A study of emotional receptivity, information processing style and expectations.

• Main Authors: Lim, Sher Hern., Seet, Shu Mei., Lim, Joel Boon Sen.
• Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Marketing::Consumer behavior
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48147
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This research seeks to better understand the underlying information processing style a customer engages in when evaluating service employees who display varying levels of emotional expressiveness. This is an extension of research conducted by Lee and Lim (2010), with our focus on the fit conditions of emotional receptivity (consumer) and emotional expressiveness (service employee). Emotional receptivity refers to an individual’s disposition toward experiencing a preferred level of emotional intensity. Fit conditions happen where there is a close match between a consumer’s emotional receptivity and the level of emotional intensity displayed by a service employee. In addition to reaffirming Lee and Lim’s research and understanding information processing styles, we shall investigate the effect of an emotional-fit condition on the zone of tolerance. Four sessions of experiments were conducted with 154 Nanyang Business School undergraduates as subjects. The results generally reaffirm Lee and Lim’s research that fit conditions lead to the subject adopting a more favourable attitude towards the service employee, and also suggest that the subject will tend to use greater affect-based processing in comparison to mismatch conditions. Moreover, the results generally show that less emotionally receptive subjects inherently use less affect-based processing regardless of the expressiveness levels exposed to. In addition, under fit conditions, subjects exhibit a narrower zone of tolerance in comparison to subjects in mismatch conditions. Based on the results obtained, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research offered.