CHAPTER 9
A CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF THE
employees to a number of relevant antecedents as well as to a variety of
tional outcomes but has offered limited theoretical guidance as to how
customers may be directly affected by emotional labor in the service
delivery process. Specific research propositions are developed that offer
insight into the antecedents and potential impact of emotional labor
strategies on customer behavior. Managerial and research implications as
well as avenues for future research are discussed from the perspective of
emotional labor theory.
Individual and Organizational Perspectives on Emotion Management and Display
Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 2, 219–236
Copyright r 2006 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reservedcustomer outcomes. We link emotional labor directly to the customer
domain by examining how customers experience and react to emotional
displays of service employees. Thus, we expand current emotional labor
research which has predominantly focused on employee and organiza-EFFECTS OF EMOTIONAL LABOR
STRATEGIES ON CUSTOMER
OUTCOMES
Markus Groth, Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and
Gianfranco Walsh
ABSTRACT
The aim of the research reported in this article was to develop a con-
ceptual model that links emotional labor strategies performed by serviceISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(06)02009-8
219

MARKUS GROTH ET AL.220INTRODUCTION
Service management and marketing researchers have become increasingly in-
terested in the role of emotions in service encounters (Lemmink & Mattson,
2002; Liljander & Strandvik, 1997; Mattila & Enz, 2002). To develop and
successfully maintain relationships with customers, service employees are
expected to display certain emotions (e.g., cheerfulness) and suppress others
(e.g., anger) as part of their job requirements. Although such ‘‘emotional
labor’’ (Hochschild, 1983) has been demonstrated to exert a major influence
on key employee outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organizational
commitment (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002), the effects that emotional lab-
or has on customers have only been sparingly addressed by organizational
scholars. This is surprising, given that the interaction between a customer
and a service provider is not only essential in the determination of customer
evaluations, but often is the service itself in the eye of the customer (Bowen,
1990; Bowen, Schneider, & Kim, 2000). Thus, there is reason to believe that
employees’ emotion regulation in service interactions does not only affect
their own well-being but also affects customer outcomes that are critical for
relationship marketing success, such as customer satisfaction and retention.
However, to date there has been a lack of conceptual as well as empirical
research into the emotional labor–customer outcome link.
In addressing this research gap, the aim of our research is to develop a
theoretical model of the antecedents of two different emotional labor strat-
egies as well as their effects on customer outcomes in order to provide service
firms with knowledge on how to achieve desirable customer outcomes
through emotional labor management. The article is structured as follows:
first, we review the existing literature on emotional labor strategies and their
effects on employees and customers. Then, by applying a two-dimensional
conceptualization of emotional labor encompassing surface acting and deep
acting, we develop a theoretical model of emotional labor and its conse-
quences and antecedents, and offer specific research propositions for future
research. Specifically, we examine how the two emotional labor strategies
affect customer perceptions of employees’ customer orientation, customer
satisfaction, social relational benefits, trust, and customer retention.
In addition, our research focuses on determinants of employees’ choice of
emotional labor strategy. Based on a number of organizational theories
discussed below, we propose a set of individual-, dyadic-, and organiza-
tional-level antecedents on service employees’ propensity to engage in either
surface acting or deep acting. Finally, theoretical as well as practical

A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 221implications of our conceptual model are discussed from the perspective of
emotional labor theories.
Importance of Emotional Labor Strategies in Service Delivery
Recent service management research has increasingly focused on the role of
emotions in service deliveries, particularly the role of emotional labor per-
formed by service employees. Emotional labor refers to the ‘‘effort, plan-
ning, and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions
during interpersonal transactions’’ (Morris & Feldman, 1996, p. 987). In her
seminal work on service workers such as flight attendants and bill collectors,
Hochschild (1979, 1983) concluded that while employees’ physical, mental,
and semi-motor tasks are often well documented, measured, and rewarded
by organizations, emotional labor often is an unacknowledged component
of their work. While the service management and marketing literatures have
focused on delivering superior service quality and on the importance of
courteous frontline employees delivering ‘‘service with a smile,’’ doing so
requires employees to consistently display emotions not genuinely felt by
them. However, until recently, little attention has been paid to the effects
such behavior may elicit. Hochschild (1983) argues that when interacting
with customers under the guidance of organizational rules and regulations,
managing one’s emotions is not simply a private act done in a social context.
Rather, emotional display is sold as labor and dictated by the organization
through training, policies, and supervision.
Thus, although emotional reactions to one’s organizational environment
are an integral part of nearly every employee’s job, emotional labor is a
distinct concept in that it focuses on emotions as a requirement of the job.
Organizations usually have certain explicit or implicit ‘‘display rules’’ (Raf-
aeli & Sutton, 1987), that is, norms and standards of behavior which in-
dicate which emotions are appropriate and should be publicly expressed and
which emotions should be suppressed. Early emotional labor research has
primarily focused on identifying various types of emotion management
strategies. Although a number of strategies have been discussed (see, e.g.,
Hochschild, 1983; Zapf, 2002), research has primarily focused on surface
acting and deep acting as commonly adopted approaches of service em-
ployees to manage their emotions. In surface acting, employees only try to
change their outward appearance without genuinely altering how they ac-
tually feel (i.e., faking). Thus, employees express feigned emotions when
surface acting. In deep acting, on the other hand, employees express the

