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Customer
Impact of nonverbal customer-to- satisfaction
customer interactions on and loyalty
intention
customer satisfaction and
loyalty intentions 1967
Hongxia Lin and Meng Zhang Received 13 August 2019
Revised 23 November 2019
School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and 20 January 2020
Economics, Chengdu, China, and 7 April 2020
Accepted 7 April 2020
Dogan Gursoy
School of Hospitality Business Management, Washington State University,
Pullman, Washington, USA and School of Tourism and Hospitality,
University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to examine the relationship among nonverbal customer-to-customer interactions
(CCIs), positive and negative emotions, customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions.
Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual model that was developed using the stimulus-
organism-response theoretical framework was tested using a sample of 583 consumers.
Findings – The results show that kinesics and paralanguage positively affect customers’ positive emotions
while proxemics, paralanguage and physical appearance negatively influence their negative emotions.
Further, both positive and negative emotions are found to have significant impacts on customer satisfaction
and loyalty intentions.
Research limitations/implications – Theoretically, this study not only contributes to the existing
servicescape and customer experience literature but also expands nonverbal interaction research in the
hospitality management field. However, results may have limited generalizability to other service settings
and other cultural contexts.
Originality/value – This study is one of the first to investigate the impact of nonverbal CCIs on service
experiences.
Keywords Satisfaction, Loyalty intentions, Emotions, Social servicescape,
Nonverbal customer-to-customer interactions
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) is prevalent and a critical phenomenon in many
service settings (Nicholls, 2010). It is an integral component of social servicescapes
(Rosenbaum and Massiah, 2011) and plays a critical role in the production and delivery of
customer experiences (Brocato et al., 2012). As the publication of Martin and Pranter’s (1989)
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
Education Department of Sichuan Province “Sichuan Culture and Tourism Innovation and
Vol. 32 No. 5, 2020
pp. 1967-1985
Development Research Center.” Education Department of Sichuan Province “Tourism Consumer © Emerald Publishing Limited
0959-6119
Theory Innovation Team.” DOI 10.1108/IJCHM-08-2019-0694
IJCHM study on CCI, this topic has been receiving increasing attention from academia (Lin et al.,
32,5 2019; Kim et al., 2020). Extant research suggests that individuals’ service experiences can be
influenced by other customers through both verbal interactions with them and observation
of their nonverbal cues (Ji et al., 2018; Gursoy et al., 2017). Verbal and nonverbal interactions
have distinctly different manifestation modes and effects (Bonaccio et al., 2016). However,
while verbal interactions between customers have been studied by a number of scholars
1968 (Baron et al., 1996; Harris et al., 1995), there is a lack of studies examining nonverbal CCIs
and their impacts on customers’ experiences.
Nonverbal interaction refers to “the sending and receiving of thoughts and feelings via
nonverbal behavior” (Ambady and Weisbuch, 2010, p. 465). Studies suggest that a large
portion of, approximately 65-90%, interpersonal communication individuals encounter every
day is carried out through nonverbal interactions (Darioly and Mast, 2013). Moreover,
nonverbal interactions can exert significant influences on individuals’ attitudes and
subsequent behaviors (Darioly and Mast, 2013). Studies that examined nonverbal
interactions between customers and employees have reported positive relationships between
employee-customer interactions and customer satisfaction (Jung and Yoon, 2011; Kim and
Baker, 2019). Compared with verbal interactions, nonverbal interactions are usually less
conscious (Poggi and Vincze, 2008), and more likely to exhibit true feelings and attitudes
(Ambady and Rosenthal, 1998). Therefore, individuals tend to be more dependent on
nonverbal cues, especially when they are in an ambiguous situation (Darioly and Mast, 2013).
In service encounters, while customers do not necessarily have direct verbal interactions
with each other, nonverbal interactions (e.g. signal nods and eye contacts) between
customers are likely to occur more frequently. As other customers are a significant
component of a servicescape, these nonverbal cues can play important roles in customers’
evaluation of the service experiences (Sundaram and Webster, 2000). Studies argue that just
the presence of other customers can exert influence on the focal customers’ experiences
(Alnawas and Hemsley-Brown, 2019; Thakor et al., 2008), which is probably because of focal
customers conscious and/or subconscious evaluations of other customers’ nonverbal
behaviors such as physical appearances and facial expressions. Furthermore, most previous
studies that have examined nonverbal CCI provided an oversimplified overview of
nonverbal interactions, such as the observation of other customers’ manners (Ji et al., 2018)
and other customers’ physical appearances (Brocato et al., 2012), without integrating
different types of nonverbal CCI into a comprehensive framework. As nonverbal CCI may
have profound impacts on customers’ service experiences, more work is needed to explore
the role of various forms of nonverbal interactions among customers in shaping their
evaluations of experiences.
Thus, the present study aims to explore the relationship between nonverbal CCIs and
customer satisfaction and loyalty. Research has claimed that social interactions, a form of
servicescape stimuli, can evoke customers’ emotional states, which then lead to their
cognitive responses (Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2003). Using the stimulus-organism-
response (S-O-R) framework as the conceptual foundation (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974),
this research argues that various dimensions of nonverbal CCIs induce customers’ positive
and negative emotions, which then determine their satisfaction level with the experience and
their loyalty intentions.
This study will make several contributions to the extant literature. First, the proposed
model seeks to examine the impacts of various dimensions of nonverbal CCIs on positive
and negative emotions, satisfaction with an experience and loyalty intentions, which is
expected to enrich customer experience and social servicescape literature. Second, as
nonverbal interactions have not received much attention from hospitality scholars (Bonaccio
et al., 2016), this study will further our understanding of nonverbal interactions and their Customer
impacts on customers’ experience formation process by examining the role of nonverbal satisfaction
CCIs in a hospitality setting. Thus, the findings of this study will benefit hospitality
businesses by providing implications on how to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty
and loyalty
through managing nonverbal interactions among customers. intention

