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Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences.

In this chapter, emotional interactions between tourists and the individuals they are potentially in interaction with are examined within the scope of social aspects of tourism atmosphere. Emotional interactions were analysed under the framework of emotional contagion. Regardless of whether the fact that emotional contagion occurs in non-conscious or conscious way, tourists are open to emotional cues to come from other individuals. Emotions of other individuals can influence tourists’ behavioural intentions by shaping their emotions. This chapter suggests a number of propositions, and develops a conceptual model to capture the role of emotional interactions.

This chapter investigated tactics used by customer service employees in performing emotion work during their interactions with customers and those internal to organizations. Based on a qualitative study in the hospitality industry, I discovered that customer service employees used a range of tactics that impact different phases of the emotion regulation process in order to facilitate emotion work. One group of tactics was directed towards the work context while the other was self-directed in an attempt to regulate the experience and expression of emotion. Taken together these two groups of tactics provide a holistic portrayal of the range of tactics used by customer service employees in performing emotion work.

The use of teams in the workplace is an accepted facet of current working life. Training is undertaken with a view to equipping students for the eventual transition to a workplace which demands the social scientific skills of being an active, contributing, co‐operative team member. The use of content and process in a practical‐based learning situation is the focus of this study, which assesses a range of learning approaches used to acquire a knowledge of the skills required for team working. The division of the course into content and task‐related aspects on the one hand, and process and subjective experience on the other, is evaluated from the point of view of the skills it transfers to the course participant. The concept of emotional intelligence is measured to ensure the practical application of theory on team working to the experience of team functioning. The results indicate the success of this approach and demonstrate its ease of transfer to the workplace training environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine causal attribution in interactional service experiences. The paper investigates how triggers in the environment of a customer-employee interaction influence customer behavioral response to employees’ negative and positive affect. Additionally, it studies the role of sympathy and authenticity as underlying mechanisms of this relationship.

Two scenario-based experimental designs (N1=162; N2=138) were used. Videotaped scenarios served as stimulus material for the manipulation of two focal variables: the employee’s emotional display as either negative or positive and the availability of an emotion trigger in the interaction environment to convey the attribution dimension of cause uncontrollability. The emotion trigger’s visibility was varied in the two studies. Customer response was captured by buying intentions.

Customer responses are more favorable for both positive and negative interactional experiences when customers have access to information on cause uncontrollability (i.e. notice triggers in the interaction environment). Analyses reveal that these effects stem from feelings of sympathy for negative experiences and authenticity for positive experiences.

This research supports the relevance of causal attribution research on interactional service experiences, which have high-profit impact. Moreover, the findings underline the importance of the experience of fact in service interactions and thereby provide a more nuanced view on the discussion of whether service providers should use impression management strategies to engender customer satisfaction even when this behavior is “faked.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine if the service worker's display of smiles in the service encounter has an effect on customer satisfaction.

An experimental design was used in which participants (N=220) were randomly allocated to one of four service encounters. Two variables were manipulated; the service worker with whom the participant interacted had either a neutral facial expression or a smiling facial expression, and the service worker was either male or female.

The smiling service worker produced a higher level of customer satisfaction than the neutral service worker, regardless of the sex of the service worker (and the sex of the participant). In addition, the results indicate that this outcome involved both emotional contagion and affect infusion.

This paper extends the service literature's discourse on the impact of the service worker's smile behavior on customer satisfaction by including intermediate variables such as appraisals, emotions, and the attitude toward the service worker.

Emotional intelligence (EI) has a profound effect on the performance of tour guides, though past studies on the subject have neglected to examine the effects of EI on neither the overall nor specific pattern of tour guides' performance. This study examines the overall link between four dimensions of EI (self-emotion appraisal [SEA], others' emotion appraisal [OEA], use of emotions [UOEs] and regulation of emotions [ROEs]) and five dimensions of citizenship performance (helping, self-development, initiative, compliance and adaptability), ultimately identifying the relationship between EI factors and each dimension of tour guides' citizenship performance.

The data from 244 Jordanian tour guides were gathered through a quantitative survey. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multiple regression analysis were performed to analyze the data.

The results reveal that emotionally intelligent tour guides are more likely to have higher levels of citizenship performance. The most significant factors in determining extra-role behaviors by tour guides are “UOEs” and “others’ emotion appraisal (OEA)”.

This study equips different professional entities in the tour guide industry with useful, contextualized links between EI and citizenship performance. This assists in developing new accreditation policies and business practices to augment tour guides' citizenship professionalism, thereby maximizing their valuable contributions to tourism growth.

This study advances the tourism studies by establishing a new theoretical link between tour guides' EI and citizenship performance. The study also uncovers unique factors of EI that significantly determine tour guides' citizenship behaviors.

The chapter should help managers to realize what they could do in order to enhance positive emotions and well being during challenging times of a post-merger integration.

Indeed, negative affects, such as anxieties, aggressions, uncertainties, and stress are a very common phenomenon in mergers and acquisitions. On the other side, positive emotions are proved to be particularly suited for preventing and dealing with negative emotions.

For researchers this chapter serves as an encouragement to shift their attention to positive emotions, and it aims to instill some ideas for further research.

This paper aims to explore consumers’ cognitive responses to the presence of other people in a planned lifestyle center. The featured lifestyle center contains shopping, lodging, dining and retail options in an open-air setting full of natural elements. This work helps explain the affinity of consumers to lifestyle centers and shows marketing researchers and practitioners how to use neuroscience hardware and software in service design research.

The study draws on social impact theory to show how the social presence of others in a lifestyle center influences six different cognitive responses. The authors evaluate consumers’ cognitive responses by using the Emotiv EPOC+ headset to obtain electroencephalogram recordings. To interpret these recordings, they use EmotivPro software, which provides readings on six emotional states, including excitement, interest, stress, engagement, attention and relaxation.

The data obtained from mall shoppers reveal that the presence of other people in a lifestyle center evokes high levels of interest and excitement and encourages relaxation.

The paper shows marketers how to use neural data to obtain insights into consumers’ cognitive responses to stimuli by using Emotiv headsets and software.

The results show the importance of social elements in encouraging customers to approach and spend time in lifestyle centers.

The paper is one of the first to explore consumers’ responses to strangers in shared settings using neuroscience.

The purpose of this paper is to put forth an expanded servicescape framework that shows that a perceived servicescape comprises physical, social, socially symbolic, and natural environmental dimensions.

This conceptual paper offers an in‐depth literature review on servicescape topics from a variety of disciplines, both inside and outside marketing, to advance a logical framework built on Bitner's seminal article (1992).

A servicescape comprises not only objective, measureable, and managerially controllable stimuli but also subjective, immeasurable, and often managerially uncontrollable social, symbolic, and natural stimuli, which all influence customer approach/avoidance decisions and social interaction behaviors. Furthermore, customer responses to social, symbolic, and natural stimuli are often the drivers of profound person‐place attachments.

The framework supports a servicescape paradigm that links marketing, environmental/natural psychology, humanistic geography, and sociology.

Although managers can easily control a service firm's physical stimuli, they need to understand how other critical environmental stimuli influence consumer behavior and which stimuli might overweigh a customer's response to a firm's physical dimensions.

The paper shows how a servicescape's naturally restorative dimension can promote relief from mental fatigue and improve customer health and well‐being. Thus, government institutions (e.g. schools, hospitals) can improve people's lives by creating natural servicescapes that have restorative potential.

The framework organizes more than 25 years of servicescape research in a cogent framework that has cross‐disciplinary implications.