This thesis will explore how customers and bartenders accomplish the service encounter in a public house, or bar. Whilst there is a body of existing literature on service encounters, this mainly investigates customer satisfaction and ignores the mundane activities that comprise the service encounter itself. In an attempt to fill this gap, I will examine how the activities unfold sequentially by examining the spoken and embodied conduct of the participants, over the course of the encounter. The data comprise audio -and video- recorded, dyadic and multi-party interactions between customer(s) and bartender(s), occurring at the bar counter. The data were analyzed using conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the talk and embodied conduct of participants, as these unfold sequentially. The first analytic chapter investigates how interactions between customers and bartenders are opened. The analysis reveals practices for communicating availability to enter into a service encounter; with customers being found to do this primarily through embodied conduct, and bartenders primarily through spoken turns. The second analytic chapter investigates the role of objects in the ordering sequence. Specifically, the analysis reveals how the Cash Till and the seating tables in the bar are mobilized by participants to accomplish action. In the third analytic chapter, multi-party interactions are investigated, focusing on the organization of turn-taking when two or more customers interact with one or more bartenders. Here, customers are found to engage in activities where they align as a unit, with a lead speaker, who interacts with the bartender on behalf of the party. In the final analytic chapter, the payment sequence of the service encounter is explored to investigate at what sequential position in the interaction payment, as an action, is oriented to. Analysis reveals that a wallet, purse, or bag, may be displayed and money or a payment card retrieved, in a variety of sequential slots, with each contributing differentially to the efficiency of the interaction. I also find that payment may be prematurely proffered due to the preference for efficiency. Overall, the thesis makes innovative contributions to our understanding of customer and bartender practices for accomplishing core activities in what members come to recognize as a service encounter It also contributes substantially to basic conversation analytic research on openings , which has traditionally been founded on telephone interactions, as well as the action of requesting. I enhance our knowledge of face-to-face opening practices, by revealing that the canonical opening sequence (see Schegloff, 1968; 1979; 1986) is not present, at least in this context. From the findings, I also develop our understanding of how objects constrain, or further, progressivity in interaction; while arguing for the importance of analysing the participants semiotic field in aggregate with talk and embodied conduct. The thesis also contributes to existing literature on multi-party interactions, identifying a new turn-taking practice with a directional flow that works effectively to accomplish ordering. Finally, I contribute to knowledge on the provision of payment, an under-researched yet prominent action in the service encounter. This thesis will show the applicability of CA to service providers; by analysing the talk and embodied conduct in aggregate, effective practices for accomplishing a successful service encounter are revealed.

En este trabajo se analiza la elección de lengua de encuentros de servicio (inglés y español). Las herramientas metodológicas empleadas son tres: una observación de carácter etnográfico, una tarea controlada y un experimento de percepción visual en línea. La hipótesis central es que el fenotipo étnico juega un papel importante en la elección de lengua en encuentros de servicio que se llevan a cabo por primera vez. El lugar en donde se realizó la investigación es un panadería ubicada en el centro este de la ciudad de Tucson, Arizona.En el primer componente metodológico es la observación etnográfica, donde se analizaron las interacciones de las trabajadoras con los distintos clientes que frecuentaron el lugar. El análisis se centró en cuatro aspectos: (i) la expresión de identidad y membresía de grupo mediante el uso de los pronombres nosotros y nuestro, (ii) el traslado de roles domésticos en las dinámicas de interacción de las parejas latinas, (iii) la existencia de una co-membresía expresada a través de la realización de las pequeñas charlas y (iv) el valor simbólico del español en este establecimiento.Seguidamente, se realizó un experimento de percepción visual, cuyo objetivo fue decidir sobre la etnicidad de los 21 clientes que acudieron a la panadería y las trabajadoras del lugar. Dentro de los resultados se obtuvo un juicio de etnicidad para cada participante. De la misma forma, se observa que el grupo de los jueces bilingües sobresale dado que es el único grupo que presentan un 100% de acuerdo en cuanto a la asignación de etnicidad de una imagen dada. Por otra parte, los jueces bilingües y los monolingües (con una tendencia menos fuerte), conforme más tiempo vivan en la comunidad, mayor será el tiempo de respuesta. Los resultados anteriores ilustran el hecho de que vivir en la comunidad y convivir cotidianamente con ambos tipos de fenotipo hace a los hablantes más conscientes de las sutilezas que deben ser consideradas al momento de evaluar fenotipicamente a un interlocutor.Finalmente se analiza la tarea controlada, en la cual se reclutaron a 21 participantes para que acudieran a la panadería y actuaran como clientes. El análisis consiste en la correlación de distintos aspectos de la interacción tales como aspectos sociodemográficos. Dentro de los resultados destaca que el fenotipo étnico no es un factor de importancia cuando las trabajadoras abren el encuentro de servicio; éste no tiene gran influencia en su elección de lengua, ellas siempre abren el encuentro mercantil en español sin importar la etnicidad del interlocutor. No obstante, cuando los clientes abren el intercambio comunicativo ellos tienen la opción de hacerlo en inglés o en español y para aquellos que pueden hacerlo en español la elección de lengua es por defecto el español. Asimismo, se destaca que la influencia del contexto en el que sucede la elección de lengua es un espacio ideológico que brinda un valor simbólico al español.