Conceptual development
Nonverbal customer-to-customer interactions
1969
Previous studies have proposed various classifications of nonverbal interactions such as
contextual, artificial, performancial and mediatory codes (Harrison, 1974), object, action and
sign languages (Ruesch and Kees, 1956), eye contact, proximity, body lean, smiling, touch
(Burgoon et al., 1984), facial, hand gestures, eye movements, body movements, vocal,
interpersonal distance, orientation angle and capability to exhibit emotions through
nonverbal cues (Hall et al., 2005). Other scholars have criticized these classifications for
being one-sided and too specific and have proposed more generic classifications. For
example, Bonaccio et al. (2016) proposed three categories of nonverbal codes – body, sensory
and contact and spatiotemporal codes. Body codes include kinesics, physical appearance
and oculesics. Sensory and contact codes contain haptics, vocalics and olfactics, while
spatiotemporal codes involve proxemics, chronemics and environment.
While these classifications provide a comprehensive overview of nonverbal interactions,
most of them are not applicable or useful in a CCI context. Therefore, this study uses
kinesics, proxemics, paralanguage and physical appearance in exploring nonverbal
interactions among customers. Kinesics refers to indirect interactions between customers
via body movements such as facial expressions, postures and gestures (Burgoon et al., 2011).
Kinesics is the most common and dominant mode of a nonverbal interaction (Gamble and
Gamble, 2013). Proxemics refers to the concept of personal space and the proper distance
between customers (Jung and Yoon, 2011). Paralanguage refers to nonverbal features of
communications that include intensity, emotions and non-lexical components such as voice
tone, pitch and speech speed of communications between individuals (Sundaram and
Webster, 2000). Paralanguage focuses on how a verbal message is conveyed, while verbal
interaction refers to the content of the message (Hargie, 2011). Physical appearance mainly
refers to the physical attractiveness and attire of other customers (Jung and Yoon, 2011).
These four categories are comprehensive and have distinctive features, and have
previously been used in previous studies that examined nonverbal communications between
employees and customers in a service context (Jung and Yoon, 2011). However, as customers
have different expectations from their interactions with employees and other customers,
their attitudes toward these interactions and their interactions with employees and other
customers are likely to be different (Rosenbaum and Massiah, 2007). Thus, these four types
of nonverbal CCIs may have distinct impacts on customer outcomes compared with
nonverbal interactions between customers and employees.

Stimulus-organism-response framework
As an influential theoretical framework in environmental psychology, the S-O-R framework
suggests that stimuli (S) from an environment can stimulate emotions (O), which then affect
responses (R) (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). Environmental stimuli can be both physical
features and interpersonal behaviors within a setting (Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2003).
Emotions reflect individuals’ affective responses to certain environmental cues (Lin and
Mattila, 2010). Responses refer to individuals’ behavioral reactions, including attitudes
toward the environment (Moon et al., 2016) and cognitive evaluations of their experiences
IJCHM (Lin and Mattila, 2010). Studies suggest that emotions are closely related to customers’
32,5 satisfaction and loyalty intentions (Finn, 2005).
Drawing on this framework, this study proposes that nonverbal CCIs (stimuli) can
trigger customers’ emotional responses (organism), which then influence customers’
evaluation of service experiences, i.e. satisfaction, and their attitudes toward the service, i.e.
loyalty intentions (response). As suggested by previous studies, emotions are examined as a
1970 two-dimensional construct, namely, positive and negative emotions that are argued to be
separate and independent of each other (Ou and Verhoef, 2017). Previous studies argue that
both positive and negative emotions can be induced simultaneously (Babin et al., 1998) and
negative emotions are not necessarily present when positive emotions are absent (Warr
et al., 1983). Furthermore, studies report that these two dimensions correlate differentially
with other variables (Gountas and Gountas, 2007). Therefore, this study takes both of them
into account when constructing the conceptual model to be able to provide a more complete
and comprehensive insight on whether they have the same drivers and outcomes.

