Workplace gossip and frontline employees’ proactive service performance

Managers are interested in promoting frontline employees’ proactive behavior because proactivity is crucial for organizational success. This study examined the link between perceived workplace gossip and employees’ (targets’) proactive service performance by focusing on the mediating role of employees’ harmonious passion and the moderating role of perceived job social support. Using time-lagged survey data from 218 supervisor-subordinate dyads in a commercial bank in China, we found that perceived workplace gossip negatively influences employees’ proactive service performance, and that this relationship is mediated by reduced harmonious passion. In addition, perceived job social support attenuates the negative relationship between perceived workplace gossip and harmonious passion, with harmonious passion having a mediating effect on the relationship between perceived workplace gossip and proactive service performance. These results provide new directions for understanding workplace gossip, harmonious passion, proactive service performance, and job social support. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.     

Frontline service employees’ customer-related social stressors, emotional exhaustion, and service recovery performance: customer orientation as a moderator

This study investigates the structural relationships among customer-related social stressors (disproportionate customer expectation, ambiguous customer expectation, disliked customers, and customers?? verbal aggression), emotional exhaustion, and service recovery performance, with customer orientation (CO) serving as a moderator between customer-related social stressors and emotional exhaustion as well as emotional exhaustion and service recovery performance. The study uses data collected from a survey of 1,014 frontline service employees in Korea??s tourism service sectors. The results indicate that customer-related social stressors positively influence emotional exhaustion; emotional exhaustion negatively influences service recovery performance; and CO acts as a moderator. CO moderates both the effects of customer-related social stressors on emotional exhaustion and those of emotional exhaustion on service recovery performance, by weakening the effects for higher CO employees. This study contributes to both theory and practice by combining the four constructs of customer-related social stressors, emotional exhaustion, service recovery performance, and CO in addition to examining their relationships while focusing on customer-related factors.     

The multichannel customer’s service experience: building satisfaction and trust

Multichannel retailers dominate today’s retail landscape. Practitioners and researchers are particularly interested in understanding how the multichannel strategy helps establishing and developing relationships with customers. Our findings, from 302 customers of multichannel financial services firms, show that frontline employees’ customer facilitation behaviors (traditional channel) have a stronger impact on satisfaction than e-psychological benefits (derived from the company’s Web site), while their positive influence on trust is not significantly different. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

How transformational leadership fuels employees’ service innovation behavior

Although there is a consensus that transformational leadership (TFL) is critical to successful service innovation behavior, the relationship between the two remains inconclusive. This study adopts a dual perspective approach that considers both motivational and social-political perspectives to further elicit the influence of TFL on the service innovation behavior of frontline employees. Using multiphase and multisource data from 269 employees and 1396 customers of hair salons, the results show that the perceived organizational climate for innovation, creative self-efficacy, and expected image gains fully mediate the relationship between TFL and employees’ service innovation behavior. TFL positively influences employees’ perceived organizational climate for innovation, which in turn enhances the service innovation behavior of employees through both motivational (i.e. creative self-efficacy) and social-political (i.e. expected image gains) mediating mechanisms. Surprisingly, expected image risks are found to have a non-significant relationship with service innovation behavior. We discuss implications of these findings with respect to innovation literature and management practice, as well as offer suggestions for further research.     

What drives customer loyalty in grocery retail? Exploring shoppers' perceptions through associative networks

Mental associations play a key role in shaping customer-brand relationships and are critical to the development of favourable attitudes and emotional attachment towards a brand. By exploring shoppers’ knowledge structures, this study identifies what drivers of customer loyalty are more relevant to customers in the context of grocery retail. A mix-method study on shoppers’ perceptions and values associated to their most patronised grocery store is presented. Through focus group discussions, concept maps and associative network analysis, three types of associations are identified: functional, relational and premium store associations. Salience and relationships among these dimensions are also discussed.     

