Feeling anxious: The dark side of checkout charity solicitations

Research and practice alike suggest that checkout charity campaigns are a win–win–win for retailers, customers, and causes. The current investigation offers a complementary perspective on the effects of checkout charity by uncovering evidence of undesirable customer responses triggered by such solicitations. Specifically, across four studies, we find that checkout charity solicitations induce customer anxiety, which in turn reduces their evaluation of the service encounter. In addition, our results reveal that such anxiety decreases during solicitation episodes when customers agree to donate; however, this occurs only when requests are made by frontline employees rather than self-checkout technologies. These results caution managers that checkout charity solicitations may have unintended consequences on customers that result in negative encounter outcomes, particularly in service environments in which the solicitation is technology-mediated.