Effects of nonverbal customer-to-customer interactions on emotions

Social servicescape factors, i.e. social environmental stimuli, have been identified as critical
antecedents of customer emotions (Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2003). Further, the
nonverbal behaviors of service providers, such as voice tone, body posture and attire, can
influence customers’ emotional state (Berry and Carbone, 2007). It is, therefore, reasonable to
propose that nonverbal CCIs can have significant effects on individuals’ emotional state.
The appraisal theory suggests that interaction with an environmental stimulus will
result in a subjective evaluation of that stimulus using a set of criteria such as agency, goal
congruence, goal relevance, certainty and coping potential (Frijda, 1987). Agency refers to
the assessment of whether a certain entity (e.g. people, objects and products) in a situation is
responsible for the outcome (Johnson and Stewart, 2005; Cai et al., 2018). Goal congruence is
the evaluation of whether the experience is consistent with an individual’s anticipated goal
(Cai et al., 2018). Goal relevance involves the assessment of the relevance of the experience
for an individual’s goals or needs (Ma et al., 2013). Certainty is the extent to which the
situation implies a certain outcome (Roseman, 1984). The coping potential is related to an
individual’s perceived ability to deal with or change the current situation (Watson and
Spence, 2007).
This study focuses on goal congruence and goal relevance of a CCI experience as the core
criteria of the appraisal. Specifically, if some of the nonverbal CCI experiences are worse than
customers’ expectations, they are likely to result in the formation of negative emotions. On
the other hand, if some of the nonverbal CCI experiences are better than their expectations,
positive emotions are likely to be generated (Johnson and Stewart, 2005). However, as
customers are likely to experience more than one nonverbal CCI experience during a service
experience, they can exhibit both positive and negative emotions concurrently based on their
evaluation of those nonverbal CCIs (Phillips and Baumgartner, 2002).
According to emotional contagion theory, emotions of one person can trigger the
corresponding emotions of others during interpersonal interactions (Pugh, 2001). This
contagion process can be realized through nonverbal interactions (Hatfield et al., 1994),
which can lead to a more accurate understanding of individuals’ emotions (Chartrand and
Lakin, 2013). Nonverbal behaviors of customers that signal favorable emotions can evoke
positive emotions in other customers (Jung and Yoon, 2011), while nonverbal behaviors that
express negative feelings elicit negative emotions in other customers. Specifically,
appropriate nonverbal behaviors, such as smiling and eye contact, have been found to elicit
positive emotions in service settings (Pugh, 2001). Furthermore, Hazlett and Hoehn-Saric
(2000) suggest that the attractiveness of employees can have a significant influence on Customer
customers’ positive emotions. The research also suggests that customers will have negative satisfaction
feelings if they perceive nonverbal interactions negatively (Sundaram and Webster, 2000).
For example, invasion of one’s interpersonal space may result in the generation of negative
and loyalty
emotions (Price et al., 1995). Additionally, inappropriate paralanguage, such as a high- intention
pitched voice, can lead to customers’ negative emotions (Kim, 2007). Based on the prior
research, this study presents the following hypotheses:
1971
H1. Nonverbal positive CCIs, i.e. kinesics (H1a), proxemics (H1b), paralanguage (H1c) and
physical appearance (H1d), have positive impacts on customers’ positive emotions.
H2. Nonverbal positive CCIs, i.e. kinesics (H2a), proxemics (H2b), paralanguage (H2c) and
physical appearance (H2d), have negative impacts on customers’ negative emotions.

Impact of customer emotions on satisfaction with the experience

Customer satisfaction has been one of the most researched topics in various disciplines such
as marketing and hospitality (Lee and Whaley, 2019). Studies agree that satisfaction is the
result of customers’ evaluation of whether the performance of a product or service meets or
exceeds customers’ expectations (Burns and Neisner, 2006; Prayag et al., 2019). Customers
use various criteria to assess the quality of services they receive (Byun and Jang, 2019).
Extant literature has identified emotions as one of the important drivers of customer
satisfaction (Oliver, 1993). Studies further argue that emotions play more significant roles in
determining customer satisfaction in service settings than in other contexts (Halstead et al.,
1994) because of the intangible nature of services (Shostack, 1977) and consumers
dependence on environmental cues for evaluating services (Burns and Neisner, 2006).
A number of studies have emphasized the importance of including positive and
negative emotions in explaining satisfaction (Phillips and Baumgartner, 2002). As
suggested by the affect-as-information theory, individuals’ emotional states can
significantly influence their evaluations of services (Mattila and Wirtz, 2000).
Specifically, when customers are in a positive emotional state, they will recall positive
memories, resulting in a positive evaluation of the service they receive. Higher the
customers’ positive emotions, the higher their satisfaction will be. On the other hand,
customers will evaluate a service experience in a negative way when they are in negative
affective states, resulting in lower satisfaction or dissatisfaction with service experiences
(Babin et al., 1998). Higher the customers’ negative emotions, lower the satisfaction they
elicit. Furthermore, as nonverbal behaviors, such as smiling and eye contact can have
significant impacts on customer emotions, both positive and negative emotions are likely
to mediate the effects of CCIs on customer satisfaction:

H3a. Customers’ positive emotions have positive impacts on their satisfaction with the
experience.
H3aa. Customers’ positive emotions mediate the impacts of nonverbal CCIs on their
satisfaction with the experience.
H3b. Customers’ negative emotions have negative impacts on their satisfaction with the
experience.
H3ba. Customers’ negative emotions mediate the impacts of nonverbal CCIs on their
satisfaction with the experience.
IJCHM Impact of customer emotion on loyalty intentions
32,5 Previous studies have already established the relationship between customers’
emotions and their loyalty intentions (Park et al., 2019; Ou and Verhoef, 2017) and
argued that emotion is a strong determinant of loyalty (Baloglu et al., 2019; Finn, 2005).
Specifically, customers with positive emotions will have the perception that they can
achieve their goals in the current service setting, resulting in high loyalty intentions.
1972 On the other hand, customers with negative emotions will have the perception that they
will fail to achieve their goals in the current service setting, leading to low loyalty
intentions (Ou and Verhoef, 2017). Furthermore, customers’ positive and negative
emotions are likely to mediate the effects of CCIs on loyalty intentions, as nonverbal
CCI experiences during a service experience are critical determinants of customers’
positive and negative emotions.

