Impact of customer preconsumption mood on the evaluation of employee behavior in service encounters

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Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 19(10): 837–860 (October 2002)Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com)� 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.10040

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Impact of CustomerPreconsumption Mood onthe Evaluation of EmployeeBehavior in ServiceEncountersVeronica LiljanderSwedish School of Economics and Business Administration

Jan MattssonRoskilde University

ABSTRACT

The influence of customers’ affective states on the evaluation ofservice encounters has been conceptually discussed for more than adecade. However, empirical studies, field studies in particular, arescarce. Recent studies have contributed to the area by empiricallydemonstrating mood effects on service satisfaction. Because of theinterpersonal nature of services, the behavior of the servicepersonnel is of utmost importance for overall service satisfaction.This article extends previous research by investigating the impact ofcustomers’ reported preconsumption mood on the evaluation ofthree service behaviors, proposed by Winsted (2000) in her seminalstudy. The findings support the existence of three service behavioraldimensions, namely, concern, congeniality and uncivility, and showthat mood valence influences these behaviors as well as encountersatisfaction. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the importance ofpast service experiences for customers’ responses, especially theirrepurchase intentions. Future research directions regarding moodeffects in services are also discussed. � 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

838 LILJANDER AND MATTSSON

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BEHAVIOR

Customers’ affective states and their influence on service evaluation andpostconsumption behavior has been a neglected area in services re-search (Mattila & Wirtz, 2000). Although there are a number of concep-tual articles proposing mood effects in services (e.g. Gardner, 1985;Knowles, Grove, & Picket, 1993; Manrai, 1993), empirical research isscarce and field studies in particular are lacking. The complexity, pro-cess nature, and variability of personal services make them especiallyvulnerable to customer mood, and there is a need to heed the numerouscalls for empirical research.Because high customer satisfaction is critical for the success of a com-

pany (Jones & Sasser, 1995; Oliver, Rust, & Varki, 1997; Solomon, Sur-prenant, Czepiel, & Gutman, 1985), service firms need to develop theirskills in managing every aspect of the service encounter. Customers’perceptions of face-to-face interaction with service employees have tra-ditionally been considered one of the most important determinants forservice satisfaction and loyalty (Gronroos, 1990). In these dyadic inter-actions, both customers’ and service employees’ dispositions are believedto affect customer service evaluations (Bitner, 1992; Gardner, 1985;Manrai, 1993; Menon & Dube, 2000). However, very little attention hasbeen paid to customer evaluations of service behavior. In a seminalstudy of employee behaviors, Winsted (2000) identified three dimen-sions that were highly related to customer satisfaction: concern, civility,and congeniality. Because Winsted’s study was conducted on a sampleconsisting of students, it is necessary to investigate the proposed di-mensions on other consumer segments and services.The purpose of this study is to investigate customers’ cognitive per-

ceptions of service behaviors and the effect of preconsumption mood onthe evaluation of service behaviors and satisfaction. Because of the im-portance of customer loyalty, determinants of repurchase intentions arealso to be investigated. The study contributes to services research byempirically studying the effect of preconsumption mood on service eval-uation in a field setting.Because familiarity may have an impact on mood effects (Bagozzi,

Gopinath, & Nyer, 1999; Donovan, Rossiter, Marcoolyn, & Nesdale,1994), the study was limited to repeat customers. The study was alsolimited to the customer’s perspective; employees’ abilities to maintain,enhance, or repair customer moods were not included in the presentstudy.The subsequent section presents a conceptual framework for the

study and discusses the relevant work in the service and affect litera-ture. Propositions for construct relationships are made and the propo-sitions are tested in a field study of three services. The article concludeswith a discussion of the results and further research directions.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

A service encounter is a specific period of time during which the cus-tomer interacts with a service (Bitner, 1990). It encompasses face-to-face interactions (Chandon, Leo, & Philippe, 1997; Solomon et al., 1985;Suprenant & Solomon, 1987) and interactions with the physicalelements of the servicescape (Bitner, 1992). Phone calls to the serviceprovider and interactions with a website can also be defined as serviceencounters. Depending on the service, encounters can be very brief orextend over days. For instance, extended service encounters can last 30minutes (Price, Arnould, & Deibler, 1995), or consist of a hospital stayof several days (Dube & Morgan, 1998). Encounters can also be dividedinto a number of individual interactions that may affect the overall eval-uation of the service (Danaher & Mattsson, 1994a, 1994b; Liljander &Strandvik, 1995; Olsen, 1992). Depending on the type of encounter, cus-tomers’ moods may vary to a larger or lesser degree from the beginningof an encounter to the end (Holbrook & Gardner, 2000; Manrai, 1993).The atmospherics of the service (Baker & Cameron 1996; Bitner, 1990;1992), service quality dimensions (Gronroos, 1990; Parasuraman, Zei-thaml, & Berry, 1988), employee behaviors (Winsted, 1997; 1999; 2000),and favorable or unfavorable incidents (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault,1990) can all affect customer mood during or after the encounter.In addition to possible variation of service performance within an en-

counter, customers can experience variability in performance betweenencounters (Liljander & Strandvik, 1995; Strandvik, 1994; Zeithaml,Berry, & Parasuraman, 1993). In relational exchanges customers’ pastexperiences with the service are believed to affect their evaluation ofthe encounter (Gronroos, 1990). Therefore, service encounter evaluationdepends on the dynamics in the encounter as well as the dynamics incustomer relationships. However, because of the difficulties involved instudying dynamic relationships, research is scarce (Holbrook & Gard-ner, 2000). In an illustrative study, Holbrook and Gardner (2000) foundsupport for the effect of earlier moods on subsequent music evaluationsand updated moods.The main concepts of the study and their relationships are illustrated

