Employee Mere Presence and Its Impact on Customer Satisfaction
通过实验和实地研究发现，即使员工不提供服务，仅仅在实体环境中出现就能提升顾客的愉悦感和满意度，愉悦感在其中起中介作用。
ABSTRACT Existing research suggests that humans are hardwired to be sensitive to the presence of other humans, and that the mere presence of someone is likely to affect human behavior. So far, however, this issue has been under‐researched in physical environments in which retail and service transactions take place and with respect to the mere presence of employees. This study examined empirically if the mere presence of an employee in a physical environment has an impact on customer affect (in terms of pleasure) and customer satisfaction. Two between‐subjects experiments, in two different settings, showed that the absence of an employee produced lower levels of pleasure and lower levels of customer satisfaction than the mere presence of an employee. The results also indicate that pleasure mediated the association between employee presence and customer satisfaction. In addition, a field study with mystery shoppers confirmed that the employee absent condition produced lower levels of satisfaction than conditions in which employees were visible.