H4a. Customers’ positive emotions have positive impacts on their loyalty intentions.
H4aa. Customers’ positive emotions mediate the impacts of nonverbal CCIs on their
loyalty intentions.
H4b. Customers’ negative emotions have negative impacts on their loyalty intentions.
H4ba. Customers’ negative emotions mediate the impacts of nonverbal CCIs on their
loyalty intentions.

Proposed model
Using the S-O-R conceptual framework, this study develops a conceptual model that
illustrates how nonverbal CCI influences focal customers’ evaluation of the current service
and future intentions. In Figure 1, four dimensions of nonverbal interactions stimulate focal
customers’ positive and negative emotions, which then exert a significant impact on their
satisfaction with the experience and their loyalty intentions.

Figure 1.
Conceptual model
Methodology Customer
Data collection satisfaction
Restaurant servicescape, the most studied hospitality servicescape (Kaminakis et al.,
2019), has served as the research setting and the context in many previous studies on
and loyalty
CCIs (Song et al., 2018) because social interactions frequently take place at restaurants intention
(Kim and Baker, 2019). Thus, this study has also chosen the restaurant servicescape as
the research setting. Data for examining the proposed model were gathered via an online
survey. Only respondents who answered yes to the screening question “have you been to 1973
a casual restaurant for dining within the last month” were identified as qualified ones
to participate in the survey. Respondents who passed the screening question were asked
to respond to the questions based on their most recent dining experience at a casual
restaurant. Before responding to structured statements, they were asked the provide
details about the restaurant and their companions. Three attention check questions, i.e.
“this is an attention check question, please choose ‘strongly agree’,” were placed
throughout the survey. Respondents who did not provide the correct response to any of
these questions were eliminated.
Two rounds of data were collected for the purpose of this study. First, the data for the
pilot test were gathered from 263 college students majoring in hospitality management in
the USA. Based on the factor analysis results conducted on the pilot study data, the
survey questionnaire was finalized. Afterward, using a simple random sampling method,
data were collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) panel members during the
months of January and February in 2019. The target population of this study was the
residents of the USA. MTurk can provide a more representative sample of the US
population, with data quality comparable to or better than traditional methods
(Buhrmester et al., 2011). Furthermore, the MTurk platform has been used widely for data
collection in previous consumer research studies (Lee and Kim, 2018; Wei et al., 2017).
Every respondent who completed the survey received a small monetary reward. A
sample of 591 respondents completed the survey. However, after eliminating the
respondents who did not provide the correct response to any of the attention check
questions, only 583 responses remained for the subsequent analysis.

Measurement
Constructs included in the proposed model were all measured by scales adapted from prior
research. Nonverbal CCIs were assessed using items that measured customers’ subjective
perception of the extent of the appropriateness of other customers’ nonverbal behaviors.
Specifically, items that were used to measure kinesics, proxemics and paralanguage came
from Jung and Yoon’s (2011) instrument. Physical appearance was measured by four items
borrowed from Jung and Yoon (2011) and Naumann et al. (2009). Six items that were
developed by Richins (1997) were used to measure positive and negative emotions. Finally,
customer satisfaction with experience was measured by four items developed by Gremler
and Gwinner (2000). Loyalty intentions construct was assessed by scales adopted from
Zeithaml et al. (1996) and Gremler and Gwinner (2000). A seven-point Likert type scale was
used to assess all items. In addition, items were slightly modified to fit the context of the
current study. For example, one item, which measures kinesics, i.e. “other customers had
proper eye contact,” was modified from the item “the employee uses proper eye contact.”
The validity and reliability of the instrument were tested through a two-step process.
First, the initial instrument was reviewed by a number of experts to confirm the validity of
the questions. Afterward, a pilot test was conducted using the data collected from 263
college students majoring in hospitality management in the US to validate the questionnaire.
IJCHM Based on the feedback received from the experts and the results of the pilot test, the survey
32,5 instrument was finalized.

Data analysis
A two-step structural equation modeling approach was used to test the proposed model
(Anderson and Gerbing, 1988), using Mplus 7.4. First, the measurement model was assessed by
1974 a confirmatory factor analysis with all constructs being modeled as correlated factors. In this
stage, the reliability and validity of the constructs were examined. Afterward, the structural
model that was developed based on the proposed hypotheses was examined.

Results
Respondents’ profile
The demographic profile of the participants are presented in Table 1. As presented in Table 1,
47.7% of the respondents were male and approximately half (53.1%) were between the ages 18
and 34, with 10.5% over the age of 54. Also, 60.2% of the respondents had a 4-year college
degree or higher. Finally, 13.4% of the sample had an annual family income of less than
$20,000, with 43.2% having between $20,000 and $59,999 and 43.4% having $60,000 and
above.