desired emotion and attempt to summon those emotions. Thus, when deep
acting, employees express true emotions.
Research on emotional labor has predominantly focused on the effects of
emotional labor on employee well-being. Specifically, Hochschild (1983)
highlighted a number of negative consequences of emotional labor, prima-
rily psychological ill health such as stress and job burnout. Links have been
shown to exist between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion (Brothe-
ridge & Grandey, 2002), job dissatisfaction (Grandey, 2003; Morris & Fe-
ldman, 1997), and lack of organizational identity (Ashforth & Humphrey,
1993; Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000). However, empirical findings are contra-
dictory to some extent. Wharton (1993, 1996), for example, found that the
more service employees engaged in emotional labor as part of their work,
the more satisfied they were. Grandey (2003) suggests that such contradic-
tions can be explained by differentiating between acting strategies. That is,
whereas surface acting has a number of negative effects on employees, deep
acting may in fact be beneficial to their psychological well-being.
Emotional Labor as a Regulatory Process
In our proposed theoretical model, we conceptualize and measure emotional
labor as a regulatory process. This is consistent with recent emotional labor
research (e.g., Grandey, 2003) and is a significant improvement on early
work in this area where emotional labor was believed to be unidimensional
in terms of frequency and consequently was measured at the job level (e.g.,
Hochschild, 1983; Wharton, 1993, 1996). As such, survey respondents were
often classified as performing high or low emotional labor based on their
reported job classification. Although Morris and Feldman (1996, 1997)
pointed out the limitation of this approach and proposed a model that
included three dimensions of emotional labor (frequency of interaction, du-
ration of interaction, and emotional dissonance), their model was similarly
criticized for lack of content validity (Kruml & Geddes, 2000; Mann, 1999).
Only recently has emotional labor been conceptualized and measured as a
regulatory process involving different types of acting strategies (Brotheridge
& Grandey, 2002; Grandey, 2003; Kruml & Geddes, 2000). By assessing and
contrasting the effects of different types of emotion management, our study
will explore the relative, comparative effects of each strategy.
Building on the identification of different alternative emotional labor strat-
egies, our aim is to understand the consequences of alternative emotional
MARKUS GROTH ET AL.222labor strategies for customer outcomes as well as the antecedents of employ-
ees’ engaging in these strategies. The great majority of empirical emotional

labor research so far has exclusively focused on employee consequences
(Grandey, 2003; Morris & Feldman, 1997; Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000;
Wharton, 1993). To our knowledge, our model is the first attempt to system-
atically map the differential effects of emotional labor strategies on customers.
In addition, our aim is to examine several individual-, dyadic-, and or-
ganizational-level determinants of emotional labor strategies. Although
some previous research has examined several emotional labor antecedents,
most of this work has focused on task characteristics specific to the display
rules of the organization (e.g., Morris & Feldman, 1996; Schaubroeck &
Jones, 2000). By focusing on employee satisfaction as well as factors specific
to the service delivery context, we hope to provide a better understanding of
these relationships. Such an understanding will provide tools for service
managers that enable them to systematically impact their employees’ choice
of acting strategies.
Customer-Related Outcomes of Emotional Labor
In contrast to the work on positive and negative effects of emotional labor
on employee well-being, the effects of emotional labor on customers have
remained largely unexplored. This is surprising, given that the effective
management of service employees’ emotions is an essential task for service
marketers and emotional display of employees is likely to influence clients’
emotions, behaviors, and attitudes, thereby influencing their buying deci-
sions and perceptions of service quality. In fact, Bitner (1990) suggests that
displayed emotions of both customers and employees are an integral part of
the service delivery itself.
Existing empirical studies that address the effects of emotional labor on
customers are rare (Grandey, 2003; Pugh, 2001; Mattila & Enz, 2002; Tsai,
2001; Tsai & Huang, 2002). All studies on the relationship between emotional
labor and customer outcomes do not directly examine the differential effects
of various emotional labor strategies. Specifically, the study by Grandey
(2003) is the only one addressing the interface of emotional labor and cus-
tomer outcomes directly, modeling the concept of affective delivery as an
outcome of emotional labor and finding support for this impact. However, in
her study, affective delivery, defined as the extent to which service delivery is
perceived as friendly and warm by customers, was assessed not by customers,
but by coworkers of the employee. The studies by Pugh (2001), Mattila and
Enz (2002), Tsai (2001), and Tsai and Huang (2002), on the other hand, did
A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 223not directly focus on emotional labor strategies, but examined the relation-
ship between employee displayed emotions and customer emotions. Although

