Reach out and touch your customers

107

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many waiters and waitresses deliver poor service to ethnic minorities because they believe that ethnic minorities are poor tippers. How managers should deal with this problem depends in part on whether or not ethnic minorities really do tip less than Whites and (if they do) on when and why this occurs. This paper reports on 2 studies that address these issues. The results indicate that Asians tip less than do Whites in comparisons across (but not within) restaurants and that Blacks tip less than do Whites in comparisons both across and within restaurants. Various explanations for these ethnic differences are tested, and the managerial implications of the results are discussed.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnic Differences in Tipping: Evidence, Explanations, and Implications

Lynn

Thomas-Haysbert²

2003

107

“…On the other hand, people often adjust their actual tips up or down from the calculated tip percentages, and those adjustments appear to be spontaneous and at least partially outside of conscious control. For example, researchers have found that tips are affected by how sunny it is outside (Cunningham, 1979;Rind, 1996), whether or not the server touches the customer (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984;Lynn, Le, & Sherwyn, 1998), and whether or not the server repeats the customer's order (van Baaren, Holland, Steenart, & van Knippenberg, 2003). These factors are unlikely to be part of customers' conscious deliberations about how much to tip (see van Baaren et al, 2003), so tipping is affected by unconscious as well as conscious processes.…”

Section: Potential Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping: A Replication and Extension

Lynn

Sturman

Ganley

et al. 2008

This study examined the effects of server race, customer race, and their interaction on restaurant tips while statistically controlling for customers' perceptions of service quality and other variables. The findings indicate that consumers of both races discriminated against Black service providers by tipping them less than White service providers. Furthermore, this server race effect on tipping was moderated by perceived service quality and dining party size. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. Particularly noteworthy is the possibility that the server race effect on tipping represents an adverse impact against Black servers that makes the use of tipping to compensate employees a violation of employment discrimination law in the United States.

“…Tipping has been the subject of numerous studies in social psychology and other disciplines (for a review, see Lynn, 2006). Much of this research has examined the effects on tipping of service (Lynn, 2003;Lynn & McCall, 2000) and of specific server behaviors, such as smiling at customers (Tidd & Lockard, 1978), touching customers (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984;Hornik, 1992;Lynn, Le, & Sherwyn, 1998), giving customers candy (Strohmetz, Rind, Fisher, & Lynn, 2002), squatting down next to the table (Davis et al, 1998;Lynn & Mynier, 1993) and writing or drawing on the check (Rind & Bordia, 1995, 1996Rind & Strohmetz, 1998, 2001.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Geodemographic Differences in Knowledge About the Restaurant Tipping Norm

Lynn¹

2006

A national telephone survey indicated that knowledge about the restaurant tipping norm is greater among people who are White, in their 40 s to 60 s, highly educated, wealthy, living in metropolitan areas, and living in the Northeast than among their counterparts. These findings support the idea that differential familiarity with tipping norms underlies geodemographic differences in tipping behavior. An educational campaign promoting the 15-20% restaurant tipping norm is needed to reduce geodemographic differences in tipping and to increase the willingness of waiters and waitresses to serve all customers equally.