Simulating Employee Presence in Store Environments: A quantitative study investigating the possibilities of simulating mere employee presence in retail settings.

Sammanfattning: Research shows that employee mere presence is of greater importance than may have previously realized. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether it is possible to simulate employee mere presence in a retail setting. Through two survey-based experiments (123 respondents in a field experiment and 117 respondents in a lab experiment), it was tested whether a simulated employee generated customer pleasure and satisfaction, compared to conditions with no employee and a real employee, respectively. Results indicate that in a lab setting, simulated employees generate more positive responses than the no employee condition, but not as strong as the real employee condition. In the field experiment, however, these differences did not come across, despite successful manipulation in both cases. We conclude that employee presence can be simulated, but that its effect may diminish outside of a lab experiment setting.