sively observed service employees. Obviously, such study design primarily
focuses on outwardly displayed emotions but leaves unexplored underlying
emotion management processes at the heart of Hochschild’s (1983) definition
of emotional labor. In other words, a distinction between surface acting and
deep acting was not possible in these studies due to the nature of the data
collection of employee emotions. In sum, a major contribution of our re-
search is to develop a theoretical model that sheds light on a topic that has
received little empirical attention to date, namely the link between employees’
emotional labor strategies and resulting customer outcomes.
Antecedents of Employees’ Emotional Labor Strategies
Similarly to research on customer outcomes, antecedents of employees’ choice
of emotional labor strategies have also received limited empirical attention, as
the majority of prior research has focused on the consequences but not the
determinants of employee emotional labor. Many of the existing studies tend
to focus on firm and job characteristics as predictors of emotional labor, such
as organizational display rules, supervision, training, and attentiveness as
predictors of employees’ emotional labor (e.g., Grandey, 2003; Kruml &
Geddes, 2000; Morris & Feldman, 1997). In addition, some researchers have
investigated dyad characteristics of employee–customer links during service
interactions as factors influencing emotional labor, for example, type of
service relationship (Grayson, 1998), power of role receiver (Morris & Fe-
ldman, 1997), and rapport (Bailey, Gremler, & McCollough, 2001). Recently,
some of the focus has shifted to individual-level antecedents of service em-
ployees, such as affective, behavioral, and dispositional characteristics, in-
cluding job satisfaction (Grandey, 2003), personality (Glomb & Tews, 2004),
and cognitions (Bailey et al., 2001). The purpose of the proposed theoretical
model is to expand this research stream. This will be achieved by examining
additional individual-, dyadic-, and organizational-level determinants of
emotional labor deemed to be important predictors of employees’ choice of
emotional labor strategies based on a number of organizational theories.
THEORETICAL MODELcustomer assessments were gathered in all four studies from customers,
employee emotions were assessed by independent observers who unobtru-
MARKUS GROTH ET AL.224To understand the consequences of different emotional labor strategies on
customer outcomes and to examine determinants of the two emotional labor

strategies, we suggest the theoretical model illustrated in Fig. 1. Basically,
we draw on the distinction of surface acting and deep acting as emotional
labor strategies (Grandey, 2003; Hochschild, 1983; Totterdell & Holman,
2003). We then argue that the two strategies will have a differential impact
on several customer outcome variables, which have been shown to be crucial
for a service firm’s economic success. Moreover, we also presume that a set
of individual-, dyadic-, and firm-level factors exists that determine and in-
fluence the choice of the two emotional labor strategies. The proposed re-
lationships of the model are discussed below.
It should be added that our model is based on the assumption that the
interaction with a service employee bears the potential to be perceived as
beneficial by the customer in that the service offered is interactive and in-
dividualized (e.g., hair dressers, medical services, therapists). Although some
of the propositions provided might also be applicable to other kinds of
services (i.e., less interactive and more standardized), we focus on individual
and interactive services when discussing the consequences and antecedents
of emotional labor.
Emotional Labor Strategies
With regard to emotion regulation strategies, different strategies have been
suggested in the literature that can be applied by service employees to cope
with organizational display rules. As discussed earlier, the most prominent
distinction of acting strategies was introduced by Hochschild (1983) who
distinguishes between surface acting and deep acting. This distinction has
been adopted by several other researchers (e.g., Grandey, 2003; Grayson,
1998; Kruml & Geddes, 2000), although some of these authors use slightly
different terminology for their constructs. As discussed, in surface acting, an
employee tries to change only his or her outward appearance and behavior
when exhibiting required emotions. For example, when dealing with an an-
gry and annoying customer, an employee may simply put on a smile and
pretend to be friendly without changing his or her inner feelings of annoy-
ance with the customer. In deep acting, on the other hand, individuals ex-
press the required emotions but do so by attempting to summon these
emotions within themselves. For example, Hochschild (1983) reports of
flight attendants who are trained to deal with angry and annoying passengers
by thinking of them as frightened first-time fliers, therefore, changing their
inner feelings from annoyance to pity and empathy. Thus, surface acting can
A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 225be conceptualized as a response-focused regulation strategy, whereas deep
acting is an antecedent-focused regulation (Totterdell & Holman, 2003).

