Mindfulness, i.e., nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness and attention, finds its roots in ancient spiritual traditions, and is most systematically articulated and emphasized in Buddhism. Although arguably relevant to a variety of practices, mindfulness research is sparse in marketing literature. In particular, there is a shortage of empirical research on the application of mindfulness in marketing (Ndubisi, 2014).

1. Exploring the Effects of Mindfulness in
Marketing: Mindfulness, Ethics, Emotional
Labor and Service Quality
Emma (Junhong) Wang
Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
PhD in Business
Department
Department of Marketing
First Advisor
Pierre Berthon
Second Advisor
Nada Nasr
Third Advisor
Joby John
Abstract
Mindfulness, i.e., nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness and attention, finds its
roots in ancient spiritual traditions, and is most systematically articulated and
emphasized in Buddhism. Although arguably relevant to a variety of practices,
mindfulness research is sparse in marketing literature. In particular, there is a shortage
of empirical research on the application of mindfulness in marketing (Ndubisi, 2014).
This dissertation follows a three-paper model to begin to address this shortage in
marketing literature. Paper one uses the Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing and
Moral Development Model as theoretical lens to discuss how mindfulness could be a
viable approach to fostering ethical marketing behaviors. Paper two (co-authored with
Pierre Berthon, Leyland Pitt and Ian P. McCarthy) explores mindfulness in service
encounters. Specifically, it looks at the effect of mindfulness on the emotional labor of

2. service workers. We propose that mindfulness can change surface acting into deep
acting, thereby significantly improving the service encounter for both the consumer and
provider. We also explore other effects of mindfulness such as adaptability, flexibility
and creativity, and their applications to the service encounter. This paper was published
in Business Horizons (Vol. 59, No. 6) in 2016. Building on the second paper, paper three
(sole-authored) empirically tests the effects of state mindfulness on the quality of the
service encounter, i.e. quality of the interaction between a customer and a service
employee. A mixed design experiment was conducted in a New England university in
October to December 2018. In the experiment, both state mindfulness and structure of
the task were manipulated between subjects while the nature of the encounter
(emotionally charged or not) was manipulated within subjects. Results of this
experiment suggest that high mindfulness manipulation groups provided significantly
higher service quality than low mindfulness manipulation groups. This pattern holds
across the four dimensions of service quality: responsiveness, assurance, reliability and
empathy. The structure (highly or less structured) and nature (emotionally-charged or
non-emotionally charge) of service encounters do not alter this pattern. In less
structured encounters, the two mindfulness manipulation groups did not experience
significantly different emotional labor, with quite similar emotive dissonance and effort,
from each other. However, in highly structured encounters, high mindfulness
manipulation groups were more aware of their emotive dissonance, but they did not
spend more emotive effort than their counterparts. The mediation effect of emotional
labor was not found in this experiment. Taken together, the three papers bring the
notion of mindfulness to the marketing domain, more specifically the service domain,
through discussions of the impact of mindfulness on marketing ethics, emotional labor
and service quality. This dissertation expands and deepens the research of mindfulness
in the marketing field and identifies opportunities for marketing researchers and
practitioners to utilize the practice of mindfulness in their discipline.