Examining the consequences of customer-oriented deviance in retail

Retail employees sometimes breach company rules and policies in order to assist their customers. Referred to as customer-oriented deviance (COD), the phenomenon is defined as intentional behaviours that depart from the norms of a referent group in honorable ways. While researchers have begun to examine the important organisational contributions that positive deviance delivers, there have been calls to develop a better understanding of the direct and indirect consequences of such behaviours. Accordingly, conceptual model was tested on a sample of 390 frontline service employees, elucidating the complex relationships between COD behaviours, self-perceptions of service quality and organisational commitment intentions. The current research also examines the moderating effect of gender on these complex relationships. The model offers a strong psychological explanation of how an employee's COD behaviours impact on their self-perception of their service reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, which leads to greater overall commitment to the organisation. This research also finds an employee's gender moderates several of these relationships. The work offers practitioners insight into the important role of employee empowerment in service organisations. The research calls for further empirical examinations of COD behaviours, including antecedents and the mediating roles of perceived risk and tenure.     

Developing a multidimensional scale of customer-oriented deviance (COD)

Although frontline employees' bending of organizational rules and norms for customers is an important phenomenon, marketing scholars to date only broadly describe over-servicing behaviors and provide little distinction among deviant behavioral concepts. Drawing on research on pro-social and pro-customer behaviors and on studies of positive deviance, this paper develops and validates a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional construct term customer-oriented deviance. Results from two samples totaling 616 frontline employees (FLEs) in the retail and hospitality industries demonstrate that customer-oriented deviance is a four-dimensional construct with sound psychometric properties. Evidence from a test of a theoretical model of key antecedents establishes nomological validity with empathy/perspective-taking, risk-taking propensity, role conflict, and job autonomy as key predictors. Results show that the dimensions of customer-oriented deviance are distinct and have significant implications for theory and practice.     

It takes two to tango: The role of customer empathy and resources to improve the efficacy of frontline employee empathy

This study investigates the link between employee empathy and customer satisfaction. Building on social exchange theory, we develop a model of employee-customer empathy. We focus on the central role of customer-oriented behaviour in explaining the empathy-satisfaction relationship, predicting that employee empathy positively influences customer-oriented behaviour, which in turn enhances customer-satisfaction. We also examine the moderating roles of customer empathy, as well as of customer resources. Results of a dyadic-survey study of 211 pairs of frontline employees and their customers support the proposed moderated -mediation model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The impact of ethical cues on customer satisfaction with service

This study examines the effects of ethical and unethical cues on customers’ evaluations of the ethics of a service provider and their subsequent satisfaction with the service. The results of a disguised, laboratory experiment are used to suggest that customers respond to unethical cues in the environment through lower ethical assessments and satisfaction ratings, but that ethical cues may not necessarily increase satisfaction scores when compared to a neutral situation. The implications suggest that ethical cues and an honest service provider may be the expected norm, and thus will lead to (or maintain) satisfaction with the service encounter, while unethical cues will create dissatisfaction.     

Employee display of burnout in the service encounter and its impact on customer satisfaction

This study examines if employee display of burnout symptoms in service encounters has an impact on customer satisfaction. An experimental approach was used in which the employee's display of burnout (absent vs. present) and the service performance level (low vs. high) were the manipulated factors. The results show that employee display of burnout had a negative impact on customer satisfaction, that this effect was mediated by customers’ appraisals of the employee's emotional state, and that the effect was stronger under the condition of low service performance.     

The normalization of deviance in healthcare delivery

Many serious medical adversities result from violations of recognized standards of practice. Over time, even egregious violations of standards of practice may become “normalized” in healthcare delivery systems. This article describes what leads to this normalization and explains why flagrant practice deviations can persist for years, despite the importance of the standards at issue. This article also provides recommendations to aid healthcare organizations in identifying and managing unsafe practice deviations before they become normalized and pose genuine risks to patient safety, quality care, and employee morale.     

How store managers can empower their teams to engage in constructive deviance: Theory development through a multiple case study

In this paper, we explore how leaders enable constructive deviance in teams they manage. We report on a qualitative field study of two hierarchical layers of store management in 17 supermarket store teams. We focus on the emergence of constructive deviance – better ways of creating value by departing from common ways of working – and how store leaders can enable this behavior. Our inductive analysis from the multiple case data suggests that store management can enable constructive deviance by combining empowering leadership behaviors with adequate levels of contingent reward and monitoring behaviors. These findings allow us to develop new hypotheses about the linkages between constructive deviance, psychological empowerment, and leadership. We detail implications for store management and we describe several future research opportunities on the concept of constructive deviance, its enablement through empowering leadership, and the relationship between organizational norms and constructive deviance.     

