Manager Effect on Customer Behavior: An Unobtrusive Assessment

Abstract

The present study sought to determine the effect of personalizing customers’ experience in a service organization by having a senior management staff member greet customers in a “warm, friendly manner.” It was hypothesized that manager behavior would significantly influence customer spending and retention time. Male customers were randomly chosen from the client population of a service organization and randomly assigned to either a control or experimental condition. Experimental group members had the opportunity to interact socially with management, whereas the control group did not. The total amount of time and money spent by customers was recorded in an unobtrusive fashion. Statistical analyses revealed that a significant difference existed between the behavior of the two groups of customers.