IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v38y2017icp34-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aesthetic labor and visible diversity: The role in retailing service encounters

Author

Listed:
  • Quach, Sara
  • Jebarajakirthy, Charles
  • Thaichon, Park

Abstract

This study endeavors to investigate the role of the appearance of customer service staff in forming customer perceptions. It also aims to fill the gap in existing knowledge by exploring the notion of visible diversity, for example, ethnicity, age, gender and perceived sexual orientation of store staff in service encounter from the customers’ perspective. The study adopted a qualitative, inductive approach in data collection using a sample of 30 customers from leading Australian fashion retailers. This study identifies three themes explaining customer perceptions of staff's aesthetic labor, namely mirroring appearance, matching appearance, and charming appearance, which can be explained by the social identity theory, role theory and aesthetic capital. It is found that staff appearance might affect customers’ intention to revisit but does not guarantee sales. In addition, based on signaling theory, the results show that age, ethnicity, gender and perceived sexual orientation of the retail store staff are meaningful factors in determining customers’ attitudes and behavior. This study is one of the first that takes aspects of visible diversity into account along with aesthetic labor and customer experience in a retail setting.

Suggested Citation

  • Quach, Sara & Jebarajakirthy, Charles & Thaichon, Park, 2017. "Aesthetic labor and visible diversity: The role in retailing service encounters," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 34-43.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:38:y:2017:i:c:p:34-43
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.05.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698916305914
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.05.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joan Sangster & Julia Smith, 2016. "Beards and Bloomers: Flight Attendants, Grievances and Embodied Labour in the Canadian Airline Industry, 1960s–1980s," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 183-199, March.
    2. Michael Spence, 2002. "Signaling in Retrospect and the Informational Structure of Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 434-459, June.
    3. Chris Warhurst & Dennis Nickson, 2007. "Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and hospitality," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 21(1), pages 103-120, March.
    4. Thaichon, Paramaporn & Lobo, Antonio & Prentice, Catherine & Quach, Thu Nguyen, 2014. "The development of service quality dimensions for internet service providers: Retaining customers of different usage patterns," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 1047-1058.
    5. Cambra-Fierro, Jesús & Berbel-Pineda, Juan M. & Ruiz-Benítez, Rocío & Vázquez-Carrasco, Rosario, 2013. "Analysis of the moderating role of the gender variable in service recovery processes," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 408-418.
    6. Kristina Johansson, 2016. "‘In a Male Workplace, Things Would Never Be Like This’: Using Gendered Notions to Neutralize Conflicts in a Swedish Supermarket," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(5), pages 505-517, September.
    7. Wei Ma, 2017. "Perturbed Utility and General Equilibrium Analysis," Working Papers 201701, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    8. Goldberg, Caren B., 2003. "Applicant reactions to the employment interview: A look at demographic similarity and social identity theory," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 561-571, August.
    9. Gerlach, Gisela & Rödiger, Kai & Stock, Ruth & Zacharias, Nicolas, 2016. "Salespersons’ Empathy as a Missing Link in the Customer Orientation–Loyalty Chain: An Investigation of Drivers and Age Differences as a Contingency," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 84780, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    10. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay & Esther Duflo, 2004. "Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1409-1443, September.
    11. Ma, Wei, 2017. "Perturbed utility and general equilibrium analysis," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 122-131.
    12. Söderlund, Magnus & Julander, Claes-Robert, 2009. "Physical attractiveness of the service worker in the moment of truth and its effects on customer satisfaction," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 216-226.
    13. Orose Leelakulthanit & Boonchai Hongcharu, 2011. "Factors That Impact Customer Satisfaction: Evidence From The Thailand Mobile Cellular Network Industry," International Journal of Management and Marketing Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 4(2), pages 67-76.
    14. Carley Foster & Sheilagh Resnick, 2013. "Service worker appearance and the retail service encounter: the influence of gender and age," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 236-247, February.
    15. Chang, Joshua & Travaglione, Antonio & O’Neill, Grant, 2015. "How can gender signal employee qualities in retailing?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 24-30.
    16. ., 2017. "A General Theory of Economic Development," Chapters, in: A General Theory of Economic Development, chapter 7, pages 115-150, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Meng, Lingsheng & Zheng, Bing & Ma, Peilan, 2017. "Perturbation bounds of generalized inverses," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 296(C), pages 88-100.
    18. David A. King, 2004. "The scientific impact of nations," Nature, Nature, vol. 430(6997), pages 311-316, July.
    19. Chris Warhurst & DENNIS NICKSON & ANNE WITZ & ANNE MARIE CULLEN, 2000. "Aesthetic Labour in Interactive Service Work: Some Case Study Evidence from the ‘New’ Glasgow," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 1-18, July.
    20. Wei Ma, 2017. "Perturbed Utility and General Equilibrium Analysis," Working Papers 654, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    21. Gloria Moss, 2012. "Lessons on Profiting from Diversity," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Gloria Moss (ed.), Lessons on Profiting from Diversity, chapter 1, pages 1-18, Palgrave Macmillan.
    22. Li, Hengzhe & Ma, Yingbin & Yang, Weihua & Wang, Yifei, 2017. "The generalized 3-connectivity of graph products," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 295(C), pages 77-83.