in Figure 1, with the exception that the direct effect of mood on satis-faction is omitted due to reasons of simplicity. Customer evaluation ofa service encounter can be divided into two stages: service process andoutcome. Strictly speaking, consumption of the service begins when thecustomer enters the service arena and ends when the customer leavesit. Even though service consumption is not limited to personal interac-tion between customers and service personnel, here the Mattila andWirtz (2000) interpretation of the preconsumption phase is adopted.They divide an encounter into preconsumption and core service con-sumption phases. Preconsumption encompasses waiting for the core ser-



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Figure 1 A two-stage framework for analyzing the effect of preconsumption mood onservice evaluations.

vice to be performed, and customer mood during this phase is affectedby the atmospherics. Postpurchase evaluation consists of the customers’overall responses to the service encounter in question.Customers enter the service environment in a positive, negative, or

neutral mood, which affects their subsequent evaluations of the service.Their mood may be constant throughout the encounter, or it may alterbecause of their interaction with the physical environment or with theservice employees (Gardner, 1985). Various stimuli, such as interactionwith the service personnel, other customers or the physical surround-ings may trigger mood changes that have implications for evaluationsand behavior (Bitner, 1992; Manrai, 1993).

Consumption Affect

Affect has been described as a subjectively experienced feeling state anda general term for moods and emotions (Cohen & Areni, 1991; Pieters& van Raaij, 1986). Moods and emotions can be distinguished based ontheir duration and the degree of arousal; however, the distinctions arenot clear-cut. Even mood as a single construct is characterized by a highvariability in definitions and measurements (Luomala & Laaksonen,2000). It has been characterized as a transient feeling state (e.g., Gard-ner, 1985), or more specifically, a “mild, pervasive and generalized af-fective state” (Mattila &Wirtz, 2000) that is less target specific, intense,and arousing than emotions (e.g., Bagozzi et al., 1999; Cohen & Areni,1991). According to the backdrop view of mood (Luomala & Laaksonen,2000), moods may be so mild that customers are not consciously awareof experiencing any feelings (Cohen & Areni, 1991). On a duration con-tinuum, mood is described as more transient than personality traits(Gardner, 1985; Pieters & van Raaij, 1986) and other more permanentfeeling states (Izard, 1993; Damasio, 1999), but less transient than emo-



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tions, which are generally defined as being shorter in duration thanmoods (Bagozzi et al., 1999). The origin and development of human emo-tions, the bodily expressions of them, and their relation to cognitionhave been subjects of debate among researchers for centuries (see, e.g.,Izard, 1980; 1993; Strongman, 1996). According to Izard (1980), bodilyexpressions are considered a significant aspect of emotions and, for ex-ample, the facial expressions of a number of basic emotions, such asfear, joy, anger, and disgust, have been shown to be universally recog-nizable (Izard, 1980). By contrast, moods may be too mild to be recog-nized by other people.Nonetheless, in practical consumer research it is very difficult to dis-

tinguish between moods and emotions (Bagozzi et al., 1999), and moodstates are also called emotional states (e.g., Kacen & Friese, 2000). Be-cause consumer studies usually rely on self-reports, and measurementsof intensity of heart rate, skin-conductance, or facial expressions are notcollected, it is difficult to determine when amilder mood turns intomoreintense emotions, or vice versa. A customer who enters a service en-counter in a neutral mood and experiences a highly favorable incidentat the service counter may feel an intense emotion at the moment ofexperiencing the incident. However, the stronger emotion then subsidesinto a happy or content mood that lasts for the rest of the day. Distin-guishing between the first moment of joy and the subsequent happymood is not an easy task for the researcher. It is therefore understand-able that the concepts affect, mood, and emotions have been used inter-changeably in consumer studies. For example, affect words that are in-cluded in Russell’s (1980) circumplex model of affect, or in the Watsonand Tellegen (1985) structure of mood, are used to denote emotions (e.g.,Bloemer & de Ruyter, 1999; Dube & Menon, 1998; Mano, 1999), as wellas mood (e.g., Mattila & Wirtz, 2000). The interchangeable use of theseconcepts can be considered a minor problem when single constructs ofconsumer affect are studied in relation to other constructs. However,valid and reliable distinctions between mood and other affect measuresare needed when, for example, mood is proposed to have an impact onaffect (e.g., Gardner, 1985; Marzocchi, 1997).Mood valence has repeatedly been shown to affect individuals’ mem-

ory, information processing, and evaluations (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Gard-ner, 1985). However, most empirical studies of mood effects have beenconducted in laboratory settings where subjects’ moods have been in-duced artificially (Gardner, 1985; Hornik, 1993; Knowles, Groves, &Pickett, 1999; Srull, 1987), resulting in a mood that lasts for about 20minutes (Isen, Clark, & Schwartz, 1978). With the exception of researchon consumers’ self-regulation of mood and mood repair (e.g., Gould,1997; Luomala & Laaksonen, 1999; 2000), field studies of consumer af-fect in general, and services in particular, are rare, and more studieshave been called for (Kelley & Hoffman, 1997; Mattila & Wirtz, 2000).Research on affect in services has mainly concentrated on customers’



