Happy to see you: the positive effects of in-store service encounters on the satisfaction of older consumers

ABSTRACT Although older consumers constitute a growing consumer segment with substantial buying power, not much is known about their satisfaction with retail stores and its antecedents. This study examines how having in-store, face-to-face service encounters with store personnel affects the store satisfaction of older consumers, focusing on the moderating role of consumer age and the mediating role of positive emotions. An empirical study demonstrates positive effects of service encounters with store employees on the store satisfaction and positive emotions of older consumers. Consumer age moderates these effects, so that there are no similar positive effects of in-store service encounters on store satisfaction or positive emotions for the younger consumers. Positive emotions also mediate the effects of in-store service encounters on store satisfaction for the older consumers, but not for the younger consumers.


Introduction
Older consumers constitute a relatively large and growing consumer segment in most countries today, but there is still a lack of research about their specific preferences and behaviour (Berg and Töndevold Liljedal 2022).This increases the need for academics and practitioners to learn more about the behaviours and preferences of this important, but relatively understudied, consumer group and whether they may differ from those of other consumer groups or not (Cameron, Richardson, and Siameja 2016;Chaouali, Souiden, and Ringle 2021).Despite large differences within the group and across countries, many older consumers have comparatively large disposable incomes and substantial buying power, which makes them an attractive segment for retailers to approach (Guido et al. 2020).It should thus be in the interest of retail firms to attract and keep the older consumer group as their customers.However, both retailers and store personnel seem to be less accurate in their assessments of the preferences and satisfaction of older consumers (Johnson-Hillery, Kang, and Tuan 1997).In fact, not much is known about older consumers' satisfaction with retail store visits.A literature review by Berg and Töndevold Liljedal (2022) recently pointed out the lack of research about older consumers' satisfaction with retailers and their stores and called for more research.The previous research on this topic indicates that although not much is known about the antecedents of consumer satisfaction among older consumers, one of the most important factors in determining the satisfaction with retailers in older consumers seems to be the service encounters that they have with store employees (Meneely, Strugnell, and Burns 2009).Providing good customer service and having skilled personnel in stores can even have a positive impact on the store choices of older consumers (Marjanen et al. 2019).Conversely, dissatisfaction with service encounters among older consumers is associated with a lack of social interaction, such as impersonal communications during interactions with service providers (Cameron, Richardson, and Siameja 2016).Judging from previous research on older consumers' responses to service encounters, the social aspects of service encounters in commercial settings in general also appear to be relatively more important to older consumers than to other consumer groups (Grougiou and Pettigrew 2011;Kang and Ridgway 1996).
The purpose of this study is to examine how such service encounters with service employees in retail stores affect the store satisfaction of older consumers, focusing on explanations for these responses such as the mediating role of positive emotions and the moderating role of consumer age.More specifically, this study focuses on the type of service encounters that can be defined as face-to-face interactions between older consumers and store personnel in physical stores, and not any other form or service encounters that may occur in retail environments (Larivière et al. 2017).Our study thus contributes to retailing research by studying older consumers' satisfaction with retail store visits, and how this is influenced by service encounters with the store personnel.We aim to make a theoretical contribution to the retailing research on older consumers (Johnson-Hillery, Kang, and Tuan 1997;Marjanen et al. 2019) and to the research on service encounters in retail stores (Söderlund 2016(Söderlund , 2018)), by examining the role of positive emotions in explaining older consumers' responses to in-store service encounters.In addition to this, we make a practical contribution to the retailing industry by examining the role of emotional responses to service encounters in older consumers' satisfaction with retail stores.Not only is there a lack of research about the causes of older consumers' satisfaction with stores and their responses to service encounters in retail stores, but there is also a lack of practical knowledge in this area, as evidenced by the difficulty experienced by retailers in attempting to determine the satisfaction levels of older consumers (Johnson-Hillery, Kang, and Tuan 1997).

