Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of this event, now a highly anticipated Campbell tradition, a decade in the making! More information at: library.campbell.edu/symposium2020
In this article, I introduce and test a hypothesis about altruism and prosocial behaviors in the customer service environment. I performed this study in order to examine whether or not specific types of business establishments foster significantly greater altruistic behaviors towards customers than others. In this observational study, I recorded information from 30 individuals at each of two locations: a Starbucks coffee shop and a Harris Teeter grocery store. This yielded a total of 60 participants. These participants didn't have to actively perform any tasks for this study; rather, I noted their public behaviors and interactions. For this study, I recorded helping behaviors shown towards customers by employees at each location, including greetings and kind gestures. The results indicate that a significant difference emerged between the two locations, specifically that employees exhibited more altruistic behaviors towards customers at a Harris Teeter than at a Starbucks, thus suggesting that altruism may be influenced by the environmental setting.
