Despite increasing interest in warmth and competence as fundamental dimensions in consumers’ evaluation of service providers, prior research remains ambiguous about which dimension is more important. The current study develops a nomological framework that clarifies this ambiguity and explains whether, when, and why warmth or competence takes precedence for different outcomes in customer-service provider relationships. Combined evidence from field and laboratory studies support the notion of an asymmetric dominance, which suggests that warmth is dominant in driving outcomes that capture relational aspects (e.g., customer-company identification), whereas competence is dominant in driving outcomes that capture transactional aspects of the customer-service provider relationship (e.g., share of wallet). The findings provide first insights into the underlying mechanisms that drive this asymmetric dominance by demonstrating that relational and capability concerns mediate this process. Moreover, the current investigation identifies novel moderators that offer managers help in identifying service contexts (people vs. object care) and customer segments (differing in process and outcome service goals) for which investing in warmth or competence is more promising. Overall, displaying competence is particular effective in driving customer attraction and current operating performance, whereas displaying warmth is better suited to establish strong emotional bonds and drive customer retention.

Using a large-scale, multilevel data set, this study introduces to the sales management literature the concept of sales representatives' headquarters stereotypes as a negative outcome of social identification. The results suggest that work team identification fosters headquarters stereotyping more strongly when organizational identification is low than when it is high. Salespeople's physical distance from their corporate headquarters increases work team identification and decreases organizational identification. Competitive intensity, as an external threat to salespeople's social identity, strengthens stereotyping and social identification. In addition to important theoretical implications, this research also provides crucial insights for managers. Headquarters stereotypes are critically important because they can have harmful consequences for sales performance and customer satisfaction. Key managerial implications are that managers should foster organizational identification and that using different compensation systems does not remedy the negative effects of stereotypes.

Capitalizing on a large-scale field experimental dataset involving 1,254 airline customers, this study introduces customer inoculation as a new, proactive strategy for mitigating the negative consequences that service failures have on customer satisfaction. Results confirm that customer inoculation eases the decrease in satisfaction when customers experience a service failure. Additional analyses indicate that customer inoculation does not harm customer satisfaction if no service failure occurs. This finding sets inoculation apart from expectation management and underscores the potential inoculation has for marketing practice. Furthermore, contrary to traditional recovery strategies for addressing service failures, customer inoculation operates in advance of a service failure and thereby circumvents potential drawbacks of traditional strategies. In sum, customer inoculation represents a novel strategy for addressing service failures with respect to existing marketing literature and expands the scope of action.

Past research suggests that individuals in dirty work occupations can manage their self-views so as to derive positive self-definitions that allow them to perform their tasks with less of the burden of stigma. Results from our three studies show that this may not necessarily be the case when they try to manage how occupational outsiders view them. Findings from our studies show that in terms of this external perspective, rather than thwarting the occupational stigma, active stigma management by the stigma bearer can unintentionally reinforce the stigma. Drawing on the expectancy-confirmation framework from the stereotyping literature, we explain the cognitive mechanism that underlies this inadvertent stigma reinforcement in the stigma perceiver and investigate the job performance implications for the stigma bearer. We test our hypotheses across two field studies and one experimental study, involving cross-industry and cross-sectional data, as well as one longitudinal data-set including 128,549 employee-customer transactions. Our results contribute to research on dirty work by revealing that stigma management can be a double-edged sword with unintended negative consequences for the stigmatized worker.

This study examines the performance implications that organizations may suffer when their salespeople develop negative stereotypes of their corporate headquarters. How such stereotypes can be remedied through managerial action is also examined. The study draws on matched data from four different sources: sales managers, salespeople, customers, and company reports. Findings indicate that negative headquarters stereotypes among salespeople are associated with poor marketing-related performance across a range of outcomes, including salespeople's adherence to corporate strategy, their customer orientation, and their sales performance. Findings also show that negative headquarters stereotypes can be remedied through managerial action, but more so at the corporate management level than at the sales unit level.