Toward holistic frontline employee management: An investigation of the interplay of positive emotion displays and dress color

Frontline employees' visual appearance is important in many service industries. Positive emotion displays are especially crucial, as are aesthetic displays such as dress color. However, emotion and aesthetic displays have commonly been examined independently of each other in marketing research. We contribute to research and practice by drawing attention to customers' holistic perception of frontline employees, indicating that emotion displays and aesthetic displays, such as dress color, are jointly processed. Across four experiments, we demonstrate that the effects of positive emotion displays on customer tipping and employee warmth can be amplified by using warm (vs. cold) dress colors. Drawing on emotions as social information theory, we show that this interaction is explained by a cognitive inferential (i.e., the perception of fit) and not by an affective pathway through positive affect. Our findings guide managers on how to choose dress colors to increase the beneficial effects of positive emotion displays.