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Prior studies have mainly attributed customer incivility to dispositional characteristics, whereas little attention has been paid to exploring service employees' role in triggering or reducing customer incivility. The purpose of the present study is to propose and test a model in which service employees' emotional labor strategies affect customer incivility via influencing customers' self-esteem threat, as well as examine the moderating role of customer's perception of service climate.

Based on a matched sample consisting of 317 employee-customer dyads in China, multiple regression analysis and indirect effect tests were employed to test our model.

The study shows that employee surface acting is positively related to customer incivility, whereas deep acting is negatively associated with customer incivility. Moreover, customer self-esteem threat mediates the relationship between both types of emotional labor and customer incivility. Customer perception of service climate moderates the relationship between deep acting and customer self-esteem threat.

The current research broadens the antecedents of customer incivility from the employee perspective and sheds more light on the role of customer self-esteem in the interactions between employees and customers. It also demonstrates a complementary relationship between service climate and individual employees' emotional labor strategies, thereby expanding the existing understanding of the management of employees' emotional labor.

Drawing from the compensation effects in social cognition theory, this study aims to investigate the interactive effects of employees’ warmth and competence and service failure types on customer’s service recovery cooperation intention after a service failure and before service recovery is completed.

This study used a scenario-based experiment with a 2 (high vs low) warmth × 2 (high vs low) competence × 2 (outcome failure vs process failure) service failure between-subjects design. Data were collected using an online panel.

This study finds that employees’ low warmth and high competence in outcome failure situations and high warmth and low competence in process failure situations are most effective at increasing customers’ service recovery cooperation intention. The findings further suggest that customers’ cooperation intention is prone to tradeoffs between customers’ perceptions of employees’ warmth and competence as suggested by compensation effects in social cognition theory, such that the effectiveness of employees’ warmth (competence) is curtailed by employees’ competence (warmth).

The findings of this study provide insights to hospitality managers for effective service recovery management. Hospitality companies can enhance customers’ behavioral intentions by training employees to demonstrate appropriate warmth and competence combination that meet customers’ expectations for a specific failure type.

This study argues that customer’s service recovery cooperation intention depends on the combination of warmth and competence displayed by employees after a service failure. The expected combination of warmth and competence varies depending on the service failure context.

This research aims to examine the cognitive appraisals of frontline employees (FLEs) when dealing with aggressive customers and the impact on their well-being, as well as several moderator effects, in a collectivist, Eastern culture.

A critical incident technique reveals the cognitive appraisal of FLEs who had recently experienced customer aggression. Data were collected through qualitative, in-depth interviews with 35 FLEs in customer-facing roles in Thailand.

The FLEs perceived threats to self-esteem, physical well-being, goal completion at work, fairness or equity and sense of control when dealing with customer aggression. These cognitive appraisals affected their psychological well-being in the form of negative affectivity, anxiety, depression and stress. Importantly, factors that moderate (exacerbate or weaken) the impact of customer aggression on cognitive appraisal, and cognitive appraisal on psychological well-being were revealed, including “customer is always right” philosophy, social status, public versus private context and social support.

Organisations should pay more attention to FLEs’ psychological well-being and how they interpret and deal with customers’ misbehaviour and aggression. The research identifies factors that moderate the impact of customer aggression on psychological well-being.

This is the first empirical paper that has examined how FLEs cope with customer aggression in a collectivist, south-east Asian context where social norms calibrate FLEs’ responses to customer aggression. It is also the first research that adopts a contingency approach to understanding how FLEs cope with customer aggression – i.e. when faced with customer aggression, under what contingency conditions do FLEs cognitive appraisals have a stronger or weaker impact on their psychological well-being?

This study investigated the effect of adding a customer's name onto a standard product on the customer's product attitude from the perspective of the name-letter effect and psychological ownership theory.

A 2 × 2 experiment was conducted to test the name effect in customization services. The main effects, mediation effects and moderation effects were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and PROCESS 2.16.3.

Adding customers' personal names onto a standard product positively affected their attitude toward the product, and these effects were mediated by psychological ownership. Furthermore, customers' responses were moderated by self-threat, whereby threatening customers' self-concept enhanced their attitude toward the product that had their name on it.

This study found a positive name effect that is applicable to customization services. It also identified mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this effect. Therefore this study extends previous studies on customization services that have solely focusing on complex product personalization by focusing on a service that requires less effort and a more basic customization service. This study also extends previous findings about name-letter effects by focusing on the associations between an individual and an object that are induced by shared name letters and by studying how directly adding a personal name onto an object can influence these associations.

A self‐help guide to achieving success in business. Directed more towards the self‐employed, it is relevant to other managers in organizations. Divided into clear sections on creativity and dealing with change; importance of clear goal setting; developing winning business and marketing strategies; negotiating skills; leadership; financial skills; and time management.

This study aims to assess a moderated-mediation model to account for the relationship between customer mistreatment and frontline hotel employees’ customer-focused voice, where their organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) served as a mediator and their felt trust (reliance and disclosure) by supervisors served as a moderator.

The data were collected through paper-based questionnaires in a cross-sectional survey, consisting of 319 valid supervisor-employee-paired responses from 33 international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Regression analyses were used for hypothesis testing.

OBSE mediates the negative effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice. Employee felt reliance intensifies the negative impact of customer mistreatment on OBSE, and this interaction effect, in turn, reduces customer-focused voice through OBSE. The employee felt disclosure marginally significantly buffers the effect of customer mistreatment on OBSE.