Literature review and hypothesis generation
In many ways, service encounters seem to be more important to older consumers than they are to the younger consumer groups.For example, in-depth interviews with older consumers have indicated that older consumers place a higher importance on service encounters than younger consumer groups do, due to the social benefits that they derive from their encounters with the service employees (Grougiou and Pettigrew 2011).In fact, even brief service encounters, such as in-store service encounters with store personnel can constitute a form of social support for many older consumers (Kang and Ridgway 1996).Based on qualitative interviews with older consumers, Plaud and Guillemot (2015) concluded that interactions with service providers in different settings can have a generally positive effect on the subjective well-being of older consumers.Another survey, this time among older British consumers, indicated that merely interacting with other consumers in commercial settings, such as retail stores, can increase the social wellbeing of older consumers (Altinay et al. 2019).These findings all point to the importance of the social aspects of service encounters for older consumers.The positive responses of older consumers to the social interactions involved in service encounters also seem to translate to an increased satisfaction with the service encounters.A study among older consumers from New Zealand (Cameron, Richardson, and Siameja 2016) showed that service encounters involving face-to-face interactions (compared to service encounters over the telephone) were associated with less dissatisfaction.The same study also found that although satisfaction levels with service encounters were generally high among the older consumers, almost one out of five service encounters that they reported had resulted in them feeling 'dissatisfied' or 'very dissatisfied' with the service.Not only the social interactions involved in service encounters with employees can have a positive effect on customer satisfaction in older consumers, but so can interacting with other customers in stores (Altinay et al. 2019) When it comes to how in-store service encounters affect not only the satisfaction with the service provided, but whether their positive effects can extend to the store satisfaction of older consumers, not much is known from either research or practice.Johnson-Hillery, Kang, and Tuan (1997) used two matching surveys, carried out in the US, to compare how store employees' perceptions of the store preferences and satisfaction levels of older consumers differed from the preferences and satisfaction levels selfreported by older consumers.A comparison of the surveys then showed that the impressions of the store employees differed distinctly from the self-reported satisfaction levels of the consumers, and that the older consumers emphasized the importance of retailers providing good in-store service.There are also some studies about older consumers' evaluations of retail stores, but these have focused more on their store choices and store experiences than on their customer satisfaction with the stores.According to several of these studies, in-store service encounters play an important part in the store choices of older consumers.For example, a longitudinal survey among consumers in Finland indicated that the level and quality of the service received in stores has a comparatively large influence on the store choices of older consumers (Marjanen et al. 2019).Another survey, this time among Swedish consumers about their ratings of grocery store attributes, indicated that older consumers found service quality to be more important to their store choice than younger consumers did (Nilsson et al. 2015).
Service is also an important factor in the store experiences of older consumers.A survey among older consumers in Northern Ireland about their grocery store shopping experiences showed that friendly and helpful staff were considered among the positive factors in their shopping experiences (Meneely, Strugnell, and Burns 2009).Further, a survey among Swedish consumers (Parment 2013) about their shopping behaviour showed that consumers from the Baby Boomer generation (in this study defined as consumers born between 1945 and 1958) were more likely than Generation Y consumers (born between 1977 and 1989) to ask for assistance from store employees in grocery stores, clothing stores and automobile dealerships.Older consumers are also more likely to derive pleasure from interacting with store employees than younger consumers.According to a survey about the pleasures of store shopping among older women in the US, consumers over the age of 65 are more likely to wish to be 'pampered' by store employees, and this desire to be pampered gradually increases with age, so that it is for example stronger in consumers over the age of 75 (Cox, Cox, and Anderson 2005).
In summary, most of the previous studies on older consumers' responses to in-store service encounters have focused on variables like store choice and store experience, rather than on store satisfaction.The few studies that have examined how service encounters specifically affect the store satisfaction of older consumers are several decades old (e.g.Johnson-Hillery, Kang, and Tuan 1997;Kang and Ridgway 1996), meaning that the older consumers studied in them were part of previous generational cohorts of consumers (Berg and Töndevold Liljedal 2022).As new age cohorts of consumers enter the older consumer group, new studies on older consumers' responses to service encounters are needed to assess whether the previous research findings still hold true, or if they were due to age cohort effects (and thus specific to previous generational cohorts of consumers).Additionally, although most of the previous research points to older consumers having positive responses to service encounters (Grougiou and Pettigrew 2011;Plaud and Guillemot 2015) and to these responses having positive effects on store choice and evaluations (Marjanen et al. 2019;Meneely, Strugnell, and Burns 2009;Nilsson et al. 2015), no previous research has examined any potential theoretical mechanisms behind this supposed hierarchy of effects.As an explanation for the positive responses to in-store service encounters in older consumers, we would thus like to propose that positive emotions play an important part in how older consumers respond.More specifically, we argue that in-store service encounters with store employees will lead older consumers to experience more positive emotions.
