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Crises threaten the operations of small businesses and endanger their survival; however, when the crisis is not attributable to the firm, consumers may rally around the business. This study aims to examine how attitudes toward helping others can create support for small businesses, which in turn can direct consumers to help businesses with increased financial support. It is hoped that this paper will inform how consumers will help firms pivot during crises.

A conceptual model was proposed which linked support for helping others to increased willingness to tip/amount tipped. The model was tested using structural equation modeling from two surveys given to customers of two small businesses, a coffee shop and an independent movie theater, respectively.

During a crisis, support for helping others has a positive impact on feelings of support for small businesses. Consumers direct their support to small businesses that they are interested in seeing survive and continue operations. They either tip more or tip when they otherwise would not have tipped.

Firms that pivot their operations because of a crisis imposed on them can still generate revenues. Consumers who have a self-interest in the continuing operations of the firm want to support it, and by pivoting their business model, the firm gives consumers the opportunity to give the firm and its employees more than they would have in the form of tips.

Prior work in crisis management has focused primarily on how firms recover and respond to a crisis of their doing. Overwhelmingly, consumers have been shown to punish firms during times of crisis. However, for a crisis that is imposed on the firm, consumers may rally behind the firm and respond by supporting it more than they are required to.

Despite the importance of the interaction between consumers and service personnel for how consumers perceive quality, service research assumes that both customers and service provider are perfectly able to interact with each other. This might not be the case on bilingual markets. This paper aims to examine customers ' behavioral reactions to being served in their first versus second language. Specifically, the paper tests whether bilinguals who are served in their second language are less likely to tip the service provider. Moreover, it seeks to examine the mediating role of speech accommodation, and the moderating roles of bilinguals ' perceived second language proficiency and political considerations.

Study 1 tests the main hypothesis using a scenario-based experiment with adult consumers in two bilingual countries (Belgium, Finland). Study 2 further elaborates on these findings using a retrospective survey of actual customer experiences in Belgium.

Driven by perceptions of speech accommodation, the results consistently show that consumers are more likely to tip if served in their native language compared to when served in their second language. Moreover, this relationship is not dependent on consumers ' perceived second language proficiency, but rather upon their political considerations.

This is the first study of bilingual customers ' behavioral reactions to being served in their second language, among bilingual customers from different countries. Given that more than half the countries in the world are multilingual, service providers need to take customers ' native language into account when serving bilingual customers.

Consumers can provide monetary tips to service employees as a reward for their efforts. However, consumers’ ability to recognize the demands of these jobs could affect tipping behavior. This study aims to examine the difficulty consumers have recognized the emotional toll of service work, and how this affects tipping behavior.

Three experiments were conducted with US participants to determine how the focus on emotional burdens of service work affects willingness to tip lower level service employees.

Results reveal that when consumers hear about the emotional costs of service labor, they report less willingness to tip low-level workers, compared to when they learn about other job costs or contributions. Results further show that reducing power distance between customers and workers can increase willingness to tip when emotional costs are emphasized.

This research contributes to the services literature by showing how feelings of power affect whether consumers appreciate certain job costs, and, in turn, their tipping behavior.

This research clarifies how consumers perceive job demands, which has direct consequences for tipping behavior and suggests more strategies to improve tips.

Findings can help advocates looking to advance the status and compensation for lower-level service workers.

This research is first to explore why the emotional costs of service labor are not recognized in certain cases, and provides insight on how to improve customer treatment of lower-level service labor.

Academic research has supported the belief that consumers undertip minority race service workers due to implicit racial biases. However, there has been less focus in examining possible moderating factors. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the role of direct and indirect experience in tipping frontline service workers from a minority background. Given the prominence of customer ratings on digital service platforms and the perception that African Americans are discriminated against, the authors look at the interplay of interaction length (direct experience) and customer ratings (indirect experience) on the relationship between race and tipping.

An expectancy disconfirmation framework was developed and tested with a sample of 360 US participants in an online experiment. The experiment followed a 2 × (race: African-American versus Caucasian) × 2 (direct experience: limited versus extensive) × 3 (indirect experience: absent versus positive versus negative customer rating) design.