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affective reactions to the service and to the impact of experienced emo-tions on service satisfaction and intended behavior. The service envi-ronment is believed to influence customer affect and customer approach/avoidance behavior (Baker & Cameron, 1996; Bitner, 1992), but littleempirical research has been conducted on how different atmosphericsinfluence affect valence and arousal (Mattila & Wirtz, 2000). Studies ofcustomers’ affective reactions to service waits have mainly focused onthe strength of displeasure that longer waits cause (Houston, Betten-court, & Wenger, 1998; Marzocchi, 1997; Taylor, 1994). In addition, at-tention has been given to the direct impact of affect on customer satis-faction and loyalty (e.g., Dube & Morgan, 1998; Lemmink & Mattsson,1998; Liljander & Strandvik, 1997). However, the impact of customers’affective states on their evaluations of service encounters has receivedlittle empirical attention (Knowles et al., 1999; Mattila & Wirtz, 2000;Wirtz, Mattila, & Tan, 2000).Wirtz et al. (2000) propose that services can be categorized according

to customers’ expectations of target arousal and that the effect of arousalon customer satisfaction varies depending on target arousal. Proposi-tions were tested with video role plays from a restaurant, and the resultsshowed interaction effects of pleasure and arousal on satisfaction. Inthe high target arousal condition, increased arousal enhanced satisfac-tion, whereas in the low target arousal condition, increased arousal re-duced satisfaction. These effects can occur if the customer is unfamiliarwith the service or if unexpected events change the level of arousal. Inanother study of services, Mattila and Wirtz (2000) investigated theeffect of a naturally occurring preconsumption mood on satisfaction andrepurchase intentions for four different types of services. Pleasure anddisconfirmation of expectations were found to affect global service sat-isfaction, but the small number of respondents per service (18–19) lim-its the conclusions that can be drawn from the findings. In addition, asnoted by the authors, other services may have been better suited forinvestigating repurchase intentions. Nonetheless, the study merits at-tention for being “the first empirical investigation that focuses on emo-tional responses elicited by the physical environment felt at the pre-process stage of service delivery.” (Mattila & Wirtz, 2000, p. 598). Withthe exception of disconfirmation of expectations, neither study includedevaluations of service performance. Thus, there is a need for furtherfield studies that include both customer mood and service evaluations.

Service Employee Behavior and Mood

According to Solomon et al. (1985, pp. 100, 101) “Any [service] encounteris assumed to contain learned and consistent behavior patterns” and“each participant should enact certain behaviors in order for the trans-action to proceed smoothly.” Swan and Bowers (1998) also emphasizethe importance of employee behaviors for customer satisfaction, and



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suggest that the communication behavior may be more important thanthe content of what is communicated. In spite of the importance of ser-vice behaviors, they have not been as thoroughly studied as other ser-vice elements. They have not been ignored, but have been partly over-looked to the benefit of other elements in traditional service qualitydimensions. For example, Gronroos (1990) includes service behaviors inthe functional dimension of service quality, that is, how the service isdelivered to customers.To fill the aforementioned gap, Winsted (1997, 1999, 2000) conducted

a series of studies on students’ evaluations of recalled service behaviorsand found three distinct dimensions of service behavior: concern, civil-ity, and congeniality (Winsted, 2000). Although service behaviors per sehave not been the focus of previous empirical studies, the three factorsresemble service quality dimensions found in other studies. For in-stance, concern and civility roughly correspond to two of the five service-provider dimensions investigated by Price et al. (1995), namely, com-petence and failing minimum standards of civility. Likewise, Winsted’sfactor bears resemblance to the listening and competence dimensionsfound in Chandon et al. (1996). All three behavioral dimensions werehighly correlated with customer satisfaction. The highest correlationwas found for concern, followed by congeniality and civility. To betterreflect the underlying items of civility (all items have a negative con-notation), here it is renamed uncivility.Customer evaluation of service employee behaviors is of particular

interest to study in relation with customer mood. In interpersonal in-teractions, employees should, at best, be able to interpret and respondto the emotional cues displayed by customers (Dube & Menon, 1998).This task is rendered difficult by the fact that milder moods are lessconspicuously expressed than the more intense emotions, and the ser-vice provider may not be able to distinguish amildly negativemood froma mildly positive and act accordingly. However, it can be assumed thatregardless of the service employee’s responses, customer evaluation ofservice behaviors, including the employee’s display of emotions, will becolored by the customer’s preinteraction mood. There is, to the authors’knowledge, no previous research on the effect of mood on customer eval-uation of these behaviors.However, previous research onmood valence effects (see, e.g., Bagozzi

et al., 1999; Gardner, 1985; Pieters & van Raaij, 1986) indicates thatcustomers in a positive mood are likely to evaluate service performancemore positively than customers in a negative mood. There is little evi-dence of this, as many studies of affect in services have either omittedservice-performance measures (e.g., Bloemer & de Ruyter, 1999; Dube& Morgan, 1998; Wirtz et al., 2000) or investigated only the joint effectof service performance and affective reactions on global satisfaction(e.g., Liljander & Strandvik, 1997).There is also evidence that familiarity with the evaluated object may



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obliterate any mood effects on object evaluation (Bagozzi et al., 1999).If this were the case, mood effects would be nonexistent, or at leastdiminished for services that are provided repeatedly within a customerrelationship, such as food retailers and bank service. A lack of moodeffects was also demonstrated by Knowles et al. (1999); they found noeffect of induced mood on SERVQUAL dimensions (Parasuraman et al.,1988) in a laboratory setting with students as subjects. To the authors’knowledge, Knowles et al. (1999) is the only empirical study of moodeffects on service evaluation, and it did not specify service behaviors.Thus, there is support for both the existence and absence of mood effectson service evaluations.Because employees may react to customer moods, customers may ex-

pect certain behavior from them. A cheerful customer might expect acheerful response, and an irritated customer may expect to be placated.However, such effects are easier to investigate in an experiment thanin a field study. The proposition is therefore limited to positing thatmood will have an effect on service evaluation, as proposed by Gardner(1985), or in this case on service behaviors:

P1: Customers’ preconsumption positive mood is positively related toconcern and congeniality and negatively related to uncivility.Negative mood has the opposite effect.

