Introduction

Many studies in service and retail settings show that several characteristics and behaviors of frontline employees influence customer reactions in the service encounter (e.g., Bitner et al., 1990; Liao and Chuang, 2004; Winsted, 2000). Such studies indicate that human beings are indeed susceptible to influence stemming from other human beings and, in a setting with commercially-based interactions, that the employee is a potent source of influence. The present study is an attempt to contribute to this literature by examining one particular aspect of employee behavior that has been neglected in existing research: the extent to which the employee is proactive in initiating contact with the customer. The core of the employee proactivity construct in the present study is the same as in existing organizational literature. It comprises a selfstarting approach to doing things before one is told to do them, not waiting until one must respond to a demand, personal initiative, and taking charge of a situation (Crant, 2000; Frese and Fay, 2001; Grant and Ashford, 2008; Rank et al., 2007; Raub and Liao, 2012; Thomas et al., 2010). In the present study, however, our focus is on employee proactivity in a more narrow sense than what is included in the organizational literature’s proactivity construct; here, we are interested in the employee initiating contact with the customer when both parties are in the same store or service environment. Typically, this entails the employee coming forward to the customer with conversation starters such as “Hi, are you looking for anything in particular?” and “Hi, can I help you?”. The impact of this particular aspect of employee proactivity has hitherto received limited interest in service and retailing research. It has been shown, however, that proactive salespersons sell more and earn higher commissions than less proactive salespersons (Bateman and Crant, 1999). Moreover, in service-related research, employee proactivity has mainly been studied in terms of service failures (e.g., de Jong and de Ruyter, 2004; Miller et al., 2000; Smith et al., 1999), and some studies indicate that proactive employee behavior in failure situations enhances recovery satisfaction (de Jong and de Ruyter, 2004; Kelley et al., 1993). Most service encounters, however, do not result in failures. This calls for research on the impact of employee proactivity also in situations in which no failures occur. An examination of employee proactivity should be seen in the light of several aspects. First, employee proactivity (in the present study) is something that occurs in the very first phase of a service encounter; it has to do with the employee initiating an encounter. Given the potential for first impressions to inform both attribute evaluations and overall evaluations (Lindgaard et al., 2006; Rabin and Schrag, 1999), employee proactivity can be seen as the platform on which the remaining parts of an encounter rest. Second, from a practical point of view, many service and retail firms have scripts with instructions for frontline employees with respect to what to do in relation to customers (Tansik and Smith, 1991; Nickson et al., 2005). And in many cases, the scripts encourage employee proactivity in the initial phase of a service encounter. The famous Starbucks Green Apron Book, for example, requests the employees to “start a conversation”, while Hilton Hotel instructions comprise a call to “show initiative”. So far, however, academic research has not been able to offer much empirical support for such activities.