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The purpose of this study is to develop and test a model of the antecedents and outcomes of one aspect of customer mind-set (CMS) – external CMS (ECMS) — among front-line employees. The goal of this paper is to help managers address customer-level orientation by further investigating the external dimension of CMS (referred to as ECMS).

Data were gathered from a sample of front-line employees of a variety of firms located in a mid-sized southeastern US city.

The results indicate that greater amounts of job autonomy and job satisfaction are positively associated with front-line employee ECMS, while the employee’s global role ambiguity, customer-specific ambiguity and role conflict are negatively associated with ECMS. In turn, front-line employee ECMS is associated with increased work motivation and sales performance.

The data are cross-sectional in nature; so, strictly causal relations cannot be inferred from these results. Also, the sample primarily consists of younger females with less work experience and who are employed at smaller organizations. Therefore, future research should further test these relations in different samples to increase the robustness of the results.

This research utilizes a rich description of the front-line employee’s job attitudes and work characteristics to build a model describing their association with the extent to which the ideas of market orientation have taken hold at the operational level and their relationship with the employee’s motivation and subsequent performance. It shows that both internal and external characteristics are associated with front-line employee ECMS, which itself is very strongly related to desirable job outcomes.

The firm’s financial performance is most directly affected by how well it serves its external customers. However, there has been no research on the role and the consequences of employee ECMS. There are only a few studies (less than five) that have empirically explored the CMS. Therefore, the many potential benefits from a deeper understanding of a market orientation culture and behaviors at the level of the front-line employee remain unclear, particularly in regards to its ECMS dimension.

The purpose of this paper is to extend Zablah et al.’s (2012) findings regarding the proper way to treat customer orientation (CO) to the study of CO among B-B salespeople in one of the most important emerging economies, India.

The authors of this study hired a professional market research firm based in Chennai, a large metropolitan city in Southern India, to manage data collection. The authors used a competing models approach to test the relationship between constructs.

CO among frontline employees operating in one of the largest emerging economies is best treated as a psychological construct that is both directly and indirectly related to performance via its ability to reduce stress and improve engagement. This finding strengthens the view of CO as a universal human work value and, more broadly, that such values operating across different cultural setting do exist. In addition, external customer mindset appears to offer a superior means to measure CO than does the widely used CO component of the SOCO scale. This conclusion is based not only upon the fact that it conceptually corresponds with the psychological nature of CO, but also that in this initial examination it exhibits a greater ability to explain employee job performance.

Managers who are able to screen and hire employees with greater CO work values should experience improved performance outcomes and also less customer ambiguity and greater satisfaction among their frontline employees. Since CO proscribes the proper way to deal with customers, greater levels of CO beliefs would counteract customer ambiguity among frontline employees operating in any environment. Accordingly, when filling frontline positions, managers should actively seek out employees who earnestly embrace the role of taking care of customers. Managers are advised to not only emphasize on salespeople whose foremost role is to take care of their customers but also to find ways to familiarize them with their products and to provide them with information regarding customer characteristics such as their background, the relationship history (especially past service and product failures), and unique preferences.

Aster Retail (AR) is the retail pharmacy division of the Aster Dr Moopen's Healthcare (ADMH) Group. The group delivers healthcare services across the Middle East, India and the Far East, with a portfolio of hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centres and retail pharmacies. AR, under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jobilal Vavachan, is well known for its people-centric approach, unique culture and innovative human resource (HR) practices. AR has won multiple awards for HR practices, service quality and business performance. In a recent corporate restructuring (2018), “Aster Primary Care” was carved out by combining the group's Clinics and Retail businesses. This case discusses the evolution of AR's HR journey and the challenges associated with integrating culturally diverse businesses without compromising the values of ADMH and its promise, “We'll Treat You Well.”

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the integrative effects of abusive supervision (AS), perceived injustice (PI) and ethical conflict (EC) on occupational turnover intentions (OTI) among frontline employees (FLEs). Furthermore, the mediating role of quiescent silence (QS) is examined.

The authors collected survey-based data from 320 FLEs working in different service sector organizations of Pakistan. The snow-ball sampling technique is employed to approach respondents of this study. The collected data are analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using SmartPLS 3.0.

The AS, PI and EC are found to collectively predict OTI among FLEs with a mediating effect of QS. The EC is the strongest predictor of OTI.

The results imply that service managers must ensure that employees are treated fairly. Furthermore, relevant trainings are offered to FLEs in order to maintain the required ethical standards at work to reduce EC perceptions.

The study is pioneer in presenting the relationship between QS and occupational turnover among FLEs. Furthermore, the study advocates the mediating role of employee quiescent silence to enrich the relationship between socio-psychological factors (i.e. AS, EC