The authors found consumers who have extended direct experience (longer service interaction) and no indirect experience (absent customer ratings) tipped African Americans more than Caucasians. Interestingly, this effect is reduced in the presence of indirect experience (customer ratings). Finally, where the consumer lacks direct experience (shorter service interaction) but is exposed to positive indirect experience (positive customer ratings), consumers tip African Americans more.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that examines the role of direct and indirect experience in the relationship between race and tipping. Based on the authors’ findings, the authors provide several contributions, including recommendations to reduce inequalities arising from implicit racial bias on digital service platforms.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature that discusses consumer tipping behaviour in eating establishments. Because there is no detailed research into this issue with regard to consumers in Central and East European countries, the authors conducted research aimed at learning about the tipping behaviour of the Poles.

This study was carried out in 2018, using the computer-assisted web interviewing method, for a sample of 1,000 people. Six research questions were asked: How often the Poles give tips in eating establishments? What is an average size of a tip? What determinants influence the frequency and magnitude of tips? Who is likely to give a tip every one to two visits? Who is likely to tip more than the standard 10%? What influences the reasons why Polish consumers tend to tip?

The findings show the strong relationships between both a consumers’ tipping frequency and magnitude and the frequency at which these consumers eat out. This study also implicates income and education as essential factors influencing tipping behaviour and the lack of gender effect on consumers’ decision to tip. It was also noticed that such reasons as the quality of service, a taste of the dishes and a belief that it is proper to tip have a significant impact on the frequency of giving the tips. A significant diversity of the reasons’ meaning for tipping among Polish consumers depending upon their age was also stated.

It would be interesting to compare the results of the current study with studies concerning consumer tipping behaviours in other Central and Eastern European countries historically and culturally similar to Poland to investigate whether the specifics of tipping behaviour noticed in Poland apply elsewhere.

This study shows the specifics of Polish people’s tipping behaviour and partially fulfills the gap in the knowledge of this aspect of consumers’ from Central and Eastern Europe behaviour. The obtained results suggest that with the increasing incomes and the widespread use of food services, tipping is likely to become more common in Poland. Furthermore, the pragmatic reasons for tipping will become more important than social and psychological motivators.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the business issues surrounding tipping and its alternatives, to summarize what is known about those issues, and to identify questions in need of further research.

Objectives are achieved via conceptual analysis and review of relevant literature.

The paper finds that voluntary tipping, service charges, and service‐inclusive pricing offer different sets of costs and benefits, so that no one policy is always the best. The principal benefits to service firms of voluntary tipping are that it lowers nominal prices, increases profits through price discrimination, motivates up‐selling and service, attracts talented workers, and lowers FICA tax payments. However, tipping also motivates discrimination in service delivery, gives servers surplus income that could go the firms' bottom line, increases the risk of income tax audits, and opens firms up to adverse impact lawsuits.

No one tipping policy is always the best. Service industry executives and managers should carefully weigh each of eight different issues (outlined together for the first time here) to identify the best tipping policy for their circumstances.

Tipping has received little attention in service marketing. Furthermore, there is no good, published source of guidance to help service industry executives and managers make decisions about tipping policies. This paper addresses these voids by providing and discussing a comprehensive list of the pros and cons of tipping and its alternatives from a business perspective.

To examine tipping propensities between the races and genders in restaurant and non‐restaurant service encounters.

Data were collected on tipping in restaurants and in other service encounters outside the restaurant from consumers across races and genders in the USA.

Analyses showed that tipping in restaurants is different from tipping in other service encounters outside the restaurant industry. While tipping in restaurants may be norm driven, tipping in service encounters outside restaurants may be out of appreciation. It was also found that, unlike in restaurants, ethnicity does not matter in tipping in service encounters outside the restaurant. Furthermore, gender was found to make a marginal difference in tipping in service encounters outside the restaurant industry.

The findings are limited to the USA since the samples came from the USA alone. However, kindness and the ability to appreciate good deeds can transcend geographic barriers. Furthermore, the findings are limited by the data being self‐reported.

The results show that there is no difference in tipping propensities in service encounters outside the restaurant industry, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Managers in service businesses outside the restaurant industry should therefore train their workers to be truly committed to delivering customer satisfaction to all customers regardless of ethnicity or gender. By focusing on making the customers happy, the workers also stand a good chance of increasing their tip.

The study fills the current gap in research and in the understanding of tipping in restaurants and in other service encounters outside the restaurant industry.

Tipping within the foodservice industry has traditionally been reserved for full-service restaurants. However, there is a growing trend of tip requests at limited-service restaurants, where tipping occurs prior to consuming the product. This research aims to examine the effect of a point-of-sale tip request at limited-service restaurants on return intentions via customer irritation. It also aims to analyze the moderating effects of check amount and perceived deservingness.