customer
retention
Customer Outcomes
deep acting
surface acting
Emotional Labor StrategiesAntecedents
relationship strength
service scripts
customer
trust
customer
satisfaction
organizational
citizenship behavior
customer social
relational benefits
customer
orientation
job satisfaction
Fig. 1. Theoretical Model of Consequences and Antecedents of Emotional Labor Strategies.
M
A
R
K
U
S
G
R
O
T
H
E
T
A
L
.
226

Customer Outcomes of Emotional Labor
Drawing on services management research and emotional labor theory, we
suggest that employees’ emotional labor strategies influence customer per-
ceptions of employees’ customer orientation, customer satisfaction, cus-
tomer trust in the service provider, the level of social benefits received from
the relationship as well as the level of customer retention.
Emotional Labor Strategies and Customer Orientation of Employees and
Customer Satisfaction
Customer orientation of the service employee is conceptualized as an em-
ployee’s efforts to fulfill customer needs, combining elements such as the
employee level of pampering the customer, reading customers’ needs, and
delivering the required service to customers (e.g., Donavan, Brown, & Mo-
wen, 2004; Hennig-Thurau, 2004). In service industries where employees
take a pivotal role for service creation and delivery, a high level of employee
customer orientation usually implies that customers feel satisfied with the
service provided, with satisfaction constituting a customer’s cognitive–emo-
tive appraisal of the service provision (Oliver, 1997). Indeed, research on
service quality and satisfaction has confirmed that employees’ customer
orientation is a major determinant of customers’ satisfaction with a service
(Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1988).
Because the way that employees regulate and display emotions influences
customer perceptions of the service delivery process, we expect that em-
ployees’ emotional labor strategies impact the level of customer orientation
of service employees as perceived by customers and consequently also cus-
tomers’ satisfaction with the service. Specifically, when an employee engages
in surface acting, customers may question his or her motivation to provide a
maximum level of service, as employees’ superficiality signals to customers
that employees might act according to prescribed job requirements and
without a real concern for the customer’s greater needs. Thus, surface acting
is expected to have a negative impact on customer orientation and customer
satisfaction. In contrast, when employees engage in deep acting, this be-
havior signals motivation and customer commitment to customers and will
have a positive effect on both customer orientation and satisfaction. Thus,
we propose:
Proposition 1. Surface acting (deep acting) by service employees has a
A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 227negative (positive) impact on customers’ assessment of service employees’
customer orientation and their satisfaction with the service.

Emotional Labor Strategies and Customer Trust
Customer trust is conceptualized as customers’ expectations about a firm’s future
behavior and their subsequent willingness to rely on the exchange partner (e.g.,
Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998). Trust is generally conceptualized as
a multidimensional construct, including the dimensions of competence (or
credibility) and benevolence (or integrity) (Sirdeshmukh, Singh, & Sabol, 2002).
Surface acting by employees conflicts with customer expectations of hon-
est behavior and may be interpreted by customers as ‘‘cheating’’ (Grandey,
2003). Therefore, surface acting is not compatible with the benevolence
dimension of trust and can consequently be expected to have a negative
impact on customer trust. Deep acting, on the other hand, requires emo-
tional investments from the employee which will be interpreted by the cus-
tomer as signal that the employee is interested in a long-term relationship
and does not intend to engage in opportunistic behavior, i.e., supporting the
development of benevolence trust on the side of the customer. This leads us
to the following proposition:
Proposition 2. Surface acting (deep acting) by service employees has a
negative (positive) impact on customers’ trust in the service firm.
Emotional Labor Strategies and Customer Social Relational Benefits
Customers have been shown to maintain relationships with service providers
because of the social benefits associated with such relationships (e.g., Goodwin
& Gremler, 1996; Gwinner, Gremler, & Bitner, 1998). Social relational benefits
refer to non-functional advantages of a relationship that customers receive, such
as the development of rapport, acquaintances, and ‘‘commercial friendships’’
with service employees (e.g., Gremler & Gwinner, 2000; Price & Arnould,
1999). We argue that the extent to which customers experience social relational
benefits depends on the emotional labor strategy of the service employee.
Specifically, as social relationships require exchange partners to signal
true interest in the other person, the expression of superficial and unau-
thentic emotions related to surface acting will have a counterproductive
effect on social benefits. Moreover, surface acting stresses the emotional
distance between employees and customers as employees apply standardized
behavior and feigned friendliness instead of treating customers as individ-
uals. In contrast, as deep acting involves a higher level of employee empathy
and interest in the customer’s well-being, it is likely to be a more appropriate
and effective behavior when it comes to social relationships among em-
ployees and customers. Thus, we propose:
Proposition 3. Surface acting (deep acting) by service employees has a
MARKUS GROTH ET AL.228negative (positive) impact on customer social relational benefits.