Winsted (2000) found a high correlation between service behaviorsand satisfaction, but the results may have been distorted by using astudent sample and service encounters that were recalled from the past.Although there is no further research on these three specific dimensions,research on other constructs that capture employee congeniality hasshown mixed results. A review by Ford (1998) of the relationship be-tween various types of congenial behaviors (courteousness, smiling atcustomers, etc.) and service satisfaction revealed that even though apositive relationship was found in some instances, other studies foundno relationship between verbal or nonverbal employee behaviors andcustomer satisfaction. Ford concluded that there is insufficient empiri-cal research into these effects.It is also possible that customers react to service behaviors only when

they differ substantially from ordinary experiences. Despite the varia-bility of services, most service encounters within a relationship are notperceived to differ substantially from normal performance (Liljander,1995; Strandvik, 1994). By contrast, positive critical incidents are oftenbased on extraordinary employee behaviors (Bitner, Booms, & Te-treault, 1990), and if customers experience service failure, the perceivedinteractional justice during complaint handling is critical for customersatisfaction with the outcome (Blodgett et al., 1997; Liljander, 1999;Tax, Brown, & Chandrashekaran, 1998). Therefore, service behaviorsmay have a stronger influence on satisfaction in nonordinary service



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encounters than in more ordinary, repetitive encounters. Other factors,such as core service outcome, will affect customer satisfaction in a fieldstudy. Therefore, the empirical study is expected to confirm Winsted’sfindings regarding the order of importance of behaviors, whereas thecorrelation between service behaviors and satisfaction can be expectedto be lower.

P2(a): Concern and congeniality have a positive effect on service en-counter satisfaction, and uncivility has a negative effect.

P2(b): Concern has the strongest impact on service encounter satis-faction, followed by congeniality and uncivility.

Early consumer satisfaction research defined satisfaction as a func-tion of disconfirmation of expectations (e.g., Cardozo, 1965; Oliver, 1980)or product performance (Churchill & Surprenant, 1982), but satisfactionis now widely believed to be influenced also by the customer’s affectivestate (Oliver, 1997). Direct effects of preconsumption mood on service-encounter satisfaction have been documented (Mattila & Wirtz, 2000),but there is a lack of research on the joint effects of customer mood andservice evaluation on satisfaction.

P3: Pre-consumption mood adds to the explanation of service encoun-ter satisfaction.

Ford (1998) notes that there is a lack of studies on the relationshipbetween employee communication behavior and customer loyalty. How-ever, previous research on services has shown that customer satisfac-tion has a stronger effect on return intentions than service quality (e.g.,Cronin & Taylor, 1992). Therefore, service behaviors may have a directinfluence on return intentions, but the direct effect of overall customersatisfaction on return intentions is assumed to be stronger.

Past Experience of the Service

In addition to the effects that familiarity may have on the relationshipbetween mood and service evaluation, previous service experiences canalso directly influence service encounter satisfaction and future repur-chase intentions. Past experiences shape the customer’s brand norm(Cadotte,Woodruff, & Jenkins, 1987) and predictive expectations (Gron-roos, 1990), both of which can be used as comparison standards andinputs into overall evaluations of service quality and satisfaction. Forexample, Houston, Bettencourt, and Wenger (1998) reported a directpositive effect of past experiences on service-encounter quality. In ad-dition, good past experiences can moderate the effect of temporary ser-vice failures on customer satisfaction (Gronroos, 1990).



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P4(a): Past experiences have a positive effect on encounter satisfac-tion (comparison standard effect).

Also, customers are likely to return to service providers that havedelivered satisfactory service in the past, and relationship performancehas been found to be a good predictor of service repurchase intentions(Strandvik & Liljander, 1995). Good experiences maymitigate the effectof one service failure on satisfaction and repurchase intentions, but theloss of trust that follows upon several past failures will most likelydampen the positive effect of one successful performance on future be-havior. Past experiences may therefore be more important than en-counter satisfaction in explaining the customer’s return intentions. Theorder and direction of different levels of service performance within aseries of interactions can also affect the outcome (cf. the dynamics ofmood in Holbrook & Gardner, 2000).The larger the discrepancy between current and past performance,

the more likely it is to affect customers’ responses in a positive or neg-ative direction. Perceived changes compared to past experiences canmoderate the effect of current encounter satisfaction on return inten-tions.

P4(b): Past experiences have a positive effect on return intentions(customer relationship effect).

P4(c): Changes in customers’ impression of the firm have a positiveeffect over and above that of encounter satisfaction on returnintentions, but the effect is smaller than for past experiences.

P4(d): Past experiences and changes in customers’ impression of theservice moderate the effect of encounter satisfaction on returnintentions (filter effect).