Given the adverse effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice through OBSE, hotels should strengthen employees’ service mindset and value their suggestions. The double-edged effects of felt trust suggest that managers should form a trusting relationship with their subordinates and reassure them that isolated incidents of customer mistreatment will not jeopardize their reputation.

This study integrated sociometer and self-consistency theories to examine OBSE as a psychological mechanism to explain the mistreatment-voice process. Besides assessing felt trust’s two-dimensional effects, this research is possibly the first attempt to examine felt trust as an enabling force or a threat to OBSE in the context of customer mistreatment.

Understanding negative customer engagement is important as it is argued that negative information has a stronger impact on a customer’s brand perception and purchase decision than that of positive information. Hence, this paper aims to propose new determinants of negatively valenced customer engagement, including disengaged and negatively engaged behaviours in a service consumption context and explore under what conditions customers display disengaged or negatively engaged behaviours.

This study incorporates justice theory, expectancy disconfirmation theory and psychology literature to propose determinants of negative customer engagement behaviours.

A conceptual framework is developed that proposes customer perceived justice and negative disconfirmation as determinants of negative customer engagement via the mediator of customer outrage. Moderating variables, include self-esteem, self-efficacy, altruism and vengeance; are also proposed to affect disengaged/negatively engaged behaviours.

This study is the first to specify the underlying reasons of negative customer engagement by establishing the conceptual linkages between negative disconfirmation, justice and negative customer engagement via the mediating role of customer outrage. Further, customer resources are used to understand disengaged/negatively engaged behaviours. In doing so, this study views negative customer engagement from the perspective of a customer’s internal response to the trigger experience, rather than the experience itself. Thus, this study contributes to literature on customer engagement by developing a conceptual framework that illustrates the underlying cognitive and affective responses that drive negative customer engagement behaviours.

The purpose of the present paper is to develop and validate a scale of romantic brand jealousy and to examine the role played by the brand love-jealousy framework on consumers' active engagement.

In order to develop and validate the romantic brand jealousy scale the present study has employed Churchill's methodology. The study has used common factor analysis and structural equation modeling using LISREL 8.72.

This research provides empirical evidence for a three-item romantic brand jealousy scale. The study results indicate that the romantic jealousy scale developed is valid and reliable. It also shows that in contrast to previous literature, wherein authors found that brand love would create customer engagement, the brand love-jealousy framework would act as a better mediator to create customer engagement and also to motivate the customer to purchase the brand.

This research was conducted in a specific country (India). It would be more robust if the scale developed by this study could be examined in the context of other countries.

This study is expected to help managers to formulate a better marketing strategy to increase customer engagement using the proposed brand love-jealousy framework.

This research adds value to the domain of consumer psychology research by proposing that brand jealousy needs to be created along with brand love in customer's mind to augment the level of active engagement.

When consumers experience a self-threat that calls their self-concept into question, the ensuing psychological discomfort motivates them to restore their self-perceptions on the threatened attribute. Although consumers can restore a threatened self-perception by consuming products and brands that possess the desired symbolic associations, this study aims to propose that word of mouth can serve to resolve self-threat and restore a threatened self-perception when the brand at the center of a word-of-mouth communication is symbolically congruent with the domain of the threat.

Experimental online survey research was conducted, inducing self-threat, manipulating brand and word-of-mouth conditions and measuring self-perceptions. Data for three studies were analyzed using SPSS and Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro.

Three studies show that spreading word of mouth can restore consumers’ threatened self-perceptions when the brand is symbolically congruent with the threat domain. Word of mouth about a symbolically congruent brand alleviates psychological discomfort, resulting in higher self-perceptions on the threatened attribute. The restorative effect is amplified for lower self-esteem consumers.

Participants in the focal conditions were required to spread word of mouth, which may not be an organic response for all consumers; although not spreading word of mouth is ineffective, other compensatory consumer behavior options exist. The brand option was provided to participants, which allowed for control but may have reduced some of the realism.

Positioning brands to meet consumers’ psychological needs encourages the development of consumer–brand attachments. Brands that resonate with consumers reap the benefits of consumers’ active loyalty behaviors and enjoy stronger brand equity. The present research implies a new way consumers can form brand attachments: by spreading word of mouth to resolve self-threat. As many consumers post detailed, personal information online, this research suggests firms can align their brand messages with relevant identity-related discrepancies.

This research extends the symbolic self-completion compensatory consumption strategy to the word-of-mouth context, showing that consumers can achieve the same restorative effect as consumption by spreading word of mouth. This research also contributes to compensatory word-of-mouth literature by establishing the role of brand meaning.

The advent of extreme automation from new technologies such as artificial intelligence portends a massive increase in unemployment. The psychological impact of this threat on the workforce is critically important. This paper aims to examine the functioning of individuals' anxiety buffers in response to this threat.

A two-stage mixed-methods design is used. In stage 1, qualitative data are gathered through semi-structured interviews. In stage 2, quantitative data are collected through two experiments to assess the psychological impact of exposure to the threat.

Exposure to the threat of extreme automation reduces self-esteem, faith in the worldview and attachment security. When self-esteem and attachment security are under attack, they are ineffective as anxiety buffers, and anxiety levels increase. Additionally, there is a distal effect such that during a period of distraction, the threatened anxiety buffers are reinforced and return to their normal levels.

This study is limited to a homogenous culture in which work is highly salient. Future research should include other cultures, other methods of exposure and further examine the distal effects.

The study examines the previously underexplored issue of individuals' psychological response to the impending changes in the workforce because of technological advancements.