Between a rock and a hard place: Seizing the opportunity of demanding customers by means of frontline service behaviors

Service businesses are increasingly facing more demanding customers as a result of a shift in power from the service providers' side to the customers' side. Related literature predominantly examines the negative side of this ongoing trend, while overlooking the positive side. The major aim of this paper is to examine how frontline employees — investment account managers — deal with the ongoing increase in customer demandingness. To address this, we draw on adaptability performance theory to test the facilitating effect of frontline employees' post-transaction service behaviors (SBs) — diligence, inducements, information communication, sportsmanship, and empathy — as a means of adaptation to higher levels of customer demand. Findings indicate that frontline employees adapt most of their SBs' intensities to match customers' demands. The results show that some SBs actually increase the effectiveness and efficiency of frontline employees' service performance, leading to an increase in customer value and satisfaction. Customer value is found as a mediator in some of the relationships between SBs and customer satisfaction. Contrary to the conception of the negative outcomes of customer demandingness, service firms need to consider taking advantage of customer demandingness by stressing the role of frontline employees in adapting to customers’ demands.     

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.     

Contextual Factors and the Creativity of Frontline Employees: The Mediating Effects of Role Stress and Intrinsic Motivation

Creative frontline service employees may be crucial in ensuring organizational performance. However, scant research has investigated the antecedents of service employee creativity. This research applies Role Theory to enlighten this issue. The findings reveal that: role conflict and role ambiguity have opposing effects on creativity; Role Theory complements Cognitive Evaluation Theory as a mediational mechanism for the influence of contextual factors on creativity; and, against current thinking, contextual factors also affect creativity directly. The results underscore the need to reconceptualize the mechanisms by which contextual factors influence creativity, and suggest how managers can promote creativity through the work environment.     

Climate perceptions and the customer orientation of frontline service employees

Satisfaction of customers' needs is particularly dependent upon the customer orientation of frontline employees. Understanding the drivers of such orientation is, therefore, a key issue in current research. Research relating perceptions of organisational values with the customer orientation of employees is rather sparse. This topic is approached by investigating the role of selected dimensions of psychological climate in promoting the customer orientation of frontline service employees. A structural equations model is developed and empirically tested, indicating that perceptions of customer, ethical, and innovation climates exert an indirect effect on the adoption of customer-oriented behaviours by frontline employees.     

A Cross-National Study of Personal Initiative as a Mediator between Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Intentions

Although considerable research has highlighted that high levels of self-efficacy are associated with high levels of entrepreneurial intentions, little attention has been paid to the mediating effects of different variables on the relations between self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions. Integrating theoretical work on self-efficacy with personal initiative literature, I developed a model of entrepreneurial intentions that included both the independent effects of self-efficacy and control variables and the mediating effect of personal initiative on entrepreneurial intentions. I tested this model with a sample of 429 students from four universities in emerging and developed countries. Results indicate that personal initiative fully mediates the effect of self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions. I uncover that the level of self-efficacy is significantly higher among the students in an emerging economy. However, no significant difference was observed in the reported levels of personal initiative in two contexts.     

Employee Motivation to Co-Create Value (EMCCV): Construction and Validation of Scale

Value Co-Creation (VCC) is an emerging concept that has vast applications in theory and practice. Though previous research has provided enough insights on the customers' role in VCC, relatively less research exists on employee motivation to co-create value (EMCCV) with customers. Among other reasons for such less empirical investigations, one is the unavailability of measurement scale for EMCCV. Therefore, the drive of this study is to conceptualize, develop, and validate a scale to measure EMCCV. Drawing from the expectancy theory and adapting the standard scale development procedure, this study develops EMCCV as a higher-order construct that constitutes four dimensions namely professional identity, financial motives, recognition motives, and career opportunities motives measured by 17 items. The measurement scale is developed in the context of automotive service centers; however, it has a broader application on the frontliners of all service industries and can be adapted in other service-oriented contexts. The scale is tested in a theoretical framework and has provided sound reliability, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity.     

Performance implications of customer-linking capabilities: Examining the complementary role of customer orientation and CRM technology

This study examines how technology and complementary resources are bundled to form capabilities that foster durable customer relationships. Drawing from the literature in marketing, strategic management, and information systems, the first outcome is a theoretically grounded conceptualization of CRM technology capability comprised of three complementary resources: technology, business, and human resources. The second key finding is that CRM technology capability and customer orientation have a positive association with the development of durable customer relationships. These resources also have a positive interactive effect on customer-linking capability, highlighting the importance of aligning strategic business and technology resources. Finally, the authors find that customer-linking capability has a positive relationship with customer relationship performance and that the rapidity of changes in the external environment moderates this relationship. This study addresses these research questions in a cross-sectional study of 215 organizations using a partial least squares modeling approach.     