EMPIRICAL STUDY

The empirical data were collected from customers of three different ser-vices: private bank services, food bought over the counter, and travelagency services. All services can be classified as social encounters (Priceet al., 1995) and customers have a choice of alternatives. Bank servicesare highly intangible, and the bought food or travel services are notconsumed until later, which means that customer evaluations of theservice encounter can be expected to be strongly influenced by employeebehavior. Target arousal was not considered in this study, but bank andfood retailers can be categorized as low target arousal services (Mattila& Wirtz, 2000; Wirtz et al., 2000). Although travel agencies are likelyto be more arousing than banks, they are not as arousing as actuallygoing on a holiday. Furthermore, travel agencies that focus solely on



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holiday travel and package tours probably have higher target arousalthan the agency in question, which offers all kinds of travel services.The data were collected by students as part of the requirements of a

Ph.D. course given by one of the authors. All students were given thesame questionnaire that had been prepared by the authors and theywere instructed on how to collect the data. Working in pairs, the stu-dents planned with the manager in charge of the service outlet the bestway to position themselves on the premises so as to be as unobtrusiveas possible. The self-report questionnaires included evaluation of pre-vious experiences of the service, preconsumption mood, that is, custom-ers’ experienced affect before interacting with an employee, perceptionsof service employee behavior, overall satisfaction, changes in perceptionof the service, and future repurchase intentions. Customer and serviceemployee behavior were also observed and recorded, but only data fromthe self-reports will be analyzed here. Of the 173 collected question-naires, five were discarded as incomplete, and 18 customers had no pre-vious experience of the service outlet. Thereby, 148 responses were re-tained for further analysis. Data were collected on weekdays,throughout the day, in three cities in the south and west of Finland,and the sample represents a range of normal service encounters. Theage of respondents varied from 15 to 84 with a mean of 43 years; 69%of the customers were women. Waiting time was observed and recordedbefore approaching a customer. The time ranged from under 1 min to10 min, with a mean of 2.5 min.To avoid a lengthy questionnaire, items on each concept were kept to

a minimum. Attention was also paid to how well the items fitted theFinnish language. The translation of items from English to Finnish andtheir final formulation was performed by a colleague who is proficientin both languages. Seven-point scales were used for all measures. Sixitems were chosen for the customer’s preconsumption affective state,reflecting different levels of pleasure and arousal. The customers wereinstructed to think about the feelings they experienced before beingserved and to what extent they had felt that way. These instructionswere followed by the statement “Before I was served, I felt:” positivelysurprised, contented, relaxed, irritated, disappointed, annoyed. Eachitem was evaluated on a 7-point scale, ranging from “not at all” to “verystrongly.” Customers’ recollections of their preconsumption feelings areassumed to adequately capture their mood before the face-to-face inter-actions with service employees.Service-behavior dimensions were measured with three items each

(scale: completely disagree–completely agree). Customers were askedto think about the service behaviors in the encounter they had just ex-perienced. The individual items are presented in conjunction with theresults (Table 1). In Winsted’s (2000) study, concern included 20 items,civility 9, and congeniality 5. Because several of the items appeared to



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Table 1. Factor Loadings for Mood and Employee Behaviors, Percent ofVariance Explained, Reliability Statistics (Cronbach’s Alpha) and ItemMeans

Factors Loading Variance % Reliability Item Mean

Positive moodPositively surprised 0.84 13.3 0.75 4.3Contented/satisfieda 0.81 5.0Relaxed 0.65 4.7

Negative moodIrritated 0.86 18.3 0.93 2.0Disappointed 0.88 1.7Annoyed 0.89 1.8

ConcernWas very knowledgeable 0.75 15.7 0.86 5.8Was very attentive 0.85 5.8Considered what I had to say 0.85 6.0

UncivilityActed rudely toward me 0.71 0.80 1.4Ignored me 0.86 14.7 1.5Seemed distracted 0.81 1.6

CongenialitySmiled a lot 0.86 16.7 0.88 4.6Was very enthusiastic 0.87 4.7Seemed happy and cheerful 0.84 5.4aThe Finnish word for contented also denotes satisfied.

be industry specific or very close inmeaning, a reduction of their numberis not expected to affect the validity of the findings.A screening question was used at the beginning of the questionnaire

to find out if it was the customer’s first encounter with the service pro-vider. Evaluation of previous experiences was then measured with thestatement “My previous experiences of this service have in generalbeen” (very bad–excellent). Overall questions on the service outcomewere placed at the end of the questionnaire. Satisfactionwith the serviceencounter as a whole was measured with two satisfaction scales reflect-ing different levels of arousal: “I’m dissatisfied”–“I’m satisfied,” “I’mdis-appointed”–“I’m delighted.” Last, customers were asked if the currentservice encounter had changed their impression of the firm (“deterio-rated considerably”–“improved considerably,” where 4 was markedwith “no change”), and their likelihood of returning to this particularservice provider if they needed this kind of service (“very unlikely”–“very likely”).

