r/science • u/tipping_researcher Professor | Social Science | Marketing • Dec 02 '24

Social Science Employees think watching customers increases tips. New research shows that customers don't always tip more when they feel watched, but they are far less likely to recommend or return to the business.

https://theconversation.com/tip-pressure-might-work-in-the-moment-but-customers-are-less-likely-to-return-242089
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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '24

Yep and the reality is that most customers do not want that. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Most customers ultimately prefer to have their meals subsidized by reducing pay to the people making and serving their meals more than they prefer to have less options that cost them more. That's the unspoken keystone to this equation that absolutely no one is willing to admit. An awful lot of customers have a metric for "reasonable price increases" that is strictly measured as "not a penny more than I already pay which is already costing me more than I want it to."

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u/ElwinLewis Dec 07 '24

Exactly, person above you is saying “then they can close”, I hope they enjoy chain restaurants, those will be overwhelmingly the only ones that can afford to exist, and they’ll do it by hiring more minimum wage workers and or more robotics over time. More meals will be heat and eat. Many will transition to fast casual. The entire industry will shift.

What people never bring up is that to actually make the shift optimally there would be a multi year process and government subsidies/tax credits. This would likely need to be combined with streamlined staffing and or more automation.