Search results

The purpose of the research was to develop a tool for measuring antecedents of customer aggressive behavior (CAB) in healthcare service settings, by identifying its roots in organizational and interpersonal dynamics.

Four studies were conducted. In Studies 1 and 2, antecedents of CAB were identified through analysis of internet reader comments and a questionnaire was distributed to students. In Study 3, scenarios were used to validate the findings of the previous studies. Finally, in Study 4, a scale was developed and validated for measuring organization- and person-related triggers of CAB using samples of 477 employees and 579 customers.

The concept of CAB was conceptualized and validated. In total, 18 items were identified across five dimensions: personal characteristics, uncomfortable environment, aggressive role models, reinforcement of aggressive behavior and aversive treatment. The scale demonstrated good psychometric results.

The research relies mainly on customer perspective. Employees and additional stakeholders should be included to achieve more accurate information that could contribute to a better understanding of CAB and its roots.

Exploring social and organizational antecedents that trigger CAB could help healthcare managers evaluate and proactively manage CAB and its implications within their organization.

This measurement scale is the first comprehensive tool, based on Bandura’s social learning theory (1973), that may identify and measure antecedents of CAB, and could be used to reduce CAB in healthcare service settings.

Extant literature holds contradictory views about the brand love’s moderation effect in the link between brand failure and consumer’s retaliation. This paper aims to first examine how failure severity correlates with negative emotions and how negative emotions lead to retaliation intention. Then, it probes into opposite moderation effects of brand love in these two stages. Further, it explores contingent factors, including perceived fairness, inferred goodwill, aggressive personality and brand trust, which may moderate “love is blind” effect or “love becomes hate” effect.

A questionnaire survey was conducted among the sample of 293 responses from Thailand, and 239 responses from China. A total of eight hypotheses were tested by adopting hierarchical regression technique and slope analyses.

The results show that consumers facing brand failure suffer negative emotions and then generate retaliation intention. Brand love positively moderates the link between failure severity and negative emotions, which is called “love becomes hate” effect. Meanwhile, brand love negatively moderates the link between negative emotions and retaliation intention, which is called “love is blind” effect. In addition, perceived fairness and inferred goodwill alleviate “love becomes hate” effect, and aggressive personality decreases “love is blind” effect.

This study makes contribution to brand failure literature by revealing twofold moderating roles of brand love in arousing retaliation behavior of consumers who encounter product/service failure, as well as contingent factors of these roles. Also, the research findings provide managerial implications to brand managers as to how to manage brand failure and reduce consumers’ retaliation by manipulating brand love and relevant contingent variables.

This paper aims to examine the widespread effects of service actors’ verbal aggression on witness customers’ intentions toward the service organizations through their self-conscious emotions. The moderating roles of the witness customers’ empathic tendencies and the source of aggression are also examined.

In two scenario-based experiments and by adopting a multifoci approach, severity of mistreatment (aggression vs incivility vs no-mistreatment) and source of mistreatment (employee-to-employee and customer-to-customer) were manipulated to test distinctive effects of witnessing aggression on self-conscious emotions and intentions.

This study shows that witnessing aggression during service experiences negatively influences customers’ intentions towards the service organization through self-conscious emotions. Moreover, empathic tendencies of customers make these effects more pronounced. It is also shown that witnessing employee-to-employee aggression has a stronger effect on self-conscious emotions and intentions than customer-to-customer aggression.

This paper uncovers the distinctive effects of aggressive behaviors of service actors on self-conscious emotions from the third-party perspective. It is also shown that empathic tendencies can be detrimental to service organizations in certain conditions.

The results warn service managers against verbal aggression because of its negative effects on witness customers. It is suggested that they should try to clarify the incident and restore justice in front of the witnesses.

This paper is one of the first attempts to investigate the distinctive effects of witnessing aggression during service experiences and the roles of self-conscious emotions and emphatic tendencies.