Linking transaction-specific satisfaction and customer loyalty – The case of casino resorts

This study investigates the relationship between customer satisfaction, delight, place attachment, and loyalty in a casino context. Customer satisfaction in this study refers to customers’ transactional experience with shopping, food and beverage, and gaming within a casino resort. The study examines how each transactional, satisfying, experience affects customer delight and place attachment, which subsequently influences customer loyalty. Customer delight and place attachment are modelled as mediators between satisfaction and loyalty. The results show that each transaction-specific satisfaction is significantly related to customer delight and place attachment with the exception that a positive experience with casino gaming is not related to place attachment. Whilst place attachment has a significant influence on customer loyalty, customer delight has little effect on the loyalty indicators. The study provides a fresh perspective on the customer satisfaction-loyalty relationship. The implications of these findings are highlighted for researchers and practitioners.     

Competitiveness vis-à-vis service quality as drivers of customer loyalty mediated by perceptions of regulation and stability in steady and volatile markets

The purpose of this research is to investigate predictors of customer loyalty in order to identify alternatives to customer satisfaction with service quality, which has been traditionally accepted as the primary predictor of customer loyalty, particularly for services. A stratified sample of bank customers was surveyed to collect information on customer perceptions and behaviors in relation to satisfaction with service quality, competitiveness, risk, regulation, stability and loyalty. Partial least squares path modelling (PLSPM) was applied to develop loyalty models for a steady market (Australia) and a volatile market (Greece). This study's empirical findings support theoretical arguments for the inclusion of customer perceptions of competitiveness in loyalty modelling. Perceptions of regulation and stability intervene in the relationship between drivers of loyalty and loyalty itself. For bankers, the study emphasizes the need to move away from customer satisfaction with service quality to explain customer loyalty, towards focusing efforts on achieving relative superiority in competitiveness, namely competitive productivity and products. Profiling customers based on their perceptions of a bank's competitiveness can provide additional explanatory power beyond traditional satisfaction based loyalty models. Services marketing has focused on the service components, and there is no doubt about its crucial role. But given this focus, other factors, such as the actual product component, have been somewhat overlooked in services research. The study makes a unique contribution to understanding and modelling customer loyalty by demonstrating the importance of the inclusion of customer perceptions of other factors as appropriate to market conditions.     

Customer response toward employees’ emotional labor in service industry settings

In the current study, we develop and test a moderated mediation model that explores the mechanisms that underlie the influence of employees' emotional labor on customer loyalty by considering affective reactions and cognitive appraisals simultaneously and illustrating moderating factors that alter their effectiveness. A sample of 259 individuals from across the United States over 20 years old were recruited on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to participate in the survey. Our emotions as social information based model clarifies the distinct roles of customers' detection of employees' deep acting and surface acting in influencing customers' affective reactions and cognitive appraisals. The current research also reveals that impact of customers' detection of employees' emotional labor on customer outcomes varies as a function of the employees' nonverbal communication.     

The practitioners’ path to customer loyalty: Memorable experiences or frictionless experiences?

Managers of CX programs are often faced with a decision between investing more in experience design (memorable CX) or improving experience delivery (frictionless CX). Current measurement approaches in both industry and academia do not provide a useful framework to address this dilemma adequately or directly. Using 6009 brand ratings by 1070 unique respondents, this research evaluates the impact of memorable vs frictionless CX on customer share of wallet, as well as the mediating effects of satisfaction on these relationships. Both memorable and frictionless CX have significant positive effects on customer share of wallet. These effects are partially mediated by satisfaction. There is an interaction between memorable and frictionless CX which suggests that attempts to maximize both have diminishing returns. The relative impact of each type of CX varies significantly by sector. This alternative method for measuring CX and assessing its impact provides incremental insight over common industry approaches.     

Web 2.0, social capital and work performance in service companies: the employees’ view

Web 2.0 networks have provoked a revolution in the last years due to their capacity to modify human relationships, particularly in business contexts. Social capital, as a crucial intangible asset embedded in Web 2.0 networks, can be extremely helpful to build and optimize personal and organizational power or resources. This exploratory study empirically analyzes the use of Web 2.0 networks for work-related purposes under a new perspective: the perception of Spanish service companies’ employees. Results show a reasonable employee use of Web 2.0 applications with work-related purposes, and identify the main benefits from them and relevant differences in their use.     

