Emotional Labor, Rapport, and Word of Mouth in Fitness Organizations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study explored the influence of emotional labor, rapport, and word-of-mouth on fitness organizations. The results showed that perceived surface acting was negatively related to rapport, while perceived deep acting was positively related to rapport. Additionally, rapport was positively associated with word of mouth. This is an interesting study, but there are still some issues that need to be refined.

1. The authors mentioned “five factors strengthen personal bonds in the customer context: trust, familiarity, interest, intimacy, and rapport”(L38-39), They only present existing studies related to rapport, please add findings related to four other factors (trust, familiarity, interest, and intimacy). In addition, since previous studies have shown that the above five factors will strengthen personal bonds in the customer context, why only rapport was studied in this study?

2. Before proposing theoretical assumptions, the author also introduced the relevant theoretical basis in detail, good job! But the theoretical assumption is only "H0", "H1", do not write "H1" and "H2". I can write the author's way of writing to distinguish between multiple different hypotheses. I would like to suggest the authors use "hypothesis 1", "hypothesis two", "hypothesis three" and so on.

3. How did the authors decide the sample size? In other words, how do we know if the sample size is sufficient? Are there exclusion criteria (e.g., mental disorders) when selecting subjects? Whether the participants were compensated for their participation?

4. It is recommended to use a three-line table or a bar chart to describe the information of the participants, since the text description is too cumbersome.

5. During data analysis, how did the author deal with the invalid data and missing data, and how many invalid data were eliminated in total?

6. What is the most innovative aspect of the present study? Please be explicit about it, rather than leaving the reader to guess.

7. References were cited irregularly. For example, the authors mentioned that "Indeed, several empirical studies have reported that strong personal bonds between service employees and customers have significant implications for favorable organizational outcomes such as customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions [2]", "According to prior studies, five factors strengthen personal bonds in the customer context: trust, familiarity, interest, intimacy, and rapport [4]", and "Several researchers have identified two emotional labor strategies for managing employees' emotions [18]", etc. These places should provide multiple articles References, or use "study" instead of "studies".

8. There are lots of grammatical errors. For example "The findings show that perceived surface acting is negatively related to rapport" (L18-19), "rapport is hypothesized to be negatively related to..." (L70-71), "the findings suggest that..." (L364), "This is in line with previous literature" (L371), and many more similar syntax errors. I suggest you to find a fluent, preferably native, English-language speaker thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

Dear Authors,

The appreciation of the article entitled “Perceived emotional labor, rapport, and word-of-mouth in fitness organizations”:

- The article addresses an important topic the role of emotional labor in influencing customer outcomes for fitness organizations.

- The summary provides a clear view of the research carried out. However, it should specify the research instruments.

- The keywords are appropriate.

- In the Introduction the purpose and goal for being of the investigation are demonstrated.

- The literature review considers the most important and current works related to the variables under study.

- The hypotheses presented are adequately supported.

- Methodology: the authors clearly describe their research strategies, provide sufficient details about the sample from which they collected data; adequately describe the instruments and their psychometric characteristics,

- The data analysis strategy is adequate and clearly explained.

- The results are well presented and the tables and figures are clear and succinct.

- Discussion: the authors present a concise and accurate summary of the main results. The results are discussed in relation to the literature cited in the literature review.

- The discussion, conclusions presented provide new knowledge and provide perspectives for future research on the subject studied.

 

The recommendation is: Accept with minor correction. The suggested modification is to specify the research instruments in the abstract.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I begin by congratulating the authors and researchers of the manuscript intitled “Perceived emotional labor, rapport, and word-of-mouth in fitness organizations”.

Your article is really well written and interesting to read.

Personally, I disagree with the actual title. As suggestion, something like “Emotional labor, relationships and word-of-mouth in fitness organizations” could be more obviously informative and clear.

Rewrite, please, the abstract and use only the same option “word-of-mouth” and not “word of mouth”.

For your Reflection only, regarding the concept of "rapport", why not identify it as a "customer relationship"?

Correct the table 2: the item 2 of Perceived Deep Acting is not correctly aligned.

You could also extend the future research part too.

Good luck!

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The current study examines the predictability of perceived emotional labor strategies on the development of rapport between fitness organizations’ employees and members and its subsequent effect on word-of-mouth regarding the fitness organizations. The authors assert that fitness employees who provide services to members may play a vital role in building competitive advantages in fitness organizations, as they have the potential to form pleasant relationships with members. Consequently, they examines the strategies that might improve personal bonds between fitness employees and members. My review will follow the basic structure identified by Sustainability as Editorial Criteria. Please note that the following comments are not intended to degrade or break the spirit of the researchers, but are provided in an attempt to improve the quality of this work.

The topic of this study is both topical and worthy of investigation and it is obvious that a lot of work and thoughts went into this paper. 

I can recommend that the authors revisit some of the ways in which they approach their theoretical framework. Indeed, some parts seem disconnected from each other. Some clarifications should also be developed in the methodological part. However, this work remains of high quality and is clearly conducted. I develop these comments below.

After an introduction presenting context and object of the present research, a theoretical framework is proposed (“2. Literature Review”) and first part seems to be devoted to the development of the research model (“2.1. Development of Research Model”. Two elements may surprise. First, it is expected that this model will emerge at the end of the theoretical framework and not at the beginning. Second, if a subheading (2.1.) exists, one expects a logical continuation (i.e., 2.2).

The first concept discussed in this literature review is emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is an object of study in contemporary psychology, both theoretically and experimentally, and is becoming increasingly popular with employers. In fact, it is said to promote the understanding of the other and the establishment of trust, which are essential to harmonious human relationships. Being aware of this communication potential and of our own sensitivity becomes an asset. However, I suggest that the authors go back to the reasons for choosing this concept. A transitional sentence or two should enhance understanding and improve the logic of this framework. By the way, emotional labor is discussed and defined in the following. Again, I advise the authors to link these different concepts, to propose transitions, in order to avoid a kind of compilation of definitions and approaches to concepts. In fact, authors need only justify why they are looking at these different concepts and why they are related to each other. The section on the links between the report and emotional labor is clear and brings out two logical assumptions. But again, the next part about the relationship between the report and the WOM is less logical and needs to be introduced. Moreover, this work is done by the authors in the last part of this theoretical framework (2.1.5)     when they discuss that this study posits that the different types of emotional labor strategies employed by fitness employees have different implications for their relationship with fitness members, which in turn have positive associations with WOM. Finally, I suggest that the authors either revise the introductory part of their theoretical framework, named model, or build a logic in the argumentation and the links between the different concepts.

The authors then present the methodology with the participants, the tools and the statistical analyses. This section is clear and well presented; the tools and analyses are relevant. However, Regarding the participants, I suggest specifying how the participants were selected (i.e., voluntary, sampling, random...) as well as the number of participants solicited (versus the number who accepted). Moreover, since the tools used by the authors are parts of questionnaires and have been modified, I suggest specifying the 12 items (which may not seem like much even if the analyses seem to confirm their consistency).

Regarding the internal consistency of the items, it is necessary to correct with Cronbach’s alpha or Cronbach’s a (but it may be a technical problem related to the submission platform that transforms a - alpha Greek alphabet into a).

Finally, I am not an English native speaker myself, so I rather refuse to provide detailed corrections about language.

Author Response

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