Tipping is often treated as casually as it is paid. What exactly tipping is cannot even be defined by a precise legal term, but is more akin to a “moral agreement”, as historian Winfried Speitkamp describes it, whose small volume Der Rest ist für Sie! is one of the very few German academic publications on the history of tipping. However, tipping is anything but a trivial matter: 10 percent on every “tipable” transaction, in a restaurant or in a cab, at least in Germany; in the USA, as is well known, it is even twice as common, around 20 percent. In economic terms, this adds up to astonishing sums – more than 2 billion euros per year in German restaurants alone – which are hardly regulated in Germany and, above all, do not have to be taxed.
In the digital context, the nature of the incidental, almost hidden micropayment has shifted. Will digital technologies give momentum to tipping or its decline? We explore this question in the second episode of our series on micropayments.
Guests
Sascha Hoffmann is Professor of Business Administration and Online Management at Hochschule Fresenius. One of his research focuses on digital product management. In 2021, he published an empirical study in which he reveals the correlation between smaller gifts in restaurants and larger counter-gifts (i.e. tipping).
Katrin Lindow-Schröder is a fundraising officer at the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau. She has helped to introduce digital payment options in the regional church community.
Further Information
The article on Uber’s “no-tip policy” quoted in the podcast can be read here. The studies by the two marketing researchers Hansen/Warren can be read here, as can the study by Jägermeister Mast. The “Swiss discussion” about tipping can be read in more detail in this NZZ article.
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