Findings

No significant differences could be detected between the three servicetypes, and consequently the analysis was performed on the complete



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data set. First, the mood items and service behaviors were factor ana-lyzed to confirm the existence of three distinct service behaviors and todetect dimensions of mood. Winsted (2000) performed factor analysiswith oblique rotation, which suggests that the dimensions in her studywere highly intercorrelated. In this study, mood and employee behaviorswere factor analysed first with Varimax rotation, which resulted in fiveuncorrelated factors explaining 78% of the total variance. An obliquerotation of the data yielded the same result; therefore the uncorrelatedfactors from the Varimax rotation were retained for further analyses.Service behavior items loaded on the expected dimensions of concern,civility and congeniality, and mood items loaded on two factors namedpositive mood and negative mood. Table 1 shows that the item “relaxed”has a lower loading than the other two items that make up the positivemood factor. In Russell’s circumplex model of affect, contented, satisfied,and relaxed are positioned very close together in the low-arousal quar-tile, whereas surprise is positioned as a positive affect of higher arousal.However, reliability statistics (Cronbach’s alpha) were high for all fac-tors, and positive mood would have improved only marginally by re-moving relaxed. The item was therefore retained as part of the factor.The item means show the extent to which customers experienced posi-tive and negative moods, for example, relaxed and contented comparedto surprised. The means support the notion that the services can beinterpreted as being of low to medium target arousal.Because of the use of similar words for positive mood and overall

encounter satisfaction, a separate factor analysis was performed to en-sure that the items did not load on the same factor. When the two sat-isfaction items were added to the analysis they formed a sixth factorwith loadings of 0.79 and 0.81. All items, except “acted rudely” (�0.32),had loadings under 0.30 on the sixth factor. Therefore, the two satisfac-tion items (means 5.5 and 5.6) were combined to form one satisfactionmean (alpha 0.86). Pearson correlation coefficients for all constructmeans are reported in Table 2. The table shows that the two precon-sumption mood constructs correlate more with service behaviors andsatisfaction than with return intentions. As expected, return intentionscorrelate most highly with encounter satisfaction and past experiences.Of the three service behaviors, concern has the highest correlation withsatisfaction, thus confirming its importance compared to the other be-haviors in satisfaction formation (Winsted, 2000).Propositions were tested with multiple regression, using factor scores

as independent variables. To test the first proposition, the three servicebehavioral dimensions were separately regressed on mood. The corre-lation matrix in Table 2 reveals that positive and negative moods cor-relate significantly with service behaviors. Before testing the proposi-tions, mood items were factor analyzed independently from the otherconstructs, and the resulting factor scores were used as independentvariables in the regression models. Construct means were used for the



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Table 2. Pearson Correlation of Construct Means (N � 148)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. NMOOD 1.002. PMOOD �0.47*3. CONC �0.34* 0.34*4. UNCIV 0.41* �0.19** �0.44*5. CONG �0.31* 0.31* 0.45* �0.28*6. SAT �0.34* 0.40* 0.62* �0.36* 0.42*7. PAST �0.37* 0.35* 0.41* �0.29* 0.39* 0.51*8. CHANGE �0.21* 0.36* 0.29* �0.16 0.25* 0.31* 0.119. INT �0.23* 0.21* 0.39* �0.34* 0.30* 0.43* 0.44* 0.24*

NMOOD � negative mood, PMOOD � positive mood, CONC � concern, UNCIV � uncivility, CONG �congeniality, SAT � encounter satisfaction, CHANGE � perceived change, INT � return intentions.

*p � 0.01.**p � 0.05.

Table 3. Service Employee Behaviors Regressed on Mood

Concern Uncivility Congeniality

Negative mood �0.29a 0.39a �0.26a

Positive mood 0.28a �0.10 0.26a

Adj. R2 0.15a 0.15a 0.12a

asign.�0.01. Standardized coefficients are reported.

dependent constructs, that is, service behaviors. The results that arereported in Table 3 support P1; that is, preconsumption mood affectscustomer evaluation of service behaviors. The coefficients are in the pro-posed direction; that is, positive mood leads to higher evaluations ofconcern and congeniality, while negative mood has the opposite effect.However, only negative mood has a significant effect on uncivility. Theeffects of positive and negative mood on concern and congeniality are ofsimilar size (0.26–0.28), whereas negative mood has a much strongereffect on perceived uncivil behavior (0.39). The adjusted R2s are smallbut significant. The findings thereby contradict those of Knowles et al.(1999), where no mood effects on service evaluation were found. Theeffects, albeit small, also indicate that familiarity with the service pro-vider does not obliterate mood effects. Because comparisons were notmade with a similar set of new customers in this study, it is still possiblethat the effect is smaller for relationship customers than it would be fornew customers. This remains to be explored in future studies.To further explore the relationship between mood and behaviors, the

data were split into four groups of low and high positive and negativemood. Because the data were skewed towards positive experiences, theresulting categories could be termed “low” and “high” only in a relativesense. For all employee behaviors, multiple comparison (Dunnet C test)



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Table 4. Hierarchial Regression of Encounter Satisfaction on EmployeeBehavior, Mood, and Past Experience

Model 1Part

Model 2Part

Model 3Part

Model 3Zero

Concern 0.50a 0.51a 0.42a 0.50a

Uncivility �0.19a �0.20a �0.16a �0.18b

Congeniality 0.25a 0.24a 0.17a 0.25a

Positive mood 0.25a 0.20a 0.24a

Negative mood �0.19a �0.12b 0.18b

Past experience 0.20a 0.50a

Adj. R2 0.33a 0.42a 0.46a

R2 change 0.09a 0.04a

Part correlations are reported for all models and zero-order correlations for Model 3.asign.�0.01bsign.�0.05.