Measurement model
First, the normality assumption was tested. The absolute skewness and kurtosis values of
all items were less than 2, indicating that there was no violation of the univariate normality

Variables (%)

Gender
Male 47.7
Female 52.3
Education
Less than high school 0.8
High school graduate 10.3
Some college 19.4
Two-year degree 9.3
Four-year degree 42.7
Professional degree 14.8
Doctorate 2.7
Age
18-25 15.6
26-34 37.5
35-44 27.3
45-54 9.1
55 or over 10.5
Annual family income
Less than $20,000 13.4
$20,000-$39,999 22.1
$40,000-$59,999 21.1
$60,000-$79,999 13.9
Table 1. $80,000-$99,999 12.0
Respondents’ profiles More than $100,000 17.5
assumption (Hair et al., 1998). However, the value of Mardia’s standardized coefficient Customer
(682.801) was greater than the cutoff value of 5 (Byrne, 2006), indicating that the data did not satisfaction
meet the assumption of multivariate normal distributions. Thus, this study used the
maximum likelihood of a robust method of estimation. Next, values of goodness-of-fit
and loyalty
indices for the measurement model were estimated. Results suggested a good fit to the data. intention
Specifically, the x 2/df value was 1.54 ( x 2 = 869.732, df = 566 and p = 0.000), which was
lower than the recommended threshold of 3. The model had a CFI of 0.97 and a TLI of 0.97,
both exceeding the cutoff value of 0.90 (Hair et al., 2009). Additionally, the RMSEA was 0.03 1975
with 90% CI (0.026, 0.034). The SRMR was 0.03. Both of them were lower than the threshold
value of 0.08 (Browne and Cudeck, 1992; Hu and Bentler, 1999).
As presented in Table 2, standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.69 to 0.95; AVE
scores of all constructs were higher than the cutoff value of 0.50, indicating acceptable
convergent validity. Cronbach’s a values of these constructs were greater than 0.70,
achieving internal consistency. Furthermore, the square roots of each construct’s AVEs
were greater than the correlations between that construct and the other constructs (Table 3),
indicating acceptable discriminant validity.

Structural model
Examination of the goodness-of-fit indices suggested that the proposed structural model
had an acceptable model fit: x 2 = 924.487 (p = 0.00), df = 575, x 2/df = 1.61, CFI = 0.97,
TLI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.03 (90% CI [0.028, 0.036]) and SRMR = 0.07.
As presented in Table 4, each nonverbal interaction type exerted a different level of
influence on emotions. Specifically, kinesics and paralanguage had positive impacts on
positive emotions ( b = 0.464, p < 0.001; and b = 0.192, p < 0.05), while proxemics,
paralanguage and physical appearance had negative impacts on negative emotions
( b =
0.133, p = 0.05; b =
0.192, p < 0.05; and b =
0.132, p < 0.05), which provided
support for H1a, H1c, H2b, H2c and H2d. However, results suggested that proxemics and
physical appearance were not significant determinants of positive emotions. Furthermore,
kinesics did not have any significant impact on negative emotions. Thus, H1b, H1d and H2a
were rejected. Results also indicated that the effect size of each of the four types of nonverbal
CCI on customer emotions is different. Kinesics had a medium-size effect on focal customer’s
emotions ( b = 0.464) while paralanguage had a relatively smaller effect on emotions ( b =
0.192). Compared with proxemics and physical appearance ( b = 0.133; and b = 0.132),
paralanguage exerted a slightly larger effect on negative emotion.
These differences in the effects of nonverbal CCI types on emotions can be explained by
customers’ expectations. As suggested by Sundaram and Webster (2000), the types of
emotions individuals generate will depend on their assessment of whether other customers
exhibited more than socially acceptable nonverbal behaviors. For example, when customers
are dining in a restaurant, other customers exhibiting friendly body motion communications
such as friendly facial expressions and gestures and eye contacts can have significant
positive effects on focal customers’ emotions because these friendly behaviors are more than
what a focal customer expects to encounter while dining out. However, if other customers act
like typical customers and do not exhibit any friendly body motion communications toward
the focal customer, other customers’ kinesics behaviors will not have any negative influences
on the focal customers’ emotions because the behavior they observe is a typical socially
acceptable behavior of other customers. On the other hand, people usually take appropriate
proxemics and physical appearance for granted in public places, so they are not likely to lead
to positive emotions. However, when other customers violate socially acceptable proxemics
and physical appearance rules, their behavior may have significant negative impacts on the
IJCHM Construct and item Factor loading* AVE Cronbach’s a
32,5
Kinesics 0.50 0.75
Kin1 0.73
Kin2 0.70
Kin3 0.69
Proxemics 0.64 0.84
1976 Pro1 0.82
Pro2 0.77
Pro3 0.80
Paralanguage 0.56 0.83
Par1 0.75
Par2 0.75
Par3 0.75
Par4 0.74
Physical appearance 0.62 0.86
PA1 0.78
PA2 0.77
PA3 0.71
PA4 0.88
Positive emotion 0.79 0.96
PE1 0.90
PE2 0.92
PE3 0.90
PE4 0.89
PE5 0.92
PE6 0.81
Negative emotion 0.81 0.96
NE1 0.92
NE2 0.95
NE3 0.94
NE4 0.89
NE5 0.78
NE6 0.90
Satisfaction 0.74 0.92
Sat1 0.89
Sat2 0.85
Sat3 0.87
Sat4 0.82
Loyalty intention 0.74 0.94
LI1 0.88
LI2 0.87
LI3 0.87
LI4 0.86
LI5 0.80
Table 2. LI6 0.87
Results of the
measurement model Note: *p < 0.001 for all the factor loadings