Development and validation of the Personal Nostalgia Scale

This research conducts five studies and uses 1185 respondents to develop and validate a six-item, seven-point Likert scale capable of measuring a personal nostalgia response to an advertisement. Traditional forms of scale development and a variety of experimental conditions are undertaken to develop and validate the scale. Statistical techniques include t-tests, correlation, regression, confirmatory factor analysis and a multitrait–multimethod matrix. This research fulfils a significant gap in the current knowledge as the current scales neither distinguish between the distinct types of nostalgia nor measure personal nostalgia as a response to advertising independently of other reactions. This is despite personal nostalgia being considered as a distinct form of nostalgia with a suggested differing influence on a number of important consumer behaviour responses. The scale has implications for researchers undertaking future studies exploring personal nostalgia's influence on consumer behaviour reactions. Nostalgia is also a commonly used and has effective advertising appeal, and this research provides practitioners with a parsimonious instrument to measure the level of personal nostalgia experienced as a result of advertising exposure. This assists in ensuring accuracy when predicting consumer reactions.     

Personal strain and ethical standards of the self-employed

Using strain theory to examine the relationship between sources of personal strain and ethical standards, we study how variations in the self-employed's household income, educational level, associational membership, and trust in institutions link to the extent to which they maintain high ethical standards. We test our hypotheses using data from 3716 self-employed persons across 39 countries. The self-employed's ethical standards relate positively to their household income and trust in institutions but negatively to their educational level and associational membership. A supplementary exploratory analysis provides further insights into how broader cultural and institutional contexts in which the self-employed are embedded might influence the relationship between sources of personal strain and ethical standards.     

“一带一路”背景下人民币国际化的原油计价研究

在"一带一路"倡议下,人民币国际化的原油计价面临着重大机遇:中国与"一带一路"沿线能源出口国利益互补、亚洲缺少原油定价中心、全球出现"去美元化"的趋势以及人民币国际化具备强有力支撑等条件,但同时也面临着资本管制与原油期货市场流动性的冲突、较低开放度的中国金融市场无法为人民币提供畅通的回流路径以及"新特里芬难题"等挑战。借鉴相关发展经验,应积极推进人民币原油期货市场建设、推进金融市场开放构建人民币环流、扩大与"一带一路"沿线国家(地区)的贸易往来、借助基础设施建设强化人民币计价功能等,努力实现人民币国际化的原油计价。     

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.     

Investigating the immediate and long-term effects of job stressors on frontline service employees

Two studies investigate the immediate and long-term effects of job stressors on frontline service employees (FSEs). Using cognitive appraisal theory, we develop and test a conceptual model of two job stressors (crowding and emotional labor) that affect coping strategies and job outcomes. Study 1, which is a field experiment, investigates the immediate effects of crowding in a single firm. Study 2 extends the findings of Study 1 and investigates the long-term effects of emotional labor and crowding on FSEs across multiple firms. The results show that crowding has a negative impact on coping strategies and job-related outcomes. In addition, emotional labor can lead to long-term negative outcomes, such as emotional exhaustion and decreased job retention, for some FSEs. Consequently, service organizations should consider strategies or tactics that prevent high levels of customer crowding and help FSEs deal with emotional labor.     

个人理财:基于生命周期理论和现代理财理论的分析

我国金融业务中,个人理财业务在短短的几年时间中得到了长足发展。这种变化是金融体系内部技术、管制、竞争等因素作用的结果,是一种适应全球金融业发展的必然趋势。个人理财业务的发展历史很短,对其系统化的提升和总结需要较长的一段时间,理论上的探讨还不够成熟。探讨个人理财的理论基础将是我国个人理财发展过程中必须面对的一个课题。本文将探讨生命周期理论和现代理财学中的有关理论,以期为个人理财业务提供理论基础。     

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.     