showed that the means of customers who were positioned in the highestnegative/lowest positive mood category differed significantly from thoseof the customers in the highest positive/lowest negative mood. Behaviormeans for customers in more neutral or mixed moods (low or high onboth mood valences) were not significantly different from other groupmeans.Hierarchical regression analysis (Pedhazur & Schmelkin, 1991; Ta-

bachnick & Fidell, 1996) was performed to investigate the incrementaleffect of perceived service behavior, mood, and past experiences on en-counter satisfaction. Table 4 shows the testedmodels and results.Model1 tested Propositions 2(a) and 2(b), both of which were supported. Show-ing concern for the customer seems to be the most important servicebehavior for increasing customer satisfaction, whereas congeniality andlack of uncivil behavior have considerably smaller effects. As expected,the correlations between service behavior and satisfaction in a fieldstudy of a familiar service are much smaller than the correlations ob-served by Winsted (2000). A number of analyses were performed to testany effects of waiting time on perceived service behavior. The only sig-nificant finding was a correlation between waiting time and perceivedcongeniality (r � �0.333, p � 0.00). The longer customers had to wait,the less congenial the behavior was perceived. Other effects of waitingtime were not observed.Models 2 and 3 were added to test P3 and P4(a), which stated that

mood and past experiences add to the explanation of satisfaction. Bothpropositions were supported. The results show that including mood sig-nificantly improves the adjusted R2. Consequently, customer mood hasa dual effect on service encounter evaluation. It directly affects the eval-uation of employee behavior but also overall satisfaction. A further in-crease in R2 was achieved by adding past experiences to mood and ser-vice behaviors. Past experiences within a relationship can be



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Table 5. Hierarchial Regression of Return Intentions on EncounterSatisfaction, Past Experience and Perceived Change inPerformance

Model 1Part

Model 2Part Zero Order

Satisfaction 0.43 0.18a 0.43a

Past experience 0.28a 0.45a

Perceived change 0.12 0.24a

Adj. R2 0.18a 0.26a

R2 change 0.08a

asign.�0.01.

interpreted as a brand norm, which has been shown to affect servicesatisfaction (Cadotte et al., 1987; Liljander, 1995).The correlation matrix in Table 2 also reveals that past experiences

and encounter satisfaction are highly correlated. Variability of employeeperformance is a typical service characteristic. However, it usually onlyvaries within an expected range. Unless the service encounter standsout as especially favorable or unfavorable, assimilation effects are morelikely to occur than contrast effects (cf. Anderson, 1973). In other words,customers will not perceive any changes in their overall perception ofthe service provider. Most customers also marked “no change” on thequestion whether the encounter had changed their perceptions of theservice for better or worse.To test Propositions 4(b)–(c), return intentions were first regressed

on encounter satisfaction (Model 1), and thereafter customers’ past ex-periences and overall perceived change were added to the model (Model2). Table 5 shows the results from the hierarchical regressions. Propo-sition 4(d) could not be tested due to multicollinearity between thethree-way moderator construct and the other variables. The change inR2 was significant, but the tolerance statistics and other tests indicatedmulticollinearity.The results show that satisfaction and past experiences determine

return intentions, whereas perceived change has no effect on it. Thestrong effect of past experiences on return intentions is noteworthy,supporting the importance of good customer relationships for future be-havior.

DISCUSSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

This study contributed to research by investigating the impact of moodon repeat customers’ perception of service employee behavior and en-counter satisfaction. Even though there is an abundance of research on



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factors that affect customer mood in retailing, much less attention hasbeen paid to how customer mood affects service evaluations. In additionto considering mood effects, the study extended Winsted’s (2000) re-search on service employee behaviors by collecting field data on serviceencounters. The results confirmed the existence of the three behavioraldimensions and their effect on service encounter satisfaction. However,the effects were considerably smaller than those found by Winsted(2000). This may be attributed to the real-life situation as opposed tothe student data in Winsted’s study. Both positive and negative moodwere found to affect perception of employee service behaviors and en-counter satisfaction, thereby showing that service companies ought topay attention to the management of both customer mood and employeebehaviors. In contrast to previous research, the results also showed thatmood influences the evaluation of familiar objects, service evaluationsmade by repeat customers, in this case. However, it should be pointedout that service employee behaviors could be interpreted as beingunique to the service encounter in question. In addition, there was notest of whether customers remembered this particular employee frompast transactions.Furthermore, the strong impact of past experiences on return inten-

tions should be considered when designing future studies. Becausemood is a transient state, its effect on service evaluation is the strongestwithin the encounter. Customers are unlikely to remember what moodthey were in the last time they used the service, but they will form andretain an overall impression of the service based on their past experi-ences. Thus, any long-term effects of mood on future evaluations will bemediated by overall perceived quality and encounter satisfaction. If con-sistency in service delivery is what counts in the long run, studies ofemployee behavior should include customers’ impression of past behav-ior as well as perceived variability of behavior between different servicerepresentatives.Because each encounter may add or subtract from the customer’s pre-

vious impression of the service, research into service encounters is nec-essary. A hitherto relatively unexplored line of research is studying theasymmetrical effects of mood on service evaluations. Such effects havebeen found for information processing (Bagozzi et al., 1999). It could notbe explored here, because of the limited sample size and homogeneityof mood experiences in the data. However, it was noted that only neg-ative mood influenced uncivil behavior, whereas both positive and neg-ative mood affected concern and congeniality. Customers who are in abad mood possibly pay more attention to uncivil employee behavior, butuncivil behavior might also enhance a customer’s negative mood. Sucheffects may, for instance, have implications for customer complaints andswitching behavior. Mood maintenance can also influence customerevaluation and behavior (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Luomala & Laaksonen,