Four online scenario-based experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. Participants were recruited from MTurk for all experiments (N_Study 1 = 152; N_Study 2 = 296; N_Study 3 = 206; N_Study 4 = 134).

Studies 1 and 2 suggested a negative impact of presenting a tip request on return intentions, with customer irritation as the underlying mechanism. Study 3 found the indirect effect was significant only when the check amount was low. Study 4 found that perceived deservingness of a tip also moderated this effect; the indirect effect was significant only when customers felt the employee did not deserve a tip. The effect was attenuated when customers felt the employee deserved a tip.

This paper contributes to the underexplored area of tipping behavior in the limited-service context. The findings contrast extant research on voluntary tipping at full-service restaurants, thus advancing theory by suggesting the consequences of tip requests are contextual and providing practical insights to limited-service establishments contemplating whether to begin requesting tips.

Given the rapid development in artificial intelligence (AI), the hotel industry is deploying AI-based systems. In line with this important development, this study aims to examine the impact of trust in the hotel and AI-related performance ambiguity on consumers’ engagement with AI-based systems. This study ultimately examined the impact of engagement on consumers’ intentions to stay in hotels offering such systems, and intentions to tip.

This study developed a conceptual model based on the social cognition theory. The study used an online survey methodology and collected data from a nationwide sample of 400 hotel consumers from the USA. The data analysis was conducted with structural equation modeling.

Consumers’ engagement is strongly influenced by their trust in the hotel but not by performance ambiguity associated with AI. In turn, engagement strongly influenced consumers’ intentions to stay in hotels that have such systems and their intentions to tip.

As AI systems capable of making decisions for consumers are becoming increasingly present in hotels, little is known about the way consumers engage with such systems and whether their engagement leads to economic impact. This is the first study that validated a model that explains intentions to stay and tip for services facilitated by autonomous AI-based systems that can make decisions for consumers.

鉴于人工智能领域的快速发展, 酒店业正在部署基于人工智能的系统。为此, 本研究探讨了客人对酒店的信任和与AI相关的性能模糊性对消费者与基于AI的系统互动的影响。最终, 本研究考察了参与度对客人在提供此类系统的酒店住宿意愿和小费意愿的影响。

本研究基于社会认知理论开发了一个概念模型。研究采用在线调查方法, 从美国全国范围的400名酒店消费者中收集数据, 并采用结构方程建模进行数据分析。

消费者的参与度受酒店的信任强烈影响, 但不受与AI相关的性能模糊性的影响。反过来, 参与度强烈影响了消费者在提供此类系统的酒店住宿和给小费的意愿。

随着能够代表消费者做出决策的人工智能（AI）系统在酒店中日益普及, 人们对消费者如何与这类系统互动以及他们的互动是否会产生经济影响知之甚少。这是第一项验证了一个可以解释在自主的基于AI系统的服务下住宿和给小费意愿的模型的研究。

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether guests’ tipping motivations (i.e. server quality, social norm and food quality) and demographic characteristics (i.e. gender, age and income) influence loyalty to the server in a restaurant.

Based on a national online survey consumer panel comprised of 468 participants, the authors utilized decision tree using R statistical software. Predictor variables were tipping motivations and demographic characteristics (age, gender and income). Target variable was loyalty to the server.

The findings suggest that social norm, food quality and income influence customers’ loyalty toward the same server on future visits. Social norm turned out to be the strongest predictor. If consumers did not have high social norm on tipping, their loyalty toward a particular server was affected by the combination of determinants such as server quality, social norm, income and food quality.

Future research can identify or develop scales of tipping motivations with stronger reliabilities in the context of restaurants. Future research can also explore other demographic differences (e.g. ethnicity and sexual orientation) in tipping motivations and server loyalty.

Servers are indeed the primary contact point and they are in the most influential position with consumers. Overall, results of this study provide an interesting insight in that restaurant guests’ experience can be ruined by bad quality of food or can be mitigated by server quality. Thus, this research highlights a step-by-step process as to the actions that a server may perform and manage in order to enhance server loyalty.

Loyalty has been examined in the context of products, brands or service providers. This study focuses on loyalty toward a specific server, because the consideration of server–guest relationship provides both a compelling and timely area of study in that restaurants continue to look for unique ways to drive server–guest rapport and customer loyalty.