Bakom okunnighetens slöja - En studie av religiösa attribut i kundmötet

Sammanfattning: The thesis is aiming to investigate what happens in the customer-service worker interaction when the service worker is wearing religious attributes. In order to operationalize this the Muslim head scarf, hijab, is chosen as stimuli. Reviewing previous research and theory in this field, it is clear that people have a preference for people that they perceive to be like themselves, this is referred to as homophily. Further on, the study investigates the ethnicity dimension of the service worker customer interaction. Theoretical areas of attractiveness and color are also investigated. The study is conducted as a scenario based experiment. Five different pictures are used to access the effect of the headscarf. The effects are evaluated with the following measures: customer satisfaction, attitude towards the brand, how interesting the service worker is perceived to be, how service minded the service worker is perceived to be and how attractive the service worker is perceived to be. Muslims are found to have a more positive attitude towards a service worker who is covering her hair than Christians have. The strongest effect is on interest and attractiveness. Customer satisfaction on the other hand is not affected by the fact that the service worker is covering her hair. The results also support the finding that black cloth on the scarf has a more negative effect on the evaluation of the service worker. The headscarf is also found to have a more negative effect on male customers than on female.