All service encounters generate emotions in consumers, whether they be positive of negative, depending on the experience that each specific consumer has with a service encounter (Chaouali, Souiden, and Ringle 2021).Compared to younger consumers, older consumers tend to view emotional information as more meaningful than young consumers do and are more motivated by goals aimed at deriving emotional meaning (Yoon et al. 2005).Older consumers also tend to remember emotional information better than younger consumers (Yoon, Cole, and Lee 2009).One indication of this in a marketing context is that older consumers are relatively more receptive to emotional appeals in advertising, compared to younger consumers (Drolet, Williams, and Lau-Gesk 2007;Williams and Drolet 2005).Recently, Chaouali, Souiden, and Ringle (2021) examined the role of emotional intelligence in older consumers' responses to service failures and found that their higher levels of emotional intelligence made older consumers more proficient in using problem-solving complaining to deal with the service failures.With increasing age, the emotional intelligence of people tends to increase (Chapman and Hayslip 2006;Tsaousis and Kazi 2013), which according to the authors then in turn shapes how older consumers perceive and respond to service encounters.We propose that the increased importance of emotions to older consumers, and to how they relate to service encounters should also play a role in their responses to service encounters in retail stores.Emotions play an important role in how consumers in general respond to service encounters, and evaluations of service encounters correlate both with consumers' displayed emotions during service encounters and their self-reported emotional responses afterwards (Mattila and Enz 2002).As mentioned, services are especially important to older consumers, who derive social benefits and increased well-being from service encounters (Grougiou and Pettigrew 2011;Plaud and Guillemot 2015), and whose store choices and experiences are positively influenced by the service provided by retailers (Marjanen et al. 2019;Meneely, Strugnell, and Burns 2009;Nilsson et al. 2015).We propose that this preference for service encounters, in combination with the increased importance of emotions to older consumers, should lead them to experience more positive emotions after store visits with service encounters with store personnel than after store visits where they did not have any service encounters with store personnel.We hypothesize that: H1 Older consumers will experience more positive emotions after store visits with service encounters than after store visits without service encounters.
Furthermore, we argue that this increase in positive emotions will lead older consumers to experience a higher satisfaction with the retail stores where the social encounters took place.Previous research studies using experimental research methods have been able to demonstrate positive effects on overall evaluation variables, such as store satisfaction, for all consumers (i.e.not only for older consumers) of the mere presence of personnel in stores (Söderlund 2016) and personnel proactivity in stores (Söderlund 2018).However, the 'mere' effect of a service encounter with personnel remains unstudied, especially for older consumers.As emotions play an important role in consumer evaluations of service encounters (Mattila and Enz 2002), we propose that when older consumers experience positive emotions from service encounters, this will in turn lead them to experience higher levels of satisfaction with the stores where the encounters took place.A valence-congruent influence of emotions on satisfaction would be consistent with an affect-as-information mechanism (e.g.Pham 2004).That is to say, in general, we tend to use information about our emotions as a source for our evaluations ('If an object feels good, it must be good').Considering how important services and service encounters are to older consumers, and the positive effects of service encounters with store personnel we predict (H1), we propose that the older consumer group will experience more satisfaction with stores after store visits that include service encounters.As such, we argue that the mere interactions with store personnel in service encounters will lead older consumers to experience higher satisfaction levels with retail stores.Thus, we hypothesize: H2 For older consumers, store satisfaction will be higher for store visits with service encounters than for store visits without service encounters.
Additionally, we propose that the positive effects of a mere service encounter hypothesized for older consumers (H2) will be mediated by the hypothesized positive effects on positive emotions (H1).Thus, we propose that the positively valanced emotional response to service encounters in older consumers will lead to positive effects on store satisfaction in this consumer group.We hypothesize that: H3 Positive emotions will mediate the positive effects of service encounters on store satisfaction in older consumers (hypothesized in H2).
In general, the quality of service provided seems to play an important role in how service encounters are evaluated by consumers (Bitner 1990).For the older consumers, we also argue that the mere presence of service encounters during store visits has a positive effect on their store satisfaction (as stated in H1).Compared to older consumers, however, younger consumers do not seem to gain as positive effects from service encounters in terms of social benefits and general well-being (Kang and Ridgway 1996;Plaud and Guillemot 2015), or be as susceptible to emotional information and appeals (Yoon, Cole, and Lee 2009).Because we previously argued that the importance of service encounters and emotions to older consumers (as demonstrated by the responsiveness to and positive effects of these for the group) will lead to the hypothesized positive effects on positive emotions (H1) and store satisfaction (H2), we consequently propose that the positive effects of a mere service encounter in store visits will be limited to older consumers.As younger consumers are less responsive to emotional information and depend less on social encounters in retail stores, we argue that there will be no similar positive effect of a mere in-store service encounter for this consumer group.Thus, we argue that consumer age will act as a boundary condition to the positive effects of service encounters on store satisfaction proposed for the older consumers.We hypothesize that: H4 Consumer age will moderate the positive effects of service encounters on positive emotions and store satisfaction hypothesized in H1 and H2, so that the positive effects will be limited to older consumers.

