Ensuring greater satisfaction by engineering salesperson response to customer emotions

In this research, we develop and empirically investigate a framework to hel p retail managers engineer effective salesperson response to customer emoti ons and ensure greater satisfaction. Building on an interpersonal view of e motions, we argue that managers must be familiar with (1) diagnostic cues f or assessing emotion-soliciting contexts and how customers generally displa y these emotions; (2) the normative salesperson responses that customers ex pect to their different emotions; (3) and the naturally occuring responses from the salesperson as observed by the customers. We report upon an emotio nal study that tested these arguments for the two negative (anxiety, anger) and two positive (joy, delight) emotions in the context of one of two reta il stores (clothing or electronic goods). We find that observed salesperson response that positively disconfirms customers' normative expectations wil l lead to greater customer satisfaction, across positive and negative emoti ons. Based on the results, we believe that detailed planning of these more interpersonal aspects of a retail strategy may be as critical to customer s atisfaction and repeat purchase as the planning of store layout and merchan dise.