Charitable organizations play a vital role in our society, as is evidenced by their enormous economic and social impact. Yet, for many of them, soliciting adequate resources to carry out their mandates is a continuing struggle. Confronted with a growing need for their services, fierce competition from other charities, and shrinking support from government agencies, charities may turn to marketers for help in developing effective promotional strategies. Unfortunately, marketing literature is unable to provide meaningful guidance because scant research attention has hampered a fuller understanding of why people help. The authors integrate relevant research in marketing, economics, sociology, and social psychology to advance theoretical understanding of helping behavior. They develop research propositions regarding specific promotional strategies that charitable organizations can employ to elicit help.

Employees’ positive affective displays have been widely used as a strategic tool to enhance service experience and strengthen customer relationships. Companies have primarily focused their employee training programs on two dimensions of display: intensity and authenticity. Yet there is limited research on when, how, and why these two dimensions affect customer reactions. Drawing on the emotions as social information (EASI) framework (Van Kleef, 2009), we develop a conceptual model in which display intensity and display authenticity differentially influence customer loyalty by changing customers’ affective reactions and cognitive appraisals. Further, we propose that the relative impact of either dimension depends on customers’ motivation to understand the environment deeply and accurately (i.e., their epistemic motivation). We tested our model in one field study and one laboratory study. Results across these two studies provide consistent support for the proposed model and advance our understanding about how different dimensions of employees’ positive affective displays enhance customer reactions. Thus, findings of this research contribute to knowledge on the interpersonal effects of emotions in customer–employee interactions.