focal customer’s emotions. Finally, people usually have certain expectations of others’
paralanguage behaviors when dining out because their service experience can easily be
affected by the tone and speed of others’ speech.
 As proposed in H3a and H3b, positive emotions and negative emotions, respectively, exerted Customer
positive and negative influences on satisfaction with the experience (b = 0.221, p < 0.001; and satisfaction
b =
0.396, p < 0.001). Also, positive emotions and negative emotions were both related to
loyalty intentions (b = 0.243, p < 0.001; and b =
0.301, p < 0.001), supporting H4a and H4b.
and loyalty
In testing the mediation effects of positive emotions and negative emotions in the intention
relationships between various types of nonverbal CCI and satisfaction with experience
and loyalty intention, PROCESS was used with the bootstrapping method (Hayes, 2009).
As reported in Table 5, the mediation effects of kinesics on satisfaction with experience 1977
( b = 0.0805, 95% CI [0.0238, 0.1489]) and loyalty intention ( b = 0.0991, 95% CI [0.0419,
0.1620]) via positive emotion were significant. Negative emotion played a mediating role
in the relationships between proxemics and physical appearance and satisfaction with
experience ( b = 0.1164, 95% CI [0.0754, 0.1702]; and b = 0.1016, 95% CI [0.0643, 0.1516])
and loyalty intention ( b = 0.0987, 95% CI [0.0608, 0.1518]; and b = 0.0867, 95%
CI [0.0503, 0.1340]). In addition, paralanguage had indirect effects on satisfaction with
experience and loyalty intention through positive emotion ( b = 0.0610, 95% CI [0.0171,
0.1146]; and b = 0.0777, 95% CI [0.0326, 0.1369]) and negative emotion ( b = 0.1152, 95%
CI [0.0770, 0.1659]; and b = 0.0909, 95% CI [0.0532, 0.1398]). These findings provided
partial support for H3aa, H3ba, H4aa and H4ba.

Variables Kin Pro Par PA PE NE Sat LI

Kinesics (Kin) 0.71

Proxemics (Pro) 0.47 0.80
Paralanguage (Par) 0.58 0.53 0.75
Physical appearance (PA) 0.44 0.45 0.51 0.79
Positive emotion (PE) 0.47 0.27 0.43 0.32 0.89
Negative emotion (NE)
0.27
0.31
0.35
0.31
0.24 0.90
Satisfaction (Sat) 0.36 0.34 0.36 0.42 0.29
0.41 0.86
Loyalty intention (LI) 0.35 0.32 0.37 0.39 0.30
0.34 0.80 0.86 Table 3.
Discriminant validity
Note: The diagonal elements (in italic) are the square roots of all constructs’ AVEs test results

Confidence
Hypothesis Path coefficient intervals p-value Support

H1a: Kinesics ! positive emotion 0.464*** [0.428, 0.887] 0.000 Yes

H2a: Kinesics ! negative emotion
0.048 [
0.356, 0.204] 0.596 No
H1b: Proxemics ! positive emotion
0.127 [
0.350, 0.017] 0.065 No
H2b: Proxemics ! negative emotion
0.133* [
0.391,
0.003] 0.045 Yes
H1c: Paralanguage ! positive emotion 0.192* [0.023, 0.492] 0.029 Yes
H2c: Paralanguage ! negative emotion
0.192* [
0.547,
0.034] 0.025 Yes
H1d: Physical appearance ! positive emotion 0.048 [
0.122, 0.257] 0.482 No
H2d: Physical appearance ! negative emotion
0.132* [
0.387,
0.029] 0.019 Yes
H3a: Positive emotion ! satisfaction with experience 0.221*** [0.104, 0.292] 0.000 Yes
H3b: Negative emotion ! satisfaction with experience
0.396*** [
0.395,
0.233] 0.000 Yes
H4a: Positive emotion ! loyalty intention 0.243*** [0.127, 0.325] 0.000 Yes
H4a: Negative emotion ! loyalty intention
0.301*** [
0.324,
0.173] 0.000 Yes
Table 4.
Notes: *p < 0.05; ***
p < 0.001 Hypotheses testing
IJCHM 95% confidence interval
32,5 Mediation effect Indirect effect S.E Boot lower Boot upper

Kinesics ! positive emotion !

