Céline Jacob

Clothing Color and Tipping: Gentlemen Patrons Give More Tips to Waitresses With Red Clothes

Recent research conducted with humans demonstrated that red, relative to other achromatic or chromatic colors, led men to view women presented on a photograph as more attractive. The effect of color on behavior was tested in a tipping context. Eleven waitresses in five restaurants were instructed to wear the same tee shirt with different colors (black, white, red, blue, green, or yellow). The effect of color on tipping according to patron’s gender was measured. It was found that waitresses wearing red received more tips but only with male patrons. Waitresses color had no effect on female patrons’ tipping behavior. The relation between red and sexual attractiveness are used to explain the results. Managerial interests related with clothing appearance were discussed.

Fund-Raising on the Web: The Effect of an Electronic Foot-in-the-Door on Donation

In an attempt to test the foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique in a computer-mediated communication context, 1,008 men and women taken at random in various e-mails lists were solicited to visit a web site for the profit of a humanitarian organization. In the FITD condition, subjects were first solicited to sign a petition form and, after that, they were solicited for a donation. In the control condition, the donation solicitation was formulated directly. In all cases, the formulation of the requests was manipulated by the order of the successive HTML pages of the site. Results show that the FITD procedure increases compliance to the final request.

Social presence reinforcement and computer-mediated communication: the effect of the solicitor's photography on compliance to a survey request made by e-mail.

Personal information is scarce in computer-mediated communication. So when information about the sender is attached with an e-mail, this could induce a positive feeling toward the sender. An experiment was carried out where a male and a female student-solicitor, by way of an e-mail, requested a student-subject to participate in a survey. In half of the cases, a digital photograph of the solicitor appeared at the end of the e-mail. Results show that subjects agreed more readily to the request in the experimental condition than in the control condition where no digital photograph was sent with the e-mail. The importance of social information on computer-mediated communication is used to explain such results.

‘Love is in the air’: Effects of songs with romantic lyrics on compliance with a courtship request

Previous research has shown that exposure to various media is correlated to variations in human behaviour. Exposure to aggressive song lyrics increases aggressive action whereas exposure to songs with prosocial lyrics is associated with prosocial behaviour. An experiment was carried out where 18—20-year-old single female participants were exposed to romantic lyrics or to neutral ones while waiting for the experiment to start. Five minutes later, the participant interacted with a young male confederate in a marketing survey. During a break, the male confederate asked the participant for her phone number. It was found that women previously exposed to romantic lyrics complied with the request more readily than women exposed to the neutral ones. The theoretical implication of our results for the General Learning Model is discussed.

The effect of physical distance between patrons and servers on tipping.

Experimental studies showing that servers’ nonverbal behaviors are associated with variation in customers’ tipping have not tested the effect of interpersonal distance between the server and the customer. Five waitresses in three restaurants were asked to stand erect at varying distances from patrons, who were alone at their table, when taking orders. Short interpersonal distance was associated with both a greater frequency in tipping and an increased amount of money given. The results highlight the importance of proxemic behavior and the role of social interaction between customers and restaurant employees.

Request Solicitation and Semantic Evocation of Freedom: An Evaluation in a Computer-Mediated Communication Context

The “But you are free of …” technique is a compliance procedure which solicits someone to comply with a request by simply telling him that he is free to accept or to refuse the request. This semantic evocation leads to increased compliance with the request. A new evaluation of the generality of this technique was tested in an experiment in which subjects received an anonymous electronic mail which asked them to consult the site of a humanitarian association for children. Analysis showed that, when the semantic evocation of freedom is included in the message, a higher compliance rate was observed than in a situation in which this evocation was omitted.

The Influence of Music on Temporal Perceptions in an on-hold Waiting Situation:

Several experiments have shown that on-hold telephone music affects the estimation of projected time before hang-up. However, the cognitive mechanisms of this effect have not been investigated, although a separate series of studies have shown that music affects time perception. Therefore an experiment was carried out in which subjects had to wait on the telephone, with the on-hold message accompanied or not by music. Results show that compared with the control condition without music, the presence of music leads to: (1) an underestimation of time spent and (2) an over-estimation of projected time passed to hang-up.

Direct look versus evasive glance and compliance with a request

MANY RESEARCHERS have asserted that eye contact is a powerful influence. For instance, Snyder, Grether, and Keller (1974) reported that motorists stopped more easily when hitchhikers looked them straight in the eye than when hitchhikers glanced elsewhere. When a verbal interaction takes place along with direct eye contact, one may observe similar results: Participants more easily refunded coins found in a phone booth when the confederate who claimed to have forgotten the coins looked directly at the participants (Brockner, Pressman, Cabitt, & Moran, 1982). Similarly, Kleinke and Singer (1979) reported that passers-by more willingly took a leaflet offered by a confederate who looked them in the eye. A direct look may make compliance with a request easier: People on the street more readily helped a female confederate asking for a dime to make a telephone call when the confederate looked directly at the person rather than fixing

‘Love is in the air’: congruence between background music and goods in a florist

Numerous experimental studies have shown that background music affects consumer behaviour in a retail environment. Some of these have tested the degree of congruence between the music played in the store and the type of goods sold. An experiment was carried out in a flower shop, where love songs and romantic music (congruence condition), pop music (music usually played in the flower-shop) and no music (control condition) were played. The results show that the mean amount of money spent was significantly higher in the love songs and romantic music condition compared with the other two, whereas the pop music condition did not lead to an increase in the amount of money spent compared with the control, no music, condition.

Presence of Various Figurative Cues on a Restaurant Table and Consumer Choice: Evidence for an Associative Link

Some studies have shown that figurative cues, presented in the immediate environment of an individual, have affected his/her later behavior. This effect was applied to consumer behavior. In a restaurant, various figurative cues related to the sea (a boat or a sailor figurine, a napkin with a picture of a boat and poetry related to the sea) or no cues (control condition) were present in the environment of the patrons. The results show that figurative cues related to the sea increased the consumption of fish dishes.