This study employed the responses of 237 subjects to questions regarding the emotions they experienced while complaining about products or organizations to test a neo‐Freudian catharsis hypothesis concerning the consequences for repeat purchasing of angry customer complaints. Aggressive complaining frequently led to the psychologically gratifying relief of frustration, and hence to higher post‐complaint levels of regard for the product or supplying firm. Identifies sub‐groups of customers possessing specific personal characteristics (extreme type‐A, type‐B personalities, low self‐esteem, guilt‐propensity); examines disparities in the patterns of complaining behavior of the various categories; and assesses the implications of the differences observed. Of the respondents who reported having complained angrily, 82 percent continued to buy the products (or use particular suppliers). Some even increased purchasing levels. Concludes that firms should actively encourage assertive complaining by customers so that the beneficial consequences of catharsis may be obtained.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate new hypotheses regarding potential correlates and underpinnings of emotional dissonance experienced in call centre work. It is argued that prior attempts to measure emotional dissonance are incomplete because such measures often do not specify which emotions are actually not shown (e.g. faked, suppressed, veiled) during work.

A field study with 161 call centre agents was conducted. Positive affectivity (PA), negative affectivity (NA) of agents and customer verbal aggression were conceptualized as correlates of emotional dissonance, whereas job satisfaction, health disorders and burnout were assessed as indicators of agents' work motivation and well‐being. To investigate the emotional underpinnings of emotional dissonance the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales (FEWS) was used and, in addition, agents were asked to report frequency, intensity and “not showing” of 15 separate emotions.

The results show that emotional dissonance was associated with lower work motivation and well‐being. Moreover, NA and customer aggression correlated positively whereas PA correlated negatively with emotional dissonance. Emotional dissonance measured with the FEWS was significantly related to the frequency of longing, the intensity of anger and the not showing of boredom, affection and anger.

The findings support the construct validity of the FEWS. However, based on correlations with agents' self‐rated ability to perform on a high level and interactions between NA and customer aggression that emerged only when emotion‐specific dissonance measures were analyzed, this paper suggests combining emotion‐specific dissonance measures with the FEWS in future research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a loss of face on the psychological well-being of frontline employees (FLEs) in an Eastern cultural context (Thailand) when subjected to customer aggression. Importantly, it adopts a contingency approach and examines moderating effects by which social status, a “customer is always right” organisational philosophy and a public/private context impact the nature of the association between customer aggression and loss of face. Finally, it examines the moderating effect of regulation of emotion on the association between loss of face on psychological well-being.

A survey, administered to 319 FLEs in retail stores in Thailand, asked them to recall a recent experience dealing with customer aggression. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling and a moderator regression.

Customer aggression expressions are associated with FLEs’ loss of face, which in turn affects FLEs’ emotional exhaustion and anxiety. FLEs social status and a “customer is always right” organisational philosophy moderate the association between customer aggression and loss of face, and FLEs’ loss of face is greater when their physical well-being is threatened publicly rather than in private. In addition, regulation of emotion was found to increase the negative impact of loss of face on emotional exhaustion.

The way FLEs respond to customer aggression during service encounters, as well as the FLEs’ status and the context, can intensify their loss of face and psychological well-being. This has implications for the extent to which organisations impose a “customer is always right” dictum on FLE, as well as the need for counselling and peer support immediately following customer aggression incidents.

This study is the first to investigate the moderating effects of social status, a “customer is always right” philosophy and public/private context on the expression of customer aggression and FLEs’ accompanying loss of face. In other words, rather than simply examining what causes face loss, the authors shift the focus from the “Is” question to “When” – i.e., under what contingency condition is there more or less face loss?

The central purpose of this study is to develop and test a model which examines the effects of customer verbal aggression on emotional dissonance, emotional exhaustion, and job outcomes such as service recovery performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. The model also investigates the impact of emotional dissonance on emotional exhaustion and the effects of emotional dissonance and exhaustion on the above‐mentioned job outcomes.

Data were gathered from a sample of frontline hotel employees in Northern Cyprus via self‐administered questionnaires. A total number of 204 questionnaires were obtained.

As hypothesized, emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion were found to be significant outcomes of customer verbal aggression. The results demonstrated that emotional dissonance amplified exhaustion. The results further revealed that customer verbal aggression and emotional dissonance intensified turnover intentions. As expected, emotional exhaustion reduced service recovery performance and job satisfaction and aggravated turnover intentions.