Research method
An empirical study was designed to test all four research hypotheses, employing an experimental design and an online sample recruited from a consumer panel.

Participants and procedure
The empirical study used an online convenience sample of consumers from the UK recruited through Prolific, which is an online research platform featuring a consumer panel that is frequently used to recruit participants for academic studies (Peer et al. 2017).Attention check questions were used throughout the questionnaire to ensure active participation, and twelve participants who failed these were directly excluded from the analysis.To enable for comparisons between the responses of different age groups, a filter provided by Prolific was used to recruit a stratified sample comprised of two different age groups.The first group consisted of 75 participants who were 65 years or older (age 65-80 years, mean age = 69.35),while the second group consisted of 73 participants who were between 25 and 46 years old (age 25-46 years, mean age = 32.11).In marketing research about older consumers, the chronological age of 65 years is the most commonly used threshold age for being considered an older consumer (Berg and Töndevold Liljedal 2022).The reason for this is likely that 65 years used to be the retirement age in many countries and continues to be the age when consumers are eligible for senior discounts (Catterall and Maclaran 2001).For the older consumer group in our stratified sample, we thus recruited consumers over the age of 65 from the Prolific consumer panel.We did not specify any upper age limit to our sample of older consumers but were still not able to recruit any participants older than 80 years old.The final sample thus consisted of 148 participants (63,5% women, 36,5% men, 25-80 years, mean age = 50.98).
The participants were each compensated with 1.25 GBP to complete an online questionnaire where they were first asked to think about a recent store visit that they had made.In the beginning of the questionnaire, participants were asked to either 'Think back to an occasion where you visited a store and interacted with the personnel' (service encounter condition) or 'Think back to an occasion where you visited a store without interacting with the personnel' (no service encounter condition).Participants were randomly assigned into these two experiment groups.Similar research methods, with consumers being asked to recollect previous service encounters with firms, have been used by, for example, Bitner, Booms, and Stanfield Tetreault (1990), and more recently among older consumers by Cameron, Richardson, and Siameja (2016).

Measurements
Consumer satisfaction with the store was measured with three items answered on 10point bipolar scales (Fornell 1992): 'How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the store you visited?' (Very dissatisfied[1]/Very satisfied[10]); 'To what extent did the store meet your expectations?' (Not at all[1]/Completely [10]); and 'Try to imagine a store that is perfect in every respect.How near or far from this ideal do you find this store?' (Very far from[1]/ Cannot get any closer[10]), based on which an index was computed (Cronbach's α = .89).Positive emotions were measured using the question 'How do you feel right now, after remembering your store visit?' and three items on a 10-point bipolar scale (negative emotions[1]/positive emotions[10], sad[1]/happy [10], in a bad mood[1]/in a good mood [10], Cronbach's α = .93).Similar measurements have previously been used by Söderlund and Berg (2019).The participants were also asked to briefly describe their store visits and what sort of store they had visited (two open questions answered in text).The participants mainly described fairly mundane store visits to a wide range of stores.The largest number (62% or 92 participants) were visits to grocery stores, followed by visits to clothing stores (6%), general stores (4%), department stores and pharmacies (3% each).