The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to deepening and extending our understanding and knowledge of emotions in service encounters by studying it from the two most central human actors in service encounter: (i) the service firm’s employees and (ii) the customer of this firm. This dissertation consist of five separate papers that conceptualize and empirically investigate how different appraisals by employees and customers generate positive and negative emotions, and how types of emotions in service encounters are linked to patterns of behavioural responses. The methods used for gathering data involved interviews and questionnaire studies of various service firms.  This dissertation has sought to offer two main contributions. First, this thesis presents an extended understanding of employees’ emotions in service encounter and their effect on employees’ perceptions of service quality. One of the chief findings is that work-related conditions such as employees’ perception of their working role and managerial practices are related to both positive and negative emotions in service encounters. Moreover, the findings indicate that there exists a spill-over effect between employees’ experiences of emotions and employees’ perceptions of the delivery of service quality in service encounters. Secondly, this thesis also contributes to furthering our understanding of the customer’s appraisal of service quality with respect to customers’ positive emotions in service encounters as well as to deepening our understanding of negative emotions when customers experience a negative service encounter. Specifically, it was found that both human and non-human service-quality factors are able to trigger customer’s positive emotions in service encounters. Positive emotions were strongly related to behavioural responses such as customer loyalty. When a customer experiences negative emotions in service encounters as a result of negative experience, the findings point to three sources of these negative emotions: (i) ‘self’ (the customer’s own fault), (ii) ‘other’ (the fault of the company), and (iii) ‘situational’ (the fault is beyond the customer’s and company’s control). Another finding is that customers’ negative emotions in service encounters tend diminish but only to some extent, even after the service firm has set into motion a process of service recovery. In summary, this thesis contributes to our understanding of emotions in service encounters and contributes to the ongoing debate and discussion in service research about the role of emotions in this context.

Due to its position as the main source of national income, the tourism and hospitality service industry in Thailand is now highlighted as an area to watch in terms of its value for continued national economic growth. Chiang Rai Rajabhat University (CRU) a university in the tourist area in the North of Thailand, plays a key role in hospitality service education and has a significant influence in the sector because it produces graduates for service in the workforce of this industry. Given the industry's competitive climate, decisions to increase the number of workers, or practitioners, need to take into account the quality of the workers. In this time of globalization, when English is used widely, particularly in the intercultural context ofhospitality service businesses, the quality of English must be seriously considered. Business English (BE) graduates, as prospective employees, need to be highly competent in English language skills. This demand for effective English users in hospitality service workplaces means that there is a need to give serious consideration to the ability of Thai graduates to become competent users of English in real workplaces, and to develop an understanding of how they may achieve the high level of competence required of them. This study investigates the English language skills Thai students used in intercultural communication in hospitality service workplaces. The aim was to determine what essential language skills were used, to explore how these skills were implemented while giving services to international tourists, and to use the results to reflect on English for Hospitality Services (EHS) study in order to provide some recommendations for teaching and learning in those courses. The project was designed as an ethnographic case study. Multiple research tools were used, but particularly participatory observations of student workplace interactions, and semi-structured interviews that included interviews with workplace staff, such as managers, heads of departments, business owners and on-site supervisors. There were additional sources of information used, including students' diaries and other documents relevant to internship. The data collected were then examined using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The participants were 15 volunteers and were fourth-year students in the Business English (BE) program at CRU. The case study involved an examination of data collected from ten workplaces in four hospitality service areas. The observation transcriptions were quantitatively scrutinized for the most essential functional language units used in the hospitality services. The significant findings indicate that the functional language of requests and responding to requests was the most frequently used unit in this hospitality services area. This result confirms previous studies that have found that the functional language of requests, including responding to requests, is the most essential functional pattern in hospitality services. Thanking, offering help/services, and refusing are counted as the second, third and fourth essential units used. However, apologizing and responding to complaints, which are generally considered important in the service area, were very much less frequently used in this study. There was no evidence that significant breakdown or major problems in communication occurred during hospitality service procedures examined; however, the findings suggest that the language proficiency of Thai students was very low in terms of language accuracy. From the results of the study, it is recommended that those responsible for EHS teaching and learning give serious consideration to increasing the level ofcommunicative competence of Thai BE students in terms of English language skills, and to improving the cultural awareness of graduates who expect to be involved in intercultural communication in the hospitality services industry.