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2000). For instance, customers who are in a good mood may wish tomaintain that mood and therefore focus on the positive aspects of theservice interaction or past high quality performance.Further studies are also required regarding the effect of employee

behavior on service satisfaction and on different types of behavioral out-comes. As noted in the literature review, results from previous studieshave been inconsistent, especially regarding the influence of congenialbehavior on customers’ overall evaluations of services. For instance,Sutton and Rafaeli (1988) found a negative relationship between em-ployees’ displayed positive emotions and sales. Based on customer in-terviews, this was explained by customers in busy settings preferring asmooth transaction to congenial behavior. The results of this study sug-gest that waiting time had a negative effect on perceived congeniality.The longer the queues are, the less time service employees have to restbetween serving customers, and the more pressure they will feel to in-crease their work pace. Thus, customers are likely to perceive a lack ofcongeniality. However, in accordance with the findings of Rafaeli andSutton (1987) it need not have a critical effect on service encounter out-comes.Congeniality had a smaller effect than concern on customer satisfac-

tion, which could be explained by customers understanding the pressurethat the employees are experiencing. Customer attributions of waitshave been shown to influence negative waiting affect and overall eval-uation of the service (Taylor, 1994). Future research should investigatethe extent to which attributions of employee behaviors can explain cus-tomer satisfaction and whether asymmetrical effects have an impact onthe evaluation. For instance, customers may tolerate a lack of congenialbehavior if the cause is perceived to be unstable (e.g., rush hour) oroutside the service representative’s control (e.g., reduced number of em-ployees), whereas uncivil behavior may always be perceived as fallingbelow the customer’s zone of tolerance, resulting in a strong customerreaction.In addition, research should focus on the relative importance of em-

ployee behaviors compared to other service elements. Discriminant va-lidity between employee behaviors and other service-quality dimensionsneed to be investigated. For instance, although there may be only littleor no overlap between “uncivility” or “congeniality” and the five SE-RVQUAL dimensions (Parasuraman et al., 1988), there appears to bemore overlap between the dimension “concern” and several SERVQUALitems.Service interactions are dyadic, and customers contribute to the pro-

cess and outcome of the encounter (Bitner, Faranda, Hubbert, & Zei-thaml, 1997; Grove, Fisk, & Dorsch, 1998). Though not discussed in theliterature, customers’ mood states are likely to affect their own behaviorwithin the encounter. An unexplored area of research is therefore the



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extent to which the customers’ own concern, uncivil or congenial behav-ior will affect the service interaction and its outcome. Moreover, if moodhas an impact on pro-social behaviors (Kelley &Hoffman, 1997;Manrai,1993), customers who are in a goodmoodmay bemore willing to performtheir expected roles within the service encounter as a whole. This isextremely important in view of the increase of self-service technologiesin services.According to Solomon et al. (1985), sellers need to adjust their role

behavior to the behavior of customers. Thus, another important re-search extension is to study employees’ mood states and their ability todetect customers’ moods, as well as their ability to maintain, enhanceor repair it through positive behaviors. Even though conceptual modelsof the relationship between customers’ and employees’ moods have beenput forward (Dube & Morgan, 1998; Manrai, 1993), empirical researchis lacking. It is, of course, not an easy task to empirically capturechanges in a customer’s mood as a consequence of employee mood orbehavior. Observation can be used as a supplement to self-reports, butas noted by Ford (1998) and by Rafaeli and Sutton (1987), there areseveral challenges to overcome if one wants to reliably observe andrecord the expressed emotions of employees and customers.One problem is that observation cannot detect whether customers or

employees are expressing their true feelings in the interaction. There-fore, measurement errors are likely to influence the relationship be-tween observed mood and customers’ self-reports of service outcomes.For instance, customers and employees may differ substantially in howlikely they are to display a negativemood. The Rafaeli and Sutton (1987)call for research on differences between employees’ felt and expressedemotions should therefore be addressed. In addition, the gap betweencustomers’ felt and expressed feelings should be studied. In order toassess the possibilities of managing customer mood in service encoun-ters, it is necessary to study how well employees are able to detect cus-tomers’ moods and the extent to which customers display their truemood to employees. It would also be valuable to investigate the extentto which customers detect a faked congenial mood in employees, andwhether faked congeniality has the same effect on customer satisfactionas authentic congeniality.Some limitations of the study have been mentioned within the text,

and will not be repeated. There are, of course, general problems withmeasuring mood in a service encounter. The extent to which customersare able to recall what mood they were in before the interaction is un-known, and the mood may be rationalized after the event. Reports onpreconsumption mood may be mixed up with other affective reactionsduring core service delivery, even though customers were instructed torecall their mood before the encounter. Furthermore, it was not possibleto distinguish between different levels of pleasure and arousal. Future



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studies could also replicate themethod used byMattila andWirtz (2000)while attempting to collect more data and to add service quality eval-uations.To sum it up, the study was a first step towards a better understand-

ing of the relationship between customer moods, perceived employeebehaviors, and evaluation of service outcomes. Overall, the results sug-gest that more attention should be paid to mood effects in service stud-ies. A number of gaps in the service literature were identified, and re-search questions for future studies were outlined.

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Impact of customer preconsumption mood on the evaluation of employee behavior in service encounters