Is beauty a premium? A study of the physical attractiveness effect in service encounters

Physical attractiveness is an essential factor in consumers' evaluation processes during a service encounter. Using both experimental and field study designs, we demonstrate that a service representative's physical attractiveness affects consumer response (i.e., customer satisfaction, service quality perception, and likability of the service representative). Also, we find that a consumer's social distance perception between themselves and a service representative mediates the physical attractiveness effect on consumer response. Thus, this article is the first to demonstrate that social distance perception is an underlining mechanism of the physical attractiveness effect. Furthermore, findings from Studies 2 and 3 show that consumers' physical attractiveness and their attractiveness-ability belief moderate the physical attractiveness effect. Although contentious to some, our findings indicate that the recruitment of attractive representatives may be an effective business practice in service settings. However, managers should not regard consumers as a homogeneous group; self-perceived unattractive consumers may respond negatively to their service representative's physical attractiveness.