Customer response to employee emotional labor: the structural relationship between emotional labor, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to extend emotional labor theories to the customer outcomes by examining a theoretical model of how emotional labor performed by the service worker affects customer satisfaction in a mediated way.
Design/methodology/approach
Structural equation modeling analyses partially support for our hypotheses from 282 dyadic survey data [i.e. service interactions customers (seniors) and service employees (caregivers)] from a home caregiver firm in South Korea.
Findings
The results of our study found that employee’s emotional regulation strategies of deep acting and surface acting differentially affect customer satisfaction, and that employee’s job satisfaction mediates the relationship between employee’s emotional regulation strategies and customer satisfaction. More specifically, the relationship between surface acting and customer satisfaction is fully mediated by employee’s job satisfaction, whereas the relationship between deep acting and customer satisfaction is partially mediated by employee’s job satisfaction.
Originality/value
Our study is the first to provide an empirical test of how employee job satisfaction mediates the relationship between employee emotional labor and customer satisfaction in service interactions. This research sheds light on the crucial role of employee job satisfaction that can be an important consideration to boost service quality and customer satisfaction by facilitating employee emotional labor.
Keywords
Citation
Hur, W.-M., Moon, T.-W. and Jung, Y.S. (2015), "Customer response to employee emotional labor: the structural relationship between emotional labor, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 71-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-07-2013-0161
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited