Ensuring greater satisfaction by engineering salesperson response to customer emotions

In this research, we develop and empirically investigate a framework to help retail managers engineer effective salesperson response to customer emotions and ensure greater satisfaction. Building on an interpersonal view of emotions, we argue that managers must be familiar with (1) diagnostic cues for assessing emotion-soliciting contexts and how customers generally display these emotions; (2) the normative salesperson responses that customers expect to their different emotions; (3) and the naturally occuring responses from the salesperson as observed by the customers. We report upon an emotional study that tested these arguments for the two negative (anxiety, anger) and two positive (joy, delight) emotions in the context of one of two retail stores (clothing or electronic goods). We find that observed salesperson response that positively disconfirms customers' normative expectations will lead to greater customer satisfaction, across positive and negative emotions. Based on the results, we believe that detailed planning of these more interpersonal aspects of a retail strategy may be as critical to customer satisfaction and repeat purchase as the planning of store layout and merchandise.