Aesthetic Labour in India : Lading and Mapping the Mind of the Practitioners-An Application of Chaid Algorithm

Aesthetic labour represents a state of discriminatory practice, based on accent, gendered body shape and language, modulated voice, scripted expression, and other suitable body attributes of employees, often observed in the hospitality and retail sectors. It implies organisational preferences for recruitment of culturally tuned, sophisticated and good-looking employees. The objective of the study was to trace the footprint of aesthetic labour in Indian context. CHAID clustering technique has been used in this study. This method has been used in marketing area to segment customers, retail stores etc. We used SPSS 16.0 Classification Tree Module to analyze our data. It facilitates implementation of CHAID algorithm. The finding of the research substantiates the arguments that the biased decision making orientation, towards deployment of aesthetic labour, is quite common among hospitality professionals in India. This article reports a slice of mental map, showcasing a decision making orientation towards recruitment of aesthetically-rich applicants, evidently seen in Indian hospitality sector. In earlier studies, CHAID algorithm has not been employed to assess the extent of aesthetic labour practice. This article contributes to fill up this gap and initiate the discussion.