Modelling and Investigating the relationship of after sales service quality with customer satisfaction,retention and loyalty – A case study of home appliances business

After sales services (ASS) are activities that take place after the purchase of the product by customers and are devoted to supporting customers in the use and disposal of goods. ASS can create sustainable relationships with customers and contribute significantly to customer satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the ASS quality by measuring the level of customer satisfaction (CS), customer retention (CR) and customer loyalty (CL) through the SERVQUAL dimensions comprising of ASS attributes and also to check which such ASS-based dimensions of SERVQUAL needs to be focused more on improving the quality of ASS with the consideration of firms involved in manufacturing the home appliances. For this purpose research models were proposed to examine the influence of ASS attributes on CS, CR and CL for three different products such as Gas Stove, Water Purifier and Mixer Grinder from the home appliances sector and tested by multiple regression analyses on data collected through the structured survey questionnaire, with a five-point Likert scale. The study has demonstrated the application of multiple regression analysis in studying the influence of ASS attributes on CS, CR and CL, and the results of the study have helped in analysing the performance of the case companies so as to devise suitable strategies in improving CS, CR and CL.     

How work design characteristics affect service employees’ work–family conflicts

Despite scholars acknowledging that the five core job characteristics (i.e. skill variety, task significance, task identity, autonomy, and feedback) significantly positively influence employees’ psychological states (i.e. job meaningfulness, job responsibility, and results knowledge), few researchers have empirically studied how these job characteristics and psychological states are related to job involvement and work–family conflict (WFC). Research data were collected by conducting a survey of service employees through a market survey website. A total of 714 valid questionnaires were eventually collected, and structural equation modeling analysis was applied to the data. The results confirmed that skill variety and job involvement have a positive direct influence on WFC, whereas task feedback significantly decreases WFC. Additional analysis suggested that the five core job characteristics indirectly influence WFC through perceived job meaningfulness, responsibility, knowledge of results, and job involvement. The managerial implications for service managers developing employee work design strategies are provided.     

Corporate identity management and employees’ responses

Main goals in this study are to analyse the effects of corporate identity management (CIM) on the employees’ responses, and the moderating effects of two employee personality traits: proactive personality and resistance to change. Two hundred and ninety-three branch managers in the banking sector in Spain participated in the study, and their responses were analysed through structural equation modelling. Results show that organizational identification is a key variable to explain the CIM effects on employees’ responses. Moreover, employees’ proactive personality and resistance to change exert a moderating influence on the way identification leads to extra-role behaviours. Human resource practices should take into account that proactive employees are more prone to externalize their identification by spreading positive WOM. Besides, identification with the organization will lead to loyalty, especially in employees with low resistance to change.     

Is there a relation between religiosity and customer loyalty in the Chinese context?

The prevalent and complicated religiosity inside Chinese consumer makes it interesting but difficult to investigate the relation between their religiosity and consumer behaviour. Based on the marketing and psychology background in the Chinese context, this study explored the relationship between Chinese religiosity and their customer loyalty. Cross‐sectional survey data and statistical methods were used to compare customer loyalty under different levels of religiosity. The results reveal significant and positive differences of customer loyalty among consumers with different extent of religiosity in most product categories. This study puts forward a new perspective for marketers to predict and develop loyal customers, even to promote marketing segmentation and customer value.     

Increasing customer loyalty and WOM in an age of terror: Cross-cultural development and validation of the customers’ reactions to terror scale (CRTS)

The threat of terror places customers in a vulnerable situation, giving rise to a variety of protective behaviors. The ability to employ these behaviors dictates customers' preferences for specific services. To enable a better understanding of this dynamic and its implications for positive customer outcomes, the current study developed a customers’ reactions to terror scale (CRTS) in a four-stage process. Data were collected from customers in France and Israel across two service contexts, hospitality and public transportation. Nomological examinations showed that services that enable customers to employ protective behaviors under the threat of terror can facilitate increased loyalty and word of mouth (WOM).     