No description available.

This thesis investigates customer-to-customer roles and impacts in the context of service encounters. This topic is studied from two angles: customer interactions during group service encounters and customer perceptions post service encounters. The first angle is a focus on group service encounters that addresses the lack of research on customer-to-customer interactions that occur in customer-to-customer interaction-intensive contexts. These are contexts where the interactions between customers are not peripheral to the service, where there can be an expectation to interact with the other customers, and are common in tourism and hospitality, recreation, and education. The second angle is a focus on service outcomes after the service encounter, including satisfaction, intention to recommend, and online word-of-mouth. Paper 1 explores how firms view and manage customer-to-customer interactions during group service encounters. It finds that the differences in attitude and conduct of firms create four possible stances toward customer-to-customer interaction. Paper 2 delves deeper into how customer-to-customer interactions impact the design and delivery of group service encounters, develops a typology of customer cohort climates (CCCs), and identifies how each CCC can be created through four elements of group service encounters. Paper 3  investigates how positive and negative customer-to-customer interactions impact service outcomes and finds that customer-to-customer interaction is a dissatisfier. Paper 4 examines how customers produce online hotel reviews and finds that content analysis of online reviews yields similar findings to more traditional quantitative research methods. This thesis advances research on the impact of customers on each other and provides evidence that other customers can and should be managed to achieve desired service outcomes. It further proposes how these interactions can be managed to further enhance service firm offerings. / <p>QC 20160516</p>

As a Higher Education (HE) lecturer in the United Kingdom (UK), I have taught Leisure students and supported their transition into placement work and graduate employment. This experience has made it clear to me that some students and graduates are not fully equipped to deal with the extensive customer demands placed on them in the workplace. The aim of this study is to analyse the skills and knowledge needed by graduates from Leisure courses to deal with real-world customer service encounters. A theoretical framework on skills, knowledge, education frameworks and employer requirements was used to identify what graduates might need in industry work and this was tests by gaining primary data from Leisure graduates. Critical incidents were gathered and interviews were conducted with five recent graduates and one current student from Leisure courses in Manchester. The data includes 57 critical incidents related to customer demands that the participants faced during service encounters in leisure roles; it also includes six semi-structured interviews on whether the participants felt their education prepared them to meet these demands. This study analyses the data using a theoretical framework of current publications and includes the theories of Soft Skills, Co-creation, Co-production, Emotional Labour, Aesthetic Labour, Sexualised Labour, Intercultural Sensitivity and Service Quality Theory. This study uses an innovative methodology to identify three key findings in support of the research questions. Staffs to staff dynamics and Intercultural Sensitivity are needed in Customer Service Encounter theory to use in Leisure UK Higher Education and fully prepare students for encounters in their graduate employment. These findings offer extensive contributions to current knowledge on theory and leisure education in UK HE to support development of all skills and knowledge needed for customer service encounters. Recommendations are raised to the Quality Assurance Agency (education governing body) and other leisure educators on how they might better educate and prepare their students for customer service encounters in graduate employment.