satisfaction with the experience 0.0805 0.0319 0.0238 0.1489
Kinesics ! positive emotion !
loyalty intention 0.0991 0.0308 0.0419 0.1620
1978 Proxemics ! negative emotion !
satisfaction with the experience 0.1164 0.0237 0.0754 0.1702
Proxemics ! negative emotion !
loyalty intention 0.0987 0.0227 0.0608 0.1518
Paralanguage ! positive emotion Positive emotion 0.0610 0.0243 0.0171 0.1146
and negative emotion ! Negative emotion 0.1152 0.0224 0.0770 0.1659
satisfaction with experience Total 0.1762 0.0345 0.1140 0.2506
Paralanguage ! positive emotion Positive emotion 0.0777 0.0263 0.0326 0.1369
and negative emotion ! loyalty Negative emotion 0.0909 0.0216 0.0532 0.1398
intention Total 0.1686 0.0342 0.1086 0.2438
Physical appearance ! negative
emotion ! satisfaction with the
Table 5.
experience 0.1016 0.0225 0.0643 0.1516
Results for the Physical appearance ! negative
mediation effects emotion ! loyalty intention 0.0867 0.0211 0.0503 0.1340

Conclusions
Discussions
Findings show that among the four types of nonverbal CCI, kinesics and paralanguage have
a positive influence on customers’ positive emotions, while proxemics, paralanguage and
physical appearance have a negative influence on their negative emotions. These findings
suggest that the impacts of nonverbal interactions among customers on customers’
emotions are likely to be different from the reported impacts of nonverbal employee-
customer interactions on customer emotions (Jung and Yoon, 2011). As customers’ positive
and/or negative emotions depend on whether they receive the expected nonverbal cues
(Sundaram and Webster, 2000), differences in results suggest that customers are likely to
have different nonverbal interaction expectations from employees and other customers.
Findings also suggest that customers are likely to use different evaluation criteria when
assessing the nonverbal interactions with other customers and employees. These differences
clearly suggest that CCIs and customer-employee interactions affect such outcome variables
as service experience quality, satisfaction and loyalty differently. Thus, it is necessary to
investigate these interactions and their impacts on outcome variables separately.
Specifically, customers are likely to experience positive emotions if other customers show
appropriate kinesics. This can be explained by Sundaram and Webster’s (2000) argument
that body movements such as frequent eye contact and open body postures are signals of
friendliness, warmth and intimacy. However, they would not have negative feelings if other
customers do not show these kinesics cues. By contrast, studies suggest that customers are
likely to have negative emotions when employees fail to exhibit proper gestures during
service delivery (Jung and Yoon, 2011). This suggests that customers have higher
expectations from their interactions with employees compared to their interactions with
other customers.
Next, findings suggest that invasion of focal customers’ personal space by other
customers can generate negative emotions while keeping a proper distance from focal
customers is not likely to have any impact on their emotional state. Similarly, the presence of Customer
other customers who are not properly groomed is likely to result in the generation of satisfaction
negative emotional state in focal customers while the presence of properly groomed and
attractive physical appearances are not likely to have any impact on focal customers’
and loyalty
emotional state. This could be because focal customers expect other customers to respect intention
each other’s personal space and to be properly groomed. As these nonverbal cues reflect the
expected norms, their presence will not result in positive emotions while their absence may
upset the focal customer, resulting in the generation of negative emotions. North Americans, 1979
especially, have an expectation of interpersonal distance (personal space) during public
interactions, a violation of which can lead to the feeling of being threatened and discomfort
(Bonaccio, et al., 2016). Moreover, physical appearance is much more influential in the
formation of first impressions than ongoing, long-term relationships (Reis, et al., 1982).
Unfavorable appearance is found to result in a lower level of social acceptance (Kleck et al.,
1974). Therefore, customers tend to have negative feelings when other customers violate
interpersonal distance and physical appearance expectations.
Results also suggest that paralanguage is found to exert significant impacts on both
positive and negative emotions. When other customers speak articulately using proper tone
and speed, focal customers experience positive emotions. However, the use of improper tone
and speed during verbal communication can result in the generation of negative emotions. This
is probably because the nonverbal aspects of a message (i.e. paralanguage) is as important as
the actual content in interpersonal communications (Sundaram and Webster, 2000).
In addition, results show that emotions triggered by nonverbal CCI exert a significant
influence on customers’ satisfaction and loyalty intentions. Specifically, positive emotions
positively affect the two customer outcomes, while negative emotions have negative
impacts, consistent with the results of previous research (Jung and Yoon, 2011; Rychalski
and Hudson, 2017).

Theoretical implications
The findings of this study contribute to the existing conceptual and theoretical knowledge
on social servicescape and customer experience from the nonverbal CCI perspective. First,
this study advances servicescape research by investigating one type of social environmental
stimuli, i.e. nonverbal CCI and its impacts on customer outcomes, responding to Park, et al.’s
(2019) call for more in-depth studies on social servicescape in hospitality settings. Second,
this study examines the influence of four dimensions of nonverbal CCI in a service setting,
expanding the research on nonverbal interactions in the field (Bonaccio, et al., 2016). Third,
as understanding customers’ evaluation process of servicescapes is of a great importance in
creating a pleasant servicescapes for customers (Lin, 2004), this study provides insights on
the impact of nonverbal CCI on the formation of customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions
through emotions, responding to Durna et al.’s (2015) appeal that more research should be
conducted to examine the relationship between servicescape elements and affective
constructs such as satisfaction and pleasure.

