In service-oriented firms, the face-to-face interaction between a service provider and a customer helps the customer form an impression of the organization. The customer's perception of service quality may have an impact on the customer's purchase behavior. The service provider may categorize the customer and that categorization may influence the manner in which the customer is treated. Two categorization variables examined in this research - the customer's superficial appearance and the customer's product knowledge.
Additionally, most service-oriented organizations provide some type of customer service orientation for their employees. This research also investigates what, if any, influence training interventions have on service provider performance.
In a single experiment with 180 undergraduate participants, three main effects and their interactions were tested - customer appearance, product knowledge, and service provider training. Participants played the role of a salesperson in a retail computer store and viewed a videotape of one of six randomly assigned customers and then completed survey instruments on (1) customer attitude evaluation, (2) open-ended recall of the customer's appearance, and (3) open-ended recall of the customer's needs.
The customer, a white male actor, was identical in all six conditions, but he was dressed in three different ways - in a suit, in casual clothing or in a tie-dyed T-shirt with a nose ring. Additionally, in each dress condition he either presented a script with a strong knowledge of the computer he wished to purchase or a script that demonstrated he knew little about computers. The training manipulation consisted of one-half of the sample reading a training primer on the importance of mindfulness in communication and not letting irrelevant information distract salespeople from the task at hand.
Results were generally not supportive of the hypotheses. The salesperson's attitude evaluation of the customer and the salesperson's recall of customer appearance and product need details were only moderately influenced by the experimental manipulations. Salesperson training had no effect. Hypotheses related to the interactions were not supported.
The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. Methodological problems are also outlined and three new follow-up studies are suggested. In addition, some practical implications of the findings are outlined.