    23. Gerlach, Gisela & Rödiger, Kai & Stock, Ruth & Zacharias, Nicolas, 2016. "Salespersons’ Empathy as a Missing Link in the Customer Orientation—Loyalty Chain: An Investigation of Drivers and Age Differences as a Contingency," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 84727, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Juliet Elizabeth Kele & Catherine Cassell & Jacqueline Ford & Kathryn Watson, 2022. "Intersectional identities and career progression in retail: The experiences of minority‐ethnic women," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 1178-1198, July.
    2. Otterbring, Tobias & Bhatnagar, Roopali & Samuelsson, Peter & Borau, Sylvie, 2021. "Positive gender congruency effects on shopper responses: Field evidence from a gender egalitarian culture," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    3. Park, Sangchul & Kim, Sanghoon & Ahn, Sungsook, 2023. "The role of consumers' construal level in art-infusion-type effect on retail product evaluation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    4. Kurata, Hisashi, 2019. "Is the information of customer types and preferences to personal selling worth the investment in innovative technology? A modeling approach," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 371-379.
    5. Ozuem, Wilson & Howell, Kerry E. & Lancaster, Geoff, 2019. "The impact of digital books on marketing communications," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 131-137.
    6. Gaan, Niharika & Shin, Yuhyung, 2023. "Sales employees’ polychronicity and sales-service ambidexterity: Mediation of work engagement and moderation of store manager support," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Park, Sangchul & Kim, Sanghoon & Ahn, Sungsook, 2023. "Understanding the effect of art infusion type on retail product shopping: An attention to the intervening role of customers’ financial wealth," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    8. Li, Yaoqi & Zhang, Chun & Laroche, Michel, 2019. "Is beauty a premium? A study of the physical attractiveness effect in service encounters," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 215-225.
    9. Zhuang, Zheng-Yun & Chung, Cheng-Kung, 2024. "Dissecting the visiting willingness of driving visitors facing a retail market's dual-pricing policy for parking," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    10. Xu, Yingzi & Ling, I-Ling, 2023. "Effects of face masks and photo tags on nonverbal communication in service encounters," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Otterbring, Tobias & Bhatnagar, Roopali & Samuelsson, Peter & Borau, Sylvie, 2021. "Positive gender congruency effects on shopper responses: Field evidence from a gender egalitarian culture," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    2. Wei Ma, 2023. "Random dual expected utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(2), pages 293-315, February.
    3. Roy Allen & John Rehbeck, 2021. "A Generalization of Quantal Response Equilibrium via Perturbed Utility," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-16, March.
    4. Vincent J. Giolito & Robert C. Liden & Dirk Dierendonck & Gordon W. Cheung, 2021. "Servant Leadership Influencing Store-Level Profit: The Mediating Effect of Employee Flourishing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 172(3), pages 503-524, September.
    5. Gohary, Ali & Hamzelu, Bahman & Alizadeh, Hamid, 2016. "Please explain why it happened! How perceived justice and customer involvement affect post co-recovery evaluations: A study of Iranian online shoppers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 127-142.
    6. Moudrý, Dann Vít & Thaichon, Park, 2020. "Enrichment for retail businesses: How female entrepreneurs and masculine traits enhance business success," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    7. Sung-Bum Kim & Seunghwan Lee & Dae-Young Kim, 2018. "The effect of service providers’ facial hair on restaurant customers’ perceptions," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 12(2), pages 277-303, June.
    8. Good, Megan C. & Schwepker, Charles H., 2022. "Business-to-business salespeople and political skill: Relationship building, deviance, and performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 32-43.
    9. Birken, Thomas & Dunkel, Wolfgang, 2013. "Dienstleistungsforschung und Dienstleistungspolitik: Eine Bestandsaufnahme internationaler Literatur zu 'service science' und 'service work'," Arbeitspapiere 282, Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Düsseldorf.
    10. Markovitch, Dmitri G. & Stough, Rusty A. & Huang, Dongling, 2024. "Consumer reactions to chatbot versus human service: An investigation in the role of outcome valence and perceived empathy," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    11. Xin Zhao, 2022. "Customer Orientation: A Literature Review Based on Bibliometric Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, February.
    12. Chang, Joshua & Travaglione, Antonio & O’Neill, Grant, 2015. "How can gender signal employee qualities in retailing?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 24-30.
    13. Kaivan Munshi & Mark Rosenzweig, 2008. "The Efficacy of Parochial Politics: Caste, Commitment, and Competence in Indian Local Governments," NBER Working Papers 14335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Ferdinand Thies & Sören Wallbach & Michael Wessel & Markus Besler & Alexander Benlian, 2022. "Initial coin offerings and the cryptocurrency hype - the moderating role of exogenous and endogenous signals," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 32(3), pages 1691-1705, September.
    15. Owen, Ann L. & Temesvary, Judit, 2018. "The performance effects of gender diversity on bank boards," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 50-63.
    16. Domingo Docampo & Lawrence Cram, 2019. "Highly cited researchers: a moving target," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 1011-1025, March.
    17. Amanda H Goodall, 2005. "Should Research Universities be Led by Top Researchers? Part 1: Are they?," HEW 0506003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Colin Lindsay & Ronald W. McQuaid, 2004. "Avoiding the ‘McJobs’," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 18(2), pages 297-319, June.
    19. Astrid Sneyers & Anneleen Vandeplas, 2013. "Girl Power in Agricultural Production: How Much Does it Yield? A Case-Study on the Dairy Sector in India," Working Papers id:5562, eSocialSciences.
    20. Juliet Elizabeth Kele & Catherine Cassell & Jacqueline Ford & Kathryn Watson, 2022. "Intersectional identities and career progression in retail: The experiences of minority‐ethnic women," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 1178-1198, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:38:y:2017:i:c:p:34-43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.