Emotional Labor Strategies and Customer Retention
Customer retention is usually considered the key outcome variable of the
relationship marketing concept (Rust & Zahorik, 1993), i.e., a company’s
coordinated efforts to build and maintain lasting relationships with prof-
itable individual customers. Although we do not presume emotional labor
to directly impact retention, there are reasons to believe that emotional
labor handling strategies affect customer retention through the other out-
come variables considered in our model. By drawing on the literature on
customer orientation of service employees (e.g., Parasuraman et al., 1988)
and relationship quality (e.g., Hennig-Thurau & Klee, 1997), we propose the
following interrelationships among the outcome constructs of our concep-
tual model:
Proposition 4. Customer orientation of service employees has a positive
impact on customer satisfaction.
Proposition 5. Customer satisfaction has a positive impact on customer
social relational benefits.
Proposition 6. Customer satisfaction has a positive impact on customer
trust.
Proposition 7. Customer satisfaction has a positive impact on customer
retention.
Proposition 8. Customer social relational benefits have a positive impact
on customer retention.
Proposition 9. Customer trust has a positive impact on customer reten-
tion.
Antecedents of Emotional Labor-Handling Strategies
Apart from customer-related outcomes of specific emotional labor strate-
gies, our theoretical model also focuses on a set of predictors of employees’
likelihood to engage in either surface acting or deep acting. Specifically, in
our proposed model we focus on three kinds of potential antecedents of
emotional labor regulation strategies, namely (a) individual-level factors, (b)
dyadic factors of the service interaction, and (c) organizational factors. Al-
though a number of antecedents can be expected to exist in each category,
we focus on those variables from each category expected to have the
strongest impact on employees’ choice of emotional labor regulation strat-
A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 229egies based on theoretical considerations and previous research findings.

Employee Job Satisfaction and Emotional Labor Strategy
Job satisfaction refers to the positive/negative attitude people have about their
jobs (e.g., Churchill, Ford, & Walker, 1974). Findings on the impact of job
satisfaction on emotional labor have been somewhat ambiguous, with some
authors having found a negative relationship (e.g., Morris & Feldman, 1997)
while others reported a positive relationship instead (e.g., Wharton, 1993).
These contradictory results may be due to the fact that job satisfaction
has differential effects on emotional labor strategies (Grandey, 2003; Morris
& Feldman, 1996). That is, employees who are dissatisfied with their jobs
may have to engage in more surface acting in order to bring their displayed
emotions in line with organizational display rules, but have difficulties to
engage in deep acting because of the emotional investments required by that
strategy. Consequently, we expect that the lower the employees’ job satis-
faction, the more they will engage in surface acting because it requires them
to spend less effort than deep acting. Thus, we propose:
Proposition 10. Employees job satisfaction will have a positive impact on
deep acting, but a negative impact on surface acting.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Acting Strategy Choice
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is defined as behavior of indi-
vidual employees that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized
by the formal reward system, and that, in the aggregate, promotes the ef-
fective functioning of the organization (Organ, 1988, 1990). Within the
context of emotional labor, OCB has only recently received attention from
researchers. Bailey et al. (2001) were the first to incorporate OCB as a
variable in their model of emotional value in service encounters. These au-
thors suggest that displaying emotions in itself may be considered as a form
of OCB. Similarly, a relationship between OCB and emotional labor strat-
egies was suggested by Totterdell and Holman (2003).
These studies suggest that employees may regard certain types of emo-
tional labor as voluntary citizenship behavior that goes beyond organiza-
tional expectations. Building on this argument, we expect that employees
with high levels of OCB will be more likely to engage in deep acting given
the higher emotional effort required to deliver this emotional labor strategy.
In contrast, when employees’ level of OCB is low, they are more likely to
prefer to engage in surface acting due to the smaller emotional efforts as-
sociated with this strategy type. Thus, we offer the following proposition:
MARKUS GROTH ET AL.230Proposition 11. OCB will have a positive impact on deep acting, but a
negative impact on surface acting.