The influences of cooperative climate,competitive climate and customer empowerment on service creativity

To extend the relationship between customer empowerment and creativity, this study explores the mediating effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (individual level). The study aims to clarify whether cooperative and competitive climates influence service creativity through intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (across level). A matching sample of 333 coaches and customers from 30 stores in the fitness industry was used to examine the study hypotheses by employing Mplus 8.3 statistical software. The results show that (1) customer empowerment and cooperative climate have significant positive effects on service creativity (that is, the service creativity of coaches); (2) the intrinsic motivation of coaches mediates the relationship between customer empowerment and service creativity; and (3) the intrinsic motivation of coaches mediates the relationship between cooperative climate and service creativity, but the mediating mechanism of extrinsic motivation does not exist in the relationship between competitive climate and service creativity.     

The effect of ethical leadership on service sabotage

ABSTRACT

This study aims at examining the impact of ethical leadership activities on service sabotage, and the mediating role of service climate and corporate ethical values (CEV) on this impact. The study was completed via 384 acceptable questionnaires in total. The research findings show that ethical leadership affects the service climate and the CEV in a positive way whereas it has a negative effect on the service sabotage. In addition, it is observed that the CEV have a positive effect on the service climate. In the light of the research findings, managers’ ethical personal and managerial characteristics affect the service climate in a positive way and play a significant role for the ethical values to become more common within the organization. Furthermore, the ethical leadership is effective for decreasing the service sabotage which is referred as the undesirable and harming behaviors within the organization.     

Customer complaining: The role of tie strength and information control

We examine the impact of two key constructs, information control and tie strength, on consumers’ likelihood of complaining following service failures. We report convergent results from three types of studies—an experiment, a survey, and secondary data. In the first study, tie strength and information control were systematically varied in an experiment using a restaurant scenario. In a second study, survey data from patients who experienced dissatisfactory service was collected. The third study used field data from 1,470 customers of an HMO. Results from all three studies showed that, following service failure, complaining is more likely when the tendency for information control is stronger and ties are weaker.     

Bringing meaning to the sales job: The effect of ethical climate and customer demandingness

Top performing salespeople are attracted to organizations that provide opportunities to make full use of their abilities. Responses from 1450 sales directors from a leading direct selling organization were used to examine salesperson's experienced meaningfulness. Results show that experienced meaningfulness is critical to sales because it impacts salesperson's performance, turnover intentions and felt stress. Further, ethical climate and customer demandingness influence experienced meaningfulness perceptions.     

The effects of wait expectations and store atmosphere evaluations on patronage intentions in service-intensive retail stores

Many factors, both obvious and subtle, influence customers’ store patronage intentions. Using videotape technology that enabled us to experimentally manipulate the number of visible store employees, number of customers, and music, we test the relative importance of wait expectations and store atmosphere evaluations on patronage intentions. These constructs are found to be critical antecedents of store patronage intentions in the context of the service-intensive retail store at which the model was tested. We also find support for the direct effects of gender on wait expectations and store atmosphere evaluations. We discuss some implications for retailing research and practice.     

Pursuit of loyalty in service recovery: The roles of brand equity and cognitive reappraisal as moderators

This research investigates the roles of brand equity and cognitive reappraisal in the association between the perception of justice and loyalty via customer affection in a service failure and recovery context. Survey data were subjected to the conditional process analysis using the regression-based method. Results reveal that customer affection plays a mediating role in the link between the perception of justice and loyalty. In addition, brand equity and cognitive reappraisal contribute as moderators in influencing the behavioral outcomes. Implications for researchers and managers are also provided.     

The golden mean: Research on the mechanism of customer participation in employee service innovation

Service innovation is of importance in achieving business success. This study aims to understand how customer participation affects employees' service innovation through zhongyong thinking and verify the moderating role of leadership empowerment in the service section. Data were collected through a paired questionnaire survey with 352 valid frontline employees and their superiors in the starred hotel industry. Multiple linear regressions and bootstrap analysis were performed to examine the hypotheses. The results indicate that customer participation is positively related to zhongyong thinking and service innovation, and zhongyong thinking partially mediates the main effect. In addition, service innovation is more substantial when leadership empowerment is high, and customer participation has a weaker impact on zhongyong thinking when leadership empowerment is low. This study contributes to the employee service innovation literature by confirming that customer participation and employees' zhongyong thinking play vital roles in the Chinese service context. This study also helps service managers understand that empowering their subordinates can facilitate employees' service innovation.     