商业模式设计与战略导向匹配性对业务绩效的影响

作为竞争优势的来源之一,商业模式设计对经营绩效而言变得越来越重要。文章通过区分驱动市场型和市场驱动型商业模式设计,探讨了商业模式设计与战略导向的匹配性对业务单位绩效的影响。结果表明,驱动市场型商业模式设计与创业导向之间的匹配对业务单位绩效产生积极影响;市场驱动型商业模式设计与顾客导向及竞争者导向之间的匹配对业务单位绩效产生积极影响。研究结论对企业的商业模式设计和创新活动提供了管理建议。     

售后服务质量、顾客满意度及其行为意愿——基于“家电下乡”政策背景下农村顾客的实证分析

在对售后服务质量和顾客行为意愿进行维度划分的基础上,本文以我国"家电下乡"政策背景下购买过家电产品的农村顾客为研究对象对上述问题进行了深入分析。结果发现,送货质量与安装质量对顾客满意度的积极影响显著;顾客满意度高对保持关系意愿有着积极影响;保持关系意愿对顾客重购意愿和推荐意愿有着积极影响;顾客重购意愿对推荐意愿的积极影响不显著。最后,对本文的研究结论、启示与不足进行了阐述。     

Approaches to the Measurement and Management of Customer Value

SUMMARY

Determining and managing customer lifetime value is one of the most important strategic objectives of companies today. This paper critically examines some of the most popular approaches traditionally used to measure the value of customers in a company's portfolio. The methods reviewed include RFM and total revenue approaches to differentiating the value of customers. Although these methods have relative advantages, they have serious drawbacks that limit the ability of managers to accurately assess customer value. An alternative model for the measurement and management of customer value is proposed.     

Driving In-Role and Extra-Role Brand Performance among Retail Frontline Salespeople: Antecedents and the Moderating Role of Customer Orientation

The organizational frontline in retail represents the frontline for an entire supply chain. This channel structure distances the branded supplier from the end consumer and makes the supplier dependent on a retail frontline salesperson that (1) it does not control and (2) also represents competing brands. This study reveals mechanisms that the supplier may use to influence retail frontline salespeople. We demonstrate the importance of consumer marketing programs and supplier representatives in building brand identification between the manufacturer’s brand and the retail frontline employee that translates into increased brand sales, while also revealing the role of rewards programs in stimulating brand-specific extra-role behaviors. Interestingly, retail frontline customer orientation, built by the retailer, diminishes the effect of brand extra-role behaviors toward the focal brand on the focal brand’s sales, providing an informal control mechanism for retailers to protect its objectives. The results of this study have powerful ramifications for both retailers and suppliers in achieving both their mutual, and sometimes differing, objectives related to the retail frontline.     

Affect versus Cognition in the Chain from Perceived Quality to Customer Loyalty: The Roles of Product Beliefs and Experience

To support managerial practice and help improve analytical models in retailing, this article extends the literature on processes in the psychological chain of effects from perceived quality to customer loyalty by making three original and fundamental contributions. Based on multilevel structural equation modeling of consumer data from Bolivia, Japan, and the USA, it shows that product beliefs mediate this chain of effects and that cross-over effects connect rational and emotional processes within this chain. Moreover, it elucidates conditions moderating the strength of these emotional and rational processes. Breadth of experience positively moderates the mediating role of product beliefs. Relative price positively moderates the effect of hedonic product beliefs on affective customer satisfaction and negatively moderates the effect of utilitarian product beliefs on cognitive customer satisfaction. Time since purchase positively moderates the role of emotional processes and negatively moderates the role of rational processes. The moderating effects of sensory, affective, and intellectual brand experience support the predictive validity of the research model. Further analyses illuminate how social recognition, customer value co-creation through product usage patterns, and product-service bundling affect product beliefs, as well as how affective and cognitive customer satisfaction influence positive word-of-mouth.     

The belt and road initiative,cultural friction and ethnicity: Their effects on the export performance of SMEs in China

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has provided Chinese firms with significant incentives to speed up the pace of internationalization. Yet very little international business (IB) research has been found to empirically examine such policy effects. This study explores this important issue using Chinese firms of different ethnicities in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China. We propose that the BRI has a positive formal institutional effect on the export performance of XUAR firms that target the “Belt” countries. Both cultural friction and ethnicity serve as the unique cultural contingencies that moderate the relationship between the BRI and export performance. More specifically, the cultural friction that results from the process of internationalization will negatively affect the export performance prompted by the BRI. The Uygur-owned firms will benefit more from the BRI due to their cultural similarity. Overall, the study takes the lead in investigating both internal conditions and external environments that promote and inhibit the internationalization process of small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the XUAR that are geographically close to the “Belt” countries. The findings help enrich the understanding of the dual “push” and “drag” effects on the outcomes of SMEs’ international activities due to the government-led initiatives and the understanding of micro-foundation toward internationalization from an ethnicity perspective.