Relationship Strength and Emotional Labor Strategy
Another potential antecedent of an employee’s emotional labor strategy
choice is the strength of the relationship, the employee maintains with an
individual customer. In our research, we draw on a conceptualization of
service relationships suggested by Gutek and colleagues (Gutek, Bhappu,
Liao-Troth, & Cherry, 1999; Gutek, Groth, & Cherry, 2002) who distin-
guish between interactions of two people who have a shared history of
interactions and expect to interact with each other again in the future (i.e.,
‘‘service relationships’’) and interactions of people who do not know each
other and do not expect to see each other again in the future (i.e., ‘‘service
encounters’’). This distinction can be transformed into a continuum of re-
lationship strength, with long-term, intensive relationships defining a high
relationship strength and one-time encounters with unknown customers
defining low strength.
When an employee encounters a customer for the first time, he or she is
likely to have difficulties in judging the appropriateness of emotional in-
vestments and therefore may be more likely to stay away from deep acting
behavior, preferring surface acting instead. Surface acting is particularly
likely to be applied when employees get the impression that a first-time
customer will not use the service offered again in the future, e.g., because the
customer is a tourist (i.e., low relationship strength). In contrast, in high
relationship strength dyads, emotional investments will be considered more
appropriate by the employee, based on the long-term perspective of his or
her relationship with the customer. Therefore, employees will tend to apply
deep acting when the strength of a relationship is high. We propose the
following proposition:
Proposition 12. Relationship strength will have a positive impact on deep
acting, but a negative impact on surface acting.
Service Scripts and Acting Strategy Choice
Service employees’ performance is never context free, but influenced by
norms and requirements of the service organization. A major organizational
variable that can be expected to influence employees’ choice of emotional
labor strategies is the level of service scripts provided by the firm. Service
scripts include formal descriptions of the way employees are expected to
behave during interactions with customers (Smith & Houston, 1983). They
are intended to increase the quality of service delivered through standard-
izing employee behavior and thereby reducing the level of service hetero-
geneity. Although service scripts can be found across many different types of
A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 231services, empirical research on service scripts has been sparse.1

The extent to which service employees’ behavior is regulated by service
scripts is likely to impact employees’ choice of emotional labor strategies.
Specifically, the more service scripts restrict employee behavior, the more
employees will engage in surface acting behavior because employees are pre-
vented by rigid scripts from behaving in a natural, spontaneous way, which is
part of a deep acting strategy. When service scripts are less rigid, leaving the
employee sufficient space to adapt his or her behavior according to a cus-
tomer’s interests and needs, the employee is more likely to engage in deep
acting behavior. Therefore, we offer our final antecedent-related proposition:
Proposition 13. The restrictiveness of service scripts has a negative impact
on deep acting, but a positive impact on surface acting.
DISCUSSION
In this article, we developed a theoretical model that links two emotional
labor acting strategies, surface acting and deep acting, to a variety of cus-
tomer outcomes as well as to a number of individual-, dyadic-, and organ-
izational-level antecedents. Given that most emotional labor research to date
has focused on employee outcomes (e.g., well-being, job burnout, etc.), our
research contributes to the emotions literature by drawing conceptual links
between employees’ propensity to engage in emotional labor and customers’
attitudes and behavioral reactions to such display of emotional labor.
In short, this research focuses on the question of how the customer ex-
perience during service encounters can be managed by employing emotional
labor strategies of service employees. Among service management and mar-
keting research scholars, the interest in emotional labor is likely to surge. This
research contributes to a more sophisticated understanding of the antecedents
and outcomes of emotional labor and builds on previous work, which has
focused on either emotional labor strategies or its consequences on employee
well-being. Our conceptual model and the propositions derived from it sup-
port the notion that emotional labor is a relevant phenomenon, yet somewhat
overlooked in the services literature, and has an impact on important cus-
tomer outcomes such as satisfaction, trust, and loyalty behavior.
Theoretical Implications and Directions for Future Research
MARKUS GROTH ET AL.232Our primary theoretical contribution lies in developing a model of emo-
tional labor outcomes and antecedents. It is hoped that our proposed model

will trigger some related future research. Naturally, a fruitful avenue would
be an empirical test of our conceptual model. Although we focused on a
number of variables deemed to be the most theoretically relevant outcomes
and antecedents of emotional labor, there are other potentially important
variables not included in our study. Future research may benefit from iden-
tifying additional customer attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors in regards
to emotional labor that influence their service experience and ultimately
affect their customer satisfaction and likelihood to remain loyal with the
organization.
Our study also has implications for future research in terms of examining
emotional labor strategies in a cross-cultural context. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that norms and expectations regarding emotional display vary
greatly among different cultures and countries among employees as well as
customers. However, to our knowledge, no empirical research has examined
the cross-cultural dimensions and implications of emotional labor. The ad-
vent of global markets and the fact that organizations operate across na-
tional boundaries require companies to become familiar with relevant
services-related concepts (such as emotional labor) across different cultures.
Thus, the relationships discussed in this article can be expected to be in-
fluenced by cultural variables. To understand the effects of culture on emo-
tional labor, it would be especially important to examine communication
patterns (verbal as well as non-verbal) as a component of culture, which is
essential to any customer–employee interaction. A wealth of research has
shown that cultures differ with regard to their communication styles and
with regard to the importance they attach to verbally expressed messages
(e.g., Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988; Guirdham, 1999; Hall, 1976). Fu-
ture research may compare data collected from different cultures to explore
whether emotional labor strategies and their antecedents and consequences
are culture sensitive, i.e., differ across various countries and cultures.
Managerial Implications
It is hoped that by specifying the phenomenon of emotional labor, appro-
priate steps can be identified and taken by managers to improve service
delivery. Our research advances managers’ understanding of the customer
experience of service delivery by showing how to strengthen customers’
relationships with the service organization through increased satisfaction
and retention based on a better understanding of customer perceptions of
A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 233emotional display strategies of service employees. The knowledge generated
by this research is not limited to service firms, but will also be of use to

