Developing interpersonal bonds between employees and customers in selling contexts can increase sales and positive perceptions of the employees and the store. Recent studies have found that mimicking the verbal and nonverbal behavior of strangers enhanced their liking for the individual who mimicked them, and influenced helping behavior. An experiment was carried out in a retail setting where four sales clerks were instructed to mimic, or not, some of the verbal expressions and nonverbal behavior of the customers. On their way out, these customers were asked to evaluate the sales clerks and the store. Results showed that mimicry was associated with a higher sales rate, greater compliance to the sales clerk's suggestion during the selling process, and more positive evaluations of both the sales clerks and the store. It was found that these evaluations mediate the relationship between mimicry and customers' behavior. Experiment 2 confirmed the behavioral effect of mimicry when a baseline condition was introduced. These results seem to show that mimicry really helps managers to develop positive relationships between their sellers and their customers.
The interaction between store employees or service industry employees and their customers is considered an essential part of customers' assessments of service quality and their relationship with the store or the service provider (Bitner, 1990 and Gwinner et al., 1998). The development of interpersonal bonds may be a way for a store to differentiate itself from others and to increase their sales, to raise customer loyalty and to create a positive word of mouth for their store. Thus, managers might consider ways they could facilitate the development of interpersonal bonds, including encouraging the development of friendships between employees and customers. Coulter and Coulter (2000) found that as perceived similarity between customers and service employees increased, customer trust also increased. Gremler et al. (2001) found that customer positive word of mouth increased when employees used interpersonal bonds in their relationships with the customers such as employee familiarity with customers, personal connection between employees and customers, or care displayed by employees.
Thus, it could be interesting for managers to encourage their employees to use social psychological procedures that facilitate positive interpersonal relationships in their own relationships with the customer. Several studies have found that some of these social psychology techniques facilitated interpersonal relationships and increased the positive perception of the individual who used such interpersonal bonds. Some of these studies have shown the efficiency of these interpersonal techniques in a selling context. For example, touch is considered as a factor that facilitates interpersonal relationships, familiarity and truth. Several studies have found that the tactile contact of a patron by a server in a restaurant or bar increases tipping (Crusco and Wetzel, 1984, Stephen and Zweigenhaft, 1986, Hornik, 1992b, Lynn et al., 1998, Ebesu Hubbard et al., 2003 and Guéguen and Jacob, 2005). Touching potential customers can also lead to an increase in product sales rates, or a greater amount of money spent (Guéguen et al., 2007, Guéguen and Jacob, 2006, Hornik, 1992a, Kaufman and Mahoney, 1999 and Smith et al., 1982). Further studies found that the professional qualities of the seller or the restaurant employee were evaluated more positively (Crusco and Wetzel, 1984, Hornik, 1992b, Stephen and Zweigenhaft, 1986, Wycoff and Holley, 1990 and Erceau and Guéguen, 2007). It has also been found that employee tactile contact was associated with a more positive perception of the store (Hornik, 1992a) or the restaurant (Hornik, 1992b).
Tactile contact is not the sole technique that facilitates interpersonal relationships. Within the various social psychology procedures, one of them, the mimicry technique, could have some interest for managers and sellers to create a positive perception of the employees among the customers. Mimicry has long been studied by social psychologist. However, its behavioral effect and its effect on the perception of the mimicker are relatively recent and the influence of mimicry in a real selling context does not exist. The first objective of this paper was to test the effect of mimicry used by a salesperson on customer behavior and judgment in a real field setting. The second objective was to test the link between customer behavior toward a salesperson who mimicked him/her and the variation in judgment created by mimicking.
In conclusion, for the first time in an experimental approach, it was found in this experiment that mimicry was associated with a greater behavioral influence in a selling context. This effect on customer behavior – observed in a real selling context – was the first evaluation of this type of the effect of mimicry. These results also confirmed previous experimental studies showing that mimicry was associated with greater score of liking for the mimicker. Furthermore, these studies focused on the assessment of personal qualities. In our experiment, it was found that the assessment of other qualities was significantly improved by the use of mimicry, such as a higher score for the seller's professional qualities, and a higher evaluation of the context. This effect tends to show that mimicry may be a powerful new influence technique, of interest to both scientists and business and sales professionals.
