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Is the Customer Always Right? The Potential for Racial Bias in Customer Evaluations of Employee Performance
Author(s) -
LYNN MICHAEL,
STURMAN MICHAEL
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00803.x
Subject(s) - tying , race (biology) , incentive , marketing , customer satisfaction , service quality , service (business) , customer service , quality (philosophy) , business , psychology , social psychology , economics , microeconomics , sociology , gender studies , philosophy , epistemology
With the encouragement of marketing scholars, many companies are tying employee incentives to customer ratings of satisfaction, service quality, or employee performance. One potential drawback to these practices is that customers' evaluations of employees—and, therefore, any associated rewards—may be biased by employee race. This possibility was examined in a restaurant setting. We found that customers rated the promptness and attentiveness of same race servers more favorably than different race servers, but there were no differences for assessments of server friendliness or appearance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.