sequences of emotional labor among managers, organizations will be able to
MARKUS GROTH ET AL.2341. As a matter of fact, the authors are not aware of a single study that has
empirically investigated service scripts.
REFERENCES
Ashforth, B. E., & Humphrey, R. H. (1993). Emotional labor in service roles: The influence of
identity. Academy of Management Review, 18, 88–115.
Bailey, J. J., Gremler, D. D., & McCollough, M. A. (2001). Service encounter emotional value:
The dyadic influence of customer and employee emotions. Services Marketing Quarterly,
23, 1–25.
Bitner, M. J. (1990). Evaluating service encounters: The effects of physical surroundings and
employee responses. Journal of Marketing, 54, 69–82.
Blattberg, R. C., Getz, G., & Thomas, J. S. (2001). Customer equity: Building and managing
relationships as valuable assets. New York: Harvard Business School Press.
Bowen, D. E. (1990). Interdisciplinary study of service: Some progress, some prospects. Journal
of Business Research, 20, 71–79.
Bowen, D. E., Schneider, B., & Kim, S. S. (2000). Shaping service cultures through strategic
human resource management. In: T. A. Swartz & D. Iacobucci (Eds), Handbook of
services marketing and management (pp. 439–454). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Brotheridge, C. M., & Grandey, A. A. (2002). Emotional labor and burnout: Comparing twomore effectively manage emotional demands of their employees and, con-
sequently, create a better service experience for their customers.
NOTESconsumer goods companies that offer consumers interaction opportunities
to increase the effectiveness of their customer-contact management.
Moving from the general to the specific, one practical implication of this
research relates to employee training. Our conceptual model offers manag-
ers, implications as to how training programs need to be designed to target
customers’ emotional needs and improve employee performance. Our the-
oretical model suggests that there are benefits associated with training serv-
ice employees in different emotional labor strategies as well as with a better
understanding of the effects that emotional components of service delivery
have on customers. For example, by applying the customer equity concept
(Blattberg, Getz, & Thomas, 2001), employees could be taught that deep
acting should be used when dealing with loyal and frequent customers, while
surface acting is more appropriate for less frequent customers. We hope that
by contributing to a better understanding of the characteristics and con-perspectives of ‘‘people work’’. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 60, 17–39.

