After analysing the data fetched in this research, this study derived at this theory: the warmth of a service provider influences a consumer to display prosocial behaviour more than the competence of a service provider.
7.1 Implications for theory
First of all, this research theory does not imply that the success of a company is based on their warmth. Secondly, the theory does not insinuate that if a company shows warmth but shows incompetence, the company can still trigger a consumer to act prosocially. The theory implies that a company is more likely to spur the prosocial behaviour of a consumer if they act more warmly than competently. This is obvious from the research findings as both variables are significant, with warmth being more significant.
Furthermore, even though the context of this research is situated during the COVID-19 period, the findings can still be used to measure the relationship between a service provider’s warmth
and competence and a consumer’s prosocial behaviour in other contexts. In other words, theresults can be used to analyse business interactions that trigger helping behaviour in other problematic situations, apart from the COVID-19 crisis.
In addition, we can also derive implications from this study’s literature review. Fiske, Cuddy &
Glick (2018) stipulate that warmth has a direct association with prosocial behaviour. Their
research theory also intersects with the theory of William & Bargh (2005), which posits that
providing a physical appearance of warmth promotes prosocial behaviour. However, while
Fiske et. al (2018) and William & Bargh (2005) investigate only warmth’s influence on prosocialbehaviour, this research investigates the influence of both warmth and competence on
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prosocial behaviour. In this respect, this research is similar to the research works of Scott, Mende, & Bolton (2013) and Kervyn, Fiske & Malone (2012). Their conclusions are also similar to this research theory.
Finally, this theory has provided a model which non-profit organisations can use to drive action and influence people to donate or volunteer to organisations that aim to help people in times of crises.
7.2 Managerial implications
We can derive managerial implications of this research’s theory from the research questions.
Firstly, if any company (particularly a non-profit organisation) seeks to draw a consumer’s attention to any ongoing crises (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic), such a company might need to display more warmth, as well as competence. The same can be said for any non-profit organisation that seeks to influence a consumer to donate towards aiding affected people in times of crises. In the same vein, if a service provider, a government for instance, wants to get people to volunteer towards helping people affected by natural disaster, that government would have to demonstrate warmth traits, in addendum with competence traits. Lastly, to get people to cooperate with enacted regulations designed to mitigate a crisis (for example, a revolution), a government might need to display more warmth than competence.
7.3 Limitations
The first limitation with this research methodology is its choice to gather data on the web.
Because we utilised Qualtrics Survey to deploy the survey questions to recipients on the
internet, there was an imbalance in the identities of respondents that answered the survey.
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For instance, an average of fifty per cent of the respondents were from Lisbon, Portugal. Also, an average of seventy per cent of the respondents have graduated from the university or about to. This might have influenced the findings in this research as the results reached might align with Portuguese graduates only and not the world in general.
Another trade-off we had to make was to ignore the creation and designing of a survey for service providers. The survey in this research was designed only for consumers and their
response to service provider’s warmth or competence. This suggests that the findings in thisresearch might be slightly one-sided and biased. This research would have been more non-partisan and objective if it had collected data from both consumers and service providers that interacted during the COVID-19 period.
7.4 Future research suggestions
Recall that in the analysis, the independent variables (IVs) (the service provider’s warmth and competence) were regressed on the dependent variable (a consumer’s prosocial behaviour), and the mediating variable was the COVID-19 pandemic. Future researchers are advised to compare the same IVs and DV using a different mediating variable, which can be the post-pandemic reality. Thus, future researchers might want to discover whether the warmth or competence of a service provider can influence a consumer to help people after a crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also, we recommend future researchers to consider other control variables and extraneous variables that have been ignored in this study. Moreover, we recommend future researchers to test this research’s theory using a different contextual crises, different from the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, future researchers might decide to test this research’s theory adapting the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war as a context.
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Lastly, unlike this research’s methodology, we advise future researchers to collect data from both service providers and consumers to derive at a more objective result than the one in this study.
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