To be engaged or not to be engaged: The antecedents and consequences of service employee engagement

Drawing on the Job Demand-Resource (JD-R) model, this study explores the antecedents and consequences of service employee engagement. The model examines the main effect of resources (autonomy, feedback, and support) on engagement and how the interaction among resources impacts engagement. Further, the model also examines the mediating role of engagement in linking resources to customers' perceived level of service employee performance. The study uses multi-level modeling on data from 482 service employees and customers in 66 retail stores. Results suggest that supervisory feedback is positively related to engagement while supervisory support is not. More engagement is related to more positive service employee performance. Regarding the interactions, supervisory support had a positive effect while supervisory feedback had a negative effect on engagement at high levels of perceived autonomy. Also, engagement was a full mediator between supervisory feedback and service employee performance. Implications for retail service management are discussed.     

The role of customer contact employees as external customers: A conceptual framework for marketing strategy and future research

Existing streams of literature in marketing, management, and organizational behavior are integrated to propose a conceptual framework that highlights the customer contact employee's dual role as employee and external customer of the organization. Several iterative “cycles of success” are proposed whereby job satisfaction, the employee's patronage of the company's products (i.e., goods or services), and job performance (as customer contact employees) are all enhanced, ultimately leading to long-term relationships (with customers and employees) and profits for the organization. The framework highlights the role of internal marketing as a tool for enhancing the competitive advantage gained by strategically considering the customer contact employee's role as external customer.     

An asymmetrical approach to understanding configurations of customer loyalty in the airline industry

This study employs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine asymmetrical relationships among service attributes, relationship quality, and customer loyalty in the airline industry. The study incorporates customers’ demographics and psychological variables to model customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is operationalised as behavioural and attitudinal dimensions in order to capture customers’ actual behaviours and behavioural intentions. Symmetrical testing is also used to compare findings with those from fsQCA application. The study provides various causal recipes or configurations for predicting relationship quality and customer loyalty. The comparison between symmetrical and asymmetrical findings presents deeper and more insightful information. These findings provide useful guidelines and references for the relevant researchers and practitioners. The study also contributes to the literature by utilising symmetrical and asymmetrical tools to advance understanding of antecedent conditions of relationship quality and customer loyalty.     

Service sabotage: The dark side of service dynamics

While many aspects of services research assume that employees are largely compliant to management prescribed service standards, a number of recent studies have highlighted the deliberate sabotage by service workers as a key issue. We contend that service sabotage is important not simply because of the pervasiveness of such behaviors, but also because of the impact that such acts can have on firm growth and profitability. Consequently, we seek to achieve three inter-linked objectives in this article. First, we highlight how service saboteurs harm customers’ service experiences and negatively affect the performance of the firm. Second, in order to assist managers in recognizing these behaviors, we identify the most common types of service saboteurs and forms of sabotage. Specifically, we classify and describe four main types of service saboteurs: Thrill Seekers, Apathetics, Customer Revengers, and Money Grabbers. Finally, and most importantly, we provide a series of suggestions regarding how managers might effectively address service sabotage in their firms. These include gathering information and exploiting existing data to establish the extent and nature of sabotage, recruiting the right quality of service staff, training and rewarding employees, enriching and empowering employees, developing a service culture, and initiating better monitoring systems and procedures.     

Managing social media recovery: The important role of service recovery transparency in retaining customers

This research examines the influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness to retain customers in the context of service recovery via social media. We propose that customer forgiveness mediates the effect of service recovery transparency on switchover intentions. We further posit that the effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is moderated by two additional recovery strategies, i.e., apology and explanation. The results of two studies, i.e., a survey and a scenario-based experiment, show that service recovery transparency acts to elicit customer forgiveness, which subsequently negatively affects switchover intentions. Furthermore, both apology and explanation moderate the effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness. The positive effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is attenuated when an apology/explanation is absent.     

Weathering consumer pricing sensitivity: The importance of customer contact and personalized services in the financial services industry

In a low-cost switching environment, certain firm actions undertaken by service employees can improve consumer loyalty, satisfaction and reduce price sensitivity. Interestingly, consumers' satisfaction levels can actually increase when experiencing a price increase. Counterintuitively, when consumers experience a price decrease, their loyalty decreases, suggesting that it might be in the firm's best interest to not offer such pricing discounts as these customers may be hypersensitive to price. Overall, it appears much easier for service employees to positively influence customer satisfaction than customer loyalty; satisfied consumers do not necessarily become loyal consumers.