Moderated mediation analysis
To address H3, bootstrap analysis (Preacher and Hayes 2008) was employed to test the prediction that positive emotions mediate the effects of the service encounter and age group interaction.PROCESS version 3.5, Model 7 (Hayes 2018) was used to estimate the conditional (i.e.moderated by age group) indirect effects of the independent variable (i.e.service encounter) on the dependent variable (i.e.store satisfaction) through the proposed mediator (i.e.positive emotions).This moderated mediation analysis is illustrated in Figure 3.The results showed that the overall positive emotions outcome model was significant (F (3,144) = 3.76, p=.012), as was the store satisfaction model (F(2,145) = 83.02,p < .001).The  index of moderated mediation was also significant (5000 bootstrap samples, 95% CI:[−2.06 to − .17]).The moderated mediation results indicated that the effects of service encounter were mediated by positive emotions in the older consumer group (5000 bootstrap samples, 95% CI: [−1.65 to − .38]),but not in the younger consumer group (5000 bootstrap samples, 95% CI: [−.60 to .85]).H3 was thus supported.

Discussion
The analysis of the results from the empirical study offered support for all the four research hypotheses formulated in this study.The mere service encounters with store personnel in retail stores showed a positive effect on store satisfaction for the older consumers, but there was no such positive effect on the store satisfaction of the younger consumers of having had in-store service encounters.For the store visits when the older consumers had experienced in-store service encounters, they also experienced more positive emotions, while no such effect on positive emotions was found for the younger consumers.Consumer age thus moderated the positive effects that the service encounters had on both store satisfaction and positive emotions.Further analysis showed that the positive emotional responses that the service encounters resulted in for older consumers mediated their positive effects on store satisfaction for the older consumer group.
No such mediating effects of positive emotions were found for the younger consumer group.This indicates that younger consumers did not have a similar emotional response to the in-store service encounters, and that their emotional response did not play a part in how they responded in terms of satisfaction with the retail stores.In summary, the older consumers had a positive response to store visits that encompassed service encounters with an employee, in terms of a positive emotional response and an increased satisfaction with the store, while no such response was found among the younger consumers.

Theoretical implications
Although service encounters are essential in the service evaluations of all consumers (Bitner, Booms, and Stanfield Tetreault 1990), our findings indicate that they may be even more crucial to older consumers in their evaluations of retail stores.In fact, merely having a service encounter during a store visit had a positive effect on store satisfaction for the older consumer group in our study.For the younger consumers there was, however, no such positive effect of merely having a service encounter.This aligns with some previous findings showing that for consumers in general, factors such as the proactivity of employees and the physical store surroundings can influence consumer evaluations of service encounters (Bitner 1990;Söderlund 2016Söderlund , 2018)).While these types of factors will likely also influence the evaluations and responses to in-store service encounters of the older consumers, our results demonstrate that the mere occurrence of a service encounter in a store visit will also have a positive effect on the store satisfaction of the older consumer group.This finding adds to our knowledge about how older consumers respond to instore service encounters and should be of both theoretical and practical interest.That a positive effect was only found for the older consumers indicate that in-store service encounters may be more important for the consumer satisfaction of this group than for younger consumer groups.These findings are also in line with the previous research showing that older consumers can derive social benefits from service encounters, and that this can have other positive effects, such as a positive effect on their general wellbeing (Kang and Ridgway 1996;Plaud and Guillemot 2015).It is also in line with the previous retailing research indicating that service encounters can have a positive effect on the store choice and store experiences of older consumers (Nilsson et al. 2015).However, unlike the research presented in this study, this previous research did not study whether the positive effects of service encounters also translated into any positive effects on older consumers' store satisfaction.
Our findings also indicate a positive emotional response to in-store service encounters among the older consumers, and that this emotional response has an explanatory role in the positive effects of service encounters on the satisfaction with retail stores.That older consumers should have an emotional response to in-store service encounters is perhaps not so surprising, due to the increased motivational role of emotions (Yoon, Cole, and Lee 2009) and responsiveness to emotional information (Williams and Drolet 2005) in this consumer group.However, by introducing this emotional response as an explanation for how older consumers respond to service encounters, this study makes both a theoretical and practical contribution.To our knowledge, the role of emotional responses to service encounters in retailing has not been studied for older consumers previously.