The cross‐sectional design of the study constrains the ability to make causal inferences. Therefore, future studies using longitudinal designs would be beneficial in establishing causal relationships. Although the paper controlled for common method bias via Harman's single‐factor test, future studies using multiple sources for data collection would minimize such a problem.

Hotel managers need to arrange training programmes to enable their employees to cope with the actions of boisterous and boorish customers. Having empowerment in the workplace seems to be an important weapon in managing such customers. In addition, managers should recruit and select the most suitable individuals for frontline service positions so that such employees can cope with difficulties associated with customer verbal aggression, emotional dissonance, and emotional exhaustion.

Empirical evidence pertaining to the consequences of customer verbal aggression in the hospitality management and marketing literatures is meagre. Thus the study partially fills this gap in the research stream of customer verbal aggression.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether emotional deviance in response to customer aggression and employees’ feelings of anger is likely to be influenced by perceived job autonomy. To date, studies on emotional labor have focused primarily on emotional regulation strategies. Little is known about the factors that may serve to increase emotional deviance (i.e. situations in which felt and expressed emotions match but are at odds with organizational display rules).

Three samples of service workers were recruited from northern Israel, and data were collected using self-reported questionnaires. Research hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analyses.

Study 1 revealed that under conditions of frequent exposure to customer aggression, more perceived job autonomy was associated with more frequent instances of emotional deviance. The results of Study 2 and Study 3 demonstrated that the relationship between anger and emotional deviance was stronger for employees reporting high levels of perceived job autonomy.

Given the potentially negative impact of emotional deviance on customer satisfaction, organizations should find a balance between satisfying employees’ desire for control and discretion and ensuring employee compliance with display rules.

This study contributes to the existing literature by pointing out that job autonomy may have a “dark side”, in the sense that it provides employees with a certain level of perceived freedom, which might then be extended to include freedom from rule compliance, especially when negative emotions are experienced.

This paper aims to examine the associations between individual factors (personality and demographic variables) and contextual factors (servicescape and situation‐specific variables), and the motives that drive episodes of dysfunctional customer behavior.

Self‐report data were collected from a survey of bar, hotel, and restaurant customers (n=380). Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis were utilized to analyze the data.

Analysis of the data revealed three clusters of motives labelled: financial egotists, money grabbers, and ego revengers. Statistically significant differences were revealed across the personality, servicescape, and situation specific variables for each motive. However, no differences were found concerning demographic variables.

This research emphasizes the primacy of three customer behavior motivations. Future research might investigate the motives for dysfunctional customer behavior across different organizational contexts and the dynamics between such motivations.

The findings of the study indicate that service managers can proactively control and manipulate servicescape and situation‐specific variables that relate to customer misbehavior motives.

No existing scholarly research has developed a data‐grounded understanding of the motivations of dysfunctional customer behaviors. Moreover, to date, no study has explored the associations between customer's motives to misbehave and personality, situation specific, servicescape, and demographic variables.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating role of emotional dissonance in the customer aggression‐job‐induced tension relationship and the role of job autonomy in buffering against the negative consequences of emotional dissonance.

In total, three samples of service workers were recruited from Northern Israel between the years 2007 and 2008 and data were collected with self‐reported questionnaires. Research hypotheses were tested with hierarchical regression analyses.

The present results show that emotional dissonance is significantly associated with a decreased sense of well‐being, even after controlling for negative disposition. The results also confirm that customer aggression relates to job‐induced tension through its influence on emotional dissonance, and that emotional dissonance is less likely to increase job‐induced tension and emotional exhaustion when the level of job autonomy is high.

The findings suggest that when intense emotional labor is required, helping service providers feel that they have control in their jobs may contribute to a better coping with its aversive effects.

Although it has been established that emotional dissonance plays a crucial role in explaining tension and psychological health‐related problems among service workers, an understanding of the factors at work that may protect employees from its negative consequences, is limited. This paper sheds light on the role of autonomy as a resource for service workers and especially for those whose jobs habitually require interactions with verbally abusive customers.