A Conceptual Model of the Effects of Emotional Labor Strategies 235Churchill, G. A., Jr., Ford, N. M., & Walker, O. C., Jr. (1974). Measuring the job satisfaction of
the industrial salesman. Journal of Marketing Research, 11, 254–260.
Donavan, D. T., Brown, T. J., & Mowen, J. C. (2004). Internal benefits of service-worker
customer orientation: Job satisfaction, commitment, and organizational citizenship be-
haviors. Journal of Marketing, 68, 128–146.
Glomb, T. M., & Tews, M. J. (2004). Emotional labor: A conceptualization and scale devel-
opment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64, 1–23.
Goodwin, C., & Gremler, D. D. (1996). Friendship over the counter. In: S. B. Brown, D.
Bowen, & T. Swartz (Eds), Advances in services marketing and management (Vol. 5, pp.
247–282). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Grandey, A. A. (2003). When the show must go on: Surface acting and deep acting as de-
terminants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Academy of Man-
agement Journal, 46, 86–96.
Grayson, K. A. (1998). Customer responses to emotional labor in discrete and relational service
exchange. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 9(2), 126–154.
Gremler, D. D., & Gwinner, K. P. (2000). Customer–employee rapport in service relationships.
Journal of Service Research, 3, 82–104.
Gudykunst, W. B., & Ting-Toomey, S. (1988). Cultural and interpersonal communication.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Guirdham, M. (1999). Communicating across cultures. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Gutek, B. A., Bhappu, A. D., Liao-Troth, M. A., & Cherry, B. (1999). Distinguishing between
service relationships and encounters. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 218–233.
Gutek, B. A., Groth, M., & Cherry, B. (2002). Achieving service success through relationships
and enhanced encounters. Academy of Management Executive, 16(4), 132–144.
Gwinner, K. P., Gremler, D. D., & Bitner, M. J. (1998). Relational benefits in service industries:
The customer’s perspective. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 26(2), 101–114.
Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond culture. New York: Doubleday.
Hennig-Thurau, T. (2004). Customer orientation of service employees: Its impact on customer
satisfaction, commitment, and retention. International Journal of Service Industry Man-
agement, 15, 460–479.
Hennig-Thurau, T., & Klee, A. (1997). The impact of customer satisfaction and relationship
quality on customer retention: A critical reassessment and model development. Psy-
chology & Marketing, 14, 737–764.
Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion in work, feeling rules and social structure. American Journal
of Sociology, 85, 551–575.
Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Kruml, S. M., & Geddes, D. (2000). Catching fire without burning out: Is there an ideal way to per-
form emotional labor. In: N. M. Ashkanasay, C. E. J. Ha¨rtel & W. J. Zerbe (Eds), Emotions
in the workplace: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 177–188). Westport, CT: Quorum Books.
Lemmink, J., & Mattson, J. (2002). Employee behavior, feelings of warmth and customer
perception in service encounters. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Manage-
ment, 30(1), 18–33.
Liljander, V., & Strandvik, T. (1997). Emotions in service satisfaction. International Journal of
Service Industry Management, 8, 148–169.Mann, S. (1999). Emotion at work: To what extent are we expressing, suppressing, or faking it.
European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 8, 347–369.

MARKUS GROTH ET AL.236Mattila, A. S., & Enz, C. A. (2002). The role of emotions in service encounters. Journal of
Service Research, 4, 268–277.
Morris, J. A., & Feldman, D. C. (1996). The dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of
emotional labor. Academy of Management Review, 4, 986–1010.
Morris, J. A., & Feldman, D. C. (1997). Managing emotions in the workplace. Journal of
Managerial Issues, 9, 257–274.
Oliver, R. T. (1997). Satisfaction: A behavioral perspective on the consumer. New York: The
McGraw-Hill Companies.
Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington,
MA: Lexington Books.
Organ, D. W. (1990). The motivational basis of organizational citizenship behavior. In: B. M.
Staw & L.L. Cummings (Eds), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 12, pp. 43–72).
Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale
for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, 64, 12–40.
Price, L. L., & Arnould, E. J. (1999). Commercial friendships: Service provider–client rela-
tionships in context. Journal of Marketing, 63, 38–56.
Pugh, S. D. (2001). Service with a smile: Emotional contagion in the service encounter. Academy
of Management Journal, 44, 1018–1027.
Rafaeli, A., & Sutton, R. I. (1987). Expression of emotion as part of the work role. Academy of
Management Review, 12, 23–37.
Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., & Camerer, C. (1998). Not so different after all: A
cross-discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23, 393–404.
Rust, R. T., & Zahorik, A. J. (1993). Customer satisfaction, customer retention, and market
share. Journal of Retailing, 69, 193–215.
Schaubroeck, J., & Jones, J. R. (2000). Antecedents of workplace emotional labor dimensions
and moderators of their effects on physical symptoms. Journal of Organizational Be-
havior, 21, 163–183.
Sirdeshmukh, D., Singh, J., & Sabol, B. (2002). Consumer trust, value, and loyalty in relational
exchanges. Journal of Marketing, 66, 15–37.
Smith, R. A., & Houston, M. J. (1983). Script based evaluations of satisfaction with services. In:
L. L. Berry, G. L. Shostack & G. D. Upah (Eds), Emerging perspectives in services (pp.
59–62). Chicago: American Marketing Association.
Totterdell, P., & Holman, D. (2003). Emotion regulation in customer service roles: Testing a
model of emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 8, 55–73.
Tsai, W. C. (2001). Determinants and consequences of employee displayed positive emotions.
Journal of Management, 27, 497–512.
Tsai, W. C., & Huang, Y. M. (2002). Mechanisms linking employee affective delivery and
customer behavioral intentions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 1001–1008.
Wharton, A. S. (1993). The affective consequences of service work. Work and Occupations, 20,
205–232.
Wharton, A. S. (1996). Service with a smile: Understanding the consequences of emotional
labor. In: C. L. Macdonald & C. Sirianni (Eds), Working in the service society (pp. 91–
112). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Zapf, D. (2002). Emotion work and psychological well-being: A review of the literature and
some conceptual considerations. Human Resource Management Review, 12, 237–268.