Start Date

6-1-2011 4:00 PM

End Date

6-1-2011 4:45 PM

Track

2. Track 2 - Poster Session

Subject Area

Consumer Behavior

Faculty Member

Shiang-Lih Chen McCain Ph.D schenmccain@mail.widener.edu

Abstract

A tip is an extra payment that a customer pays voluntarily in gratitude for a service (Wikipedia, 2010). According to Mason (2006), servers’ income-tax takes out almost all their hourly salaries; therefore tips can represent 100% of servers’ take-home pay. In other aspects, tips are not only the net income of servers, but also a method which managers use to measure customers satisfaction and service quality. According to Lynn (2001), some managers believe that there are three benefits when customers give tips: encourage servers to deliver good services, measure server performance, and identify dissatisfied customers. Some factors are applied to measure customers’ tip size, such as race, culture, gender, table size, payment methods, age, education, income,… etc. Other research investigated whether specific service behaviors influence customers’ tipping behavior, such as how the servers interact with the customers. To the author’s knowledge, all the previous tip-size studies were conducted from management’s points of view instead of customers’ perspective. In order to fulfill this void, the purpose of this study is to investigate what factors customers take into consideration when they are tipping. The results of this study will help servers earn more tips, and thus increase their job satisfaction.

Keywords

tip, tipping size, service quality, customer perspective

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Jan 6th, 4:00 PM Jan 6th, 4:45 PM

How Customers Decide Their Tipping Size

A tip is an extra payment that a customer pays voluntarily in gratitude for a service (Wikipedia, 2010). According to Mason (2006), servers’ income-tax takes out almost all their hourly salaries; therefore tips can represent 100% of servers’ take-home pay. In other aspects, tips are not only the net income of servers, but also a method which managers use to measure customers satisfaction and service quality. According to Lynn (2001), some managers believe that there are three benefits when customers give tips: encourage servers to deliver good services, measure server performance, and identify dissatisfied customers. Some factors are applied to measure customers’ tip size, such as race, culture, gender, table size, payment methods, age, education, income,… etc. Other research investigated whether specific service behaviors influence customers’ tipping behavior, such as how the servers interact with the customers. To the author’s knowledge, all the previous tip-size studies were conducted from management’s points of view instead of customers’ perspective. In order to fulfill this void, the purpose of this study is to investigate what factors customers take into consideration when they are tipping. The results of this study will help servers earn more tips, and thus increase their job satisfaction.