Is there really an Asian connection? Professional service quality perceptions and customer satisfaction

Scenarios involving dental services investigate whether Asian cultures are similar enough to allow standardization of service offerings. The authors control and manipulate levels of service quality and performance to yield a 2 × 2 experimental design, with Japanese, Chinese, and Korean subjects (N = 637) selected to test the invariance of the measures. The findings yield significant cultural differences with the Chinese respondents perceiving significantly higher service quality and expressing greater customer satisfaction when performance is high and expressing less customer satisfaction when performance is low than do the Japanese and Korean respondents. Thus, even though all three countries are considered high-context cultures, having their roots in Confucianism, differences in national culture lead to the conclusion that “one size does not fit all” in terms of service offerings.     

The effect of pre-flight attendants’ emotional intelligence,emotional labor,and emotional exhaustion on commitment to customer service

Previous studies have shown that the success of airlines depends heavily on the quality of in-flight services provided by flight attendants. The performance of flight attendants is primarily based on their emotional intelligence (EI). Thus, airlines endeavor to recruit flight attendants with high EI and also conduct continuous EI training even after their recruitment. To meet the demand of excellent flight attendants, a number of universities and colleges have established airline service programs. This study examines the relationships among EI, emotional labor (EL), emotional exhaustion (EE), and commitment to customer service (CCS) among pre-flight attendants in the undergraduate airline service programs. The results of the study revealed that the better pre-flight attendants understand their emotions and use them appropriately, the more they display their true emotions and modify their bad feelings to desirable emotions required for effective in-flight customer services. Also, the more pre-flight attendants employ EL, the more exhausted they are emotionally. As the first study on pre-flight attendants’ EI, this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on EI, EL, EE, and CCS. The findings of the study also provide practical implications that effective assessment and education of EI by university-based airline service programs can contribute to service excellence of airlines.     

How situational circumstances modify the effects of frontline employees’ competences on customer satisfaction with the store

This article aims to analyze whether the effectiveness of frontline employees' competences (task and interaction) at managing customer satisfaction with the store differ depending on situational circumstances, specifically, on type of query (consultation vs. assistance) and store crowding. A qualitative study was used to investigate the importance of these two situational circumstances in sales encounters. Subsequently, the hypotheses were tested by a quantitative study based on a survey of 575 customers about their shopping experience. The findings indicate that the effect of frontline employees’ task competence on customer satisfaction increases when the store is crowded, while the effect of interaction competence is stronger in relation to consultation queries than to assistance queries. Important theoretical and practical implications for frontline employees and store managers are outlined.     

Smart technology and service employees’ job crafting: Relationship between STARA awareness,performance pressure,receiving and giving help,and job crafting

Owing to the rapid spread of smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and algorithms (STARA), service jobs are being replaced by these technologies. Despite the potential effect of STARA awareness on employee outcomes, surprisingly few studies have explored its role service employees' work outcomes. Addressing this gap, our research assessed the mediating relationship between STARA awareness, performance pressure, and job crafting, as well as the moderating effects of help-receiving and help-giving on this relationship. We conducted a quantitative study for 301 South Korean service employees using surveys collected at two points in time. The results indicated that service employees' STARA awareness positively affected job crafting through performance pressure. Furthermore, the association between STARA awareness and performance pressure was more prominent for higher levels of help-receiving than for lower levels of help-receiving. Help-receiving further moderated the indirect effect of performance pressure on the STARA awareness and job crafting relationship. While the mitigating effect of help-giving was not supported, we observed a significantly positive association between STARA awareness and performance pressure only when help-receiving was high and help-giving was low. These findings contribute to the literature on technology in the retailing sector by uncovering how STARA awareness affects service employees’ performance pressure and job crafting and the roles played by help-giving and help-receiving in this relationship.     

Does the importance of value,brand and relationship equity for customer loyalty differ between Eastern and Western cultures?

The use of the customer equity framework as a focal marketing strategy to increase customer loyalty has emerged as an important topic. Despite a growing number of investigations, previous studies are limited by their strong U.S. and European orientations. Research into Western consumers cannot necessarily predict the behaviour of Eastern consumers though. Therefore, this study investigates whether the link between customer equity drivers (value equity, brand equity and relationship equity) and loyalty intentions is sensitive to the cultural environment. A sample of 1553 Chinese and 1085 Dutch consumers in the banking and supermarket industries reveals that all three customer equity drivers exert a greater impact in Western than in Eastern cultures. This study also shows that Eastern consumers in general have higher loyalty intentions than Western consumers.