Tipping tips : the effects of personalization on restaurant gratuity.

Abstract

The present experiments sought to verify 2 techniques that restaurant servers can employ to increase their tip incomes: (a) the impact of addressing credit card customers by name (Experiment I), and (b) the effect of presenting customers with candy along with their bill (Experiment 2). In Experiment I, tipping percentages from 3176 lunch orders and 4611 dinner orders were subjected to a repeated-measures analysis of variance (i.e., ANOVA) utilizing sex of server, type of restaurant, comment to customer, and meal as factors. Analyses indicated that female servers received greater tips, higher tips were given at dinner, and credit card customers addressed by name left significantly greater tips than those not personally addressed. Experiment 2 employed an A-B-A-B design with tipping percentages from 3962 lunch orders and 5398 dinner orders in a repeated measures ANOVA incorporating meal, sex of server, and candy condition (i.e., Candy vs No Candy) as factors. Female servers received higher tip amounts, greater tips were given at lunch, and significantly higher tips were given by customers presented with candy along with their bill.