dependent variables measured were satisfaction and loyalty. The results indicated that women are more receptive to deep acting than are their male counterparts, and are thus, more likely to be loyal to an organization if deep acting is employed. How to encourage deep acting among foodservice providers is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional labor
• gender
• surface acting
• deep acting
• loyalty
• satisfaction