This thesis investigates self-guiding sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIP) in communication and choice of linguistic strategies of politeness during service encounters in Turkish and English. To this end, two questionnaires were administered to 67 monolingual native speakers of English (ENS) by online administration and 85 monolingual native speakers of Turkish (TNS) by pen and paper administration who were all university students. Data were collected (1) by a SIP questionnaire to determine what principles are important in deciding what to say, and (2) by a linguistic strategies of politeness questionnaire (LSQ) to determine the strategies subjects would employ in conflict-generating service encounters. Three sociopragmatic interactional superprinciples were identified through factor analysis, namely (a) Tact (cost-benefit), (b) Relational Communicative Style, and (c) Task achievement. It has been found that face is of central value in communication and the key to the design of politeness and that its maintenance appears to be a prerequisite to adjusting communicative style and goal-orientation. Results indicate that the major differences between TNS and ENS were related to the principles of &amp / #8216 / sounding restrained&amp / #8217 / , &amp / #8216 / sounding humorous&amp / #8217 / , and &amp / #8216 / sounding warm and friendly&amp / #8217 / . The principles of &amp / #8216 / hinting&amp / #8217 / and &amp / #8216 / clarity&amp / #8217 / were not found as opposites for the TNS whereas they were in negative correlation for the ENS. Moreover, findings for the LSQ demonstrate that realization of self-goal was more important for TNS than ENS as reflected in conflict-maximizing linguistic strategy choice. The study underscores the need for a novel approach to politeness that incorporates SIPs choice of linguistic strategy.

Den aktuella studien syftade till att öka förståelsen för den betydande roll känslor har i servicemöten. En experimentell design användes där deltagare randomiserades till en av två scenariobeskrivningar, där en variabel var manipulerad. Två olika ansiktsuttryck, ett leende eller ett neutralt, användes som stimuli för att undersöka dess inverkan på kunderna. Resultaten visade att en leende servicearbetare påverkade kundernas känslor positivt, samt ökade både nöjdheten och reciprociteten jämfört med en servicearbetare med neutralt ansiktsuttryck. Dessutom utvärderade kunderna den leende servicearbetarens personliga egenskaper mer positivt jämfört med servicearbetaren med neutralt ansiktsuttryck. Resultaten bekräftar många föregående studiers resultat på området. Resultaten belyser även en viktig bit som tidigare forskning missat, nämligen utvärderingen av servicearbetarens personkaraktäristiska och dess inverkan i servicemötet.Därigenom markerar studien ett behov av utökad kunskap inom området. Slutsatsen är att ett leende påverkar kunder positivt ur många aspekter. En ökad förståelse och kunskap för området kan i ett längre perspektiv ge en praktisk nytta för många parter; för serviceföretagen, men även för servicearbetare och kunder. / The present study aimed to extend the understanding of the important role that feelings have in service encounters. An experimental design was used where participants were randomly allocated to one of two text-based  scenarios. Two different facial expressions were used in an experiment to investigate their influence on customers. The results showed that a smiling service worker affected the customers’ feelings positive, and increased the customers’ satisfaction as well as their reciprocity, compared to a service worker with a neutral facial expression. Furthermore, the customers evaluated the smiling service workers personal qualities more positive compared to the service worker with a neutral facial expression. The results confirm many earlier studies results in the same research area. The results also highlight an important part that earlier research have missed, namely the personal evaluation of the service worker and its influence in the service encounter. Thereby, this study marks a need of extended knowledge in the area. The conclusion is that a smile affects customers positively in many aspects. An increased understanding and knowledge can give a practical use for many parts; for service companies but also for service workers and customers.

<p>The dissertation explores the infusion of Self-Service-Technology (SST) into the casual dining restaurant experience. Casual, sit-in dining restaurants deliver hospitality or service through human servers, however, the introduction of Self-Service-Technology has shifted the norm and expectations of the dining experience. The purpose of these studies is to examine the effect implementation of SST has on the dynamic between restaurant consumers and hospitality employees. Three distinct studies were conducted to examine consumer adoption of, and resistance to, SST, as well as an assessment of different service delivery scenarios involving SST, and employees’ and consumers’ perspectives of SST and hospitality values. In Study 1, many restaurant consumers expressed that relative advantage and compatibility drive their adoption of SST. However, for some, functional and psychological barriers inhibit adoption. Despite customers’ enthusiasm to adopt SST, study 2 shows that they still significantly favor traditional, human service. In study 3, SST represents a paradox for both consumers and employees. Consumers state that hospitality traditions and value matter, yet their behaviors regarding SST run counter to traditional hospitality philosophy. For employees, SST represents a conflict between feeling insecure about their current role and adapting to a new role involving SST in the service delivery experience. </p>