Building friendships and relationships: The role of conversation in hairdressing service encounters.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of conversation as an element of interaction that occurs in a hairdressing service encounter with the aim of seeking to understand variations in conversation between “short” and “long‐term” clients; how conversation contributes to the development of “commercial friendships”; and how relationships develop through conversation.Design/methodology/approach – Quota sampling is used to select eight hairdressing service encounters in one Australian salon for recording and subsequent interviews with clients. Quotas address gender and duration of continued patronage. Conversations and interviews were analysed thematically and using conversation analysis.Findings – The progress and evolution of conversations varied between short and long‐term customers; topics also varied by this classification as well as gender. Conversation played an important function with respect to building friendship with the service provider; conversation also assisted in the...