Managerial implications
As mentioned, there is a lack of knowledge among both retailers and retail researchers about what causes older consumers to experience satisfaction with retail stores (Berg and Töndevold Liljedal 2022;Johnson-Hillery, Kang, and Tuan 1997).The knowledge that mere instore service encounters can result in more positive emotions in the older consumer group, and that this in turn can lead older consumers to be more satisfied with the stores, should thus be of great interest to retailers.Maintaining enough staff in their stores to ensure face-to face service encounters with store personnel for all customers would of course have enormous financial implications for most retailers, in terms of increased personnel costs.Retailers should thus benefit from more in-depth knowledge about how consumers of different age groups respond to service encounters, so that staff can be allocated to ensure optimal service levels for e.g.different store formats and product categories depending on the age distribution of the customers.Retailers should also be aware of the positive unintended effects on the emotions on older consumers that service encounters with store employees can have.Most of the service encounters recollected by consumes in our study could be classified as ordinary customer experiences (Heinonen and Lipkin 2023), but they still managed to evoke a positive emotional response in the older consumers that lasted long enough afterwards for them to recollect it in our study.In addition to the positive effects on the store satisfaction of older consumers, retailers should thus be pleased to know that merely interacting with their store employees can cause a positive emotional response in their older customers.

Limitations and suggestions for future research
The study reported in this article compared the responses to in-store service encounters of older consumers (aged 65 or older) with the responses of a specific group of younger consumers (aged 25-46 years old).There are obviously other large age categories in society, such as consumers under 25 years or between 47 and 64 years old, that were thereby excluded from this study.Future research may thus want to include more age groups in order to be able to more fully investigate how responses to service encounters in terms of emotions and satisfaction with store visits may differ across age groups.Additionally, our sample of older consumers did not contain any participants over the age of 80, likely due to the relatively small size of the sample and our use of an online consumer panel (from Prolific) to recruit the participants.In general, the participants of online consumer panels are likely to be quite young, and older participants can be difficult to reach through such an online sample (Peer et al. 2017), Future research in the area may consequently want to employ other types of samples and recruitment methods to reach more groups of older consumers.Furthermore, although chronological age is still the most frequently used variable to define the older consumer group, the appropriateness of this practice has been discussed for many years (Berg and Töndevold Liljedal 2022;Kohijoki and Marjanen 2013).Some argue that age is in fact a construct, rather than a characteristic and that only considering chronological age will fail to encompass this construct fully (Kuppelwieser and Klaus 2021).In future studies of older consumers' responses to in-store service encounters, other measures of age than chronological age might consequently be particularly interesting to include, such as cognitive age, which is the self-perceived age of the consumers (Catterall and Maclaran 2001;Szmigin and Carrigan 2000), or the future time perspective (FTP) which is based on how long consumers believe they have left to live (Kuppelwieser and Klaus 2021).
In line with this, it may also be interesting for future research to compare differences between service encounters that take place face-to-face in physical stores (which we focused on in this study) and those that are mediated through for example telephone, email, or online chat functions.As mentioned, the findings from a survey by Cameron, Richardson, and Siameja (2016) indicated that face-toface encounters were less likely to result in dissatisfaction for older consumers than service encounters over the telephone.Although the current research on older consumers and technology typically debunks stereotypical perceptions that the older generations would not be capable of, or even interested in, using newer technologies (Berg and Töndevold Liljedal 2022), different forms of service encounters may still be better or more ill-suited to different age groups.Finally, as our study was carried out with a sample of consumers from the UK and future research may want to replicate the findings in other geographical regions and cultural contexts, as well as re-examining the results over time over time as new generational cohorts enter the older consumer group.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
The work was supported by the Handelsrådet [2020:6].

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Mean scores for positive emotions.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Mean scores for store satisfaction.