Abstract

Employers in the leisure service industry ask their employees to be enthusiastic and display appropriate emotions, even if they are not feeling them. This concept of managing emotions by amplifying or suppressing emotions, in the work context, has been termed emotional labour. Employers assume that, even if employee's displayed emotions are not genuine, appropriate employee emotional displays will encourage client satisfaction and loyalty. The effects of emotional labour on employees have been studied by a number of researchers, however, studies on the effects of emotional labour on client responses are rarer. Through questionnaires distributed to instructors and their clients in group fitness classes, this study demonstrates that some indicators of emotional labour are related to client perceptions of instructor vitality as well as to client responses to the service. It was also found that client perceptions of vitality had significant relationships with client responses to the service. This study attempts to spark thought in practitioners and academics alike for the need to question the relationship that emotional labour has on client responses.