Predisposing Customers to Be More Satisfied by Inducing Empathy in Them

• Published in: Cornell hospitality quarterly 2017-08, Vol.58 (3), p.229-239
• Main Authors: Davis, Cassandra, Jiang, Li, Williams, Patti, Drolet, Aimee, Gibbs, Brian J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumers; Customer satisfaction; Customer services; Empathy; Hospitality industry
• ISSN: 1938-9655; 1938-9663
• DOI: 10.1177/1938965517704373

The present research demonstrates that increasing a consumer’s empathy with a service provider can increase that consumer’s satisfaction with the service. In Study 1, customers at a café who were induced to empathize with the clerk felt more satisfied with the service, and in Study 2, such empathizing customers were better tippers. Study 3 corroborated this finding of an empathy–satisfaction relation using dispositional empathy, showing that naturally occurring levels of empathy were positively related to consumers’ feelings of satisfaction in a long-term service relationship (personal fitness training). Study 4 found that the positive effect of empathy on consumer satisfaction held true for a negative service situation (for female but not for male consumers), indicating that the effect was not the result of consumers becoming more sensitive to the valence of the service situation. In addition, the overall results suggest that the effect was not mediated by more favorable attitudes toward the service provider or by more favorable attributions of responsibility to the service provider. Instead, we suggest that empathy may make consumers more cooperative and that being satisfied is one way consumers “cooperate” with a service provider. These findings exemplify how responses to a marketing situation can be managed by manipulating the mental state of consumers rather than by altering the attributes of the goods or services being offered.