Managerial implications
This study also provides several managerial implications to hospitality managers. Findings
show that various forms of nonverbal CCI have different impacts on customers’ positive and
negative emotions, which then influence customers’ satisfaction with their experiences and
loyalty intentions. Sundaram and Webster (2000) argue that, during interactions with
others, individuals have certain nonverbal signal expectations that indicate the approval
and attention of others. Thus, it is critical for hospitality businesses managers to pay close
IJCHM attention to nonverbal CCI among their customers and develop strategies to manage those
32,5 nonverbal CCIs to maximize the impacts of those CCIs on customers’ positive emotions and
positive evaluations. Specifically, as kinesics and paralanguage have a direct impact on the
generation of positive emotions, service operators should provide opportunities and
encourage their customers to perform favorable kinesics movements and use socially
acceptable paralanguage during conversations. Considering the fact that the best customer
1980 experiences are created when focal customers establish an emotional connection with the
social servicescape of a service setting, it is critical to creating a friendly atmosphere that
encourages friendly interactions, which may facilitate nonverbal interactions among
customers such as nodding head and eye contact. As kinesics effect on positive emotion is
larger than the effect size of paralanguage, more emphasis should be placed on motivating
and encouraging customers’ positive kinesics.
As suggested by Nicholls (2011), hospitality businesses should provide clear CCI scripts
that can help customers understand the acceptable nonverbal behaviors during service
transactions. One strategy is to place friendly tips about acceptable nonverbal interaction
rules within a service environment, such as reminding customers to show respect to other
customers and employees thorough appropriate nonverbal cues. These friendly tips can be
used to encourage customers to exhibit acceptable nonverbal behaviors such as eye contact,
friendly and warm smile and appropriate body gestures. By contrast, unfavorable
nonverbal behaviors such as invading ones’ personal space, being loud and inappropriate
attire should be discouraged. For example, restaurant operators could provide clues using
pictures hanging on the walls, tabletop tents and buttons employees wear to discreetly
remind customers to smile and great other customers, and to observe socially acceptable
paralanguage norms to create an exceptional dining experience for all customers.
Hospitality companies should also provide training opportunities to their employees to
help them develop nonverbal interaction skills that can set good examples of nonverbal
interactions, which can result in customers’ favorable nonverbal behaviors. For example,
companies can provide paralanguage training opportunities to their employees to teach them
about appropriate and acceptable paralanguage practices such as the appropriate speed of
speech and level of the pitch during verbal communications. Moreover, employees should be
trained not only to exhibit exemplary nonverbal interactions that can create emotional
connections with customers but also to be trained to observe nonverbal interactions among
customers to identify and intervene destructive ones because improper performance of
proxemics, paralanguage and physical appearance are found to elicit negative customer
emotions. It is vital to empower employees to intervene if any of the customers exhibit
nonverbal behaviors that may disturb other customers’ service experiences.

Limitations and future research

Although this study does make contributions to the extant literature, it is not free of
limitations. First, the results of this study are based on data obtained from casual restaurant
consumers in the USA, which may limit its generalizability to other service settings and
other types of restaurants. As CCI may have a different level of impact in different service
contexts (Amorim et al., 2015), and some nonverbal cues can be interpreted differently in
different cultural contexts (Bonaccio et al., 2016), future investigations should examine the
conceptual model presented in this study in other types of restaurants, other service settings
and under other cultural contexts. Second, as suggested by Bonaccio et al. (2016),
individuals’ perceptions and preferences for nonverbal displays are different across genders.
For instance, women tend to prefer less interpersonal distance and speak more fluently than
men (Hall, 2006). Future studies may want to examine the moderating role of gender on the
relationships between various forms of nonverbal CCI and customers’ perceptions and Customer
evaluations. Third, although the pilot test and the main study were based on two different satisfaction
data sources, single-source bias was a potential issue because the data for the main study
was collected at a particular time. Future research could validate the conceptual model using
and loyalty
data from other sources such as experiments. Fourth, this study may have left out some intention
other factors that might affect the relationships posited in the conceptual model. Future
research is needed to validate this model through experiments and integrate other relevant
variables to improve the current model. Finally, future studies may want to identify new
1981
dimensions and new items for nonverbal CCI via an exploratory approach.

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Further reading
Ahrholdt, D.C., Gudergan, S.P. and Ringle, C.M. (2017), “Enhancing service loyalty: the roles of delight,
satisfaction, and service quality”, Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 56 No. 4, pp. 436-450.
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About the authors

Hongxia Lin is a PhD student in the School of Business Administration at Southwestern University
of Finance and Economics, China (lhx4321@163.com). Her primary interest is consumer behavior in
tourism.
Dr Meng Zhang is a Professor and Director of Institute of Tourism Management in the School of
Business Administration at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China. Her research
interests focus on consumer behavior in tourism, tourism competitiveness and cross-cultural studies.
Meng Zhang is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: zhangm707@swufe.edu.cn
Dr Dogan Gursoy is a Taco Bell Distinguished Professor in the School of Hospitality Business
Management at Washington State University. His research interests are hospitality and tourism
marketing, travelers’ information search behavior, community support for tourism development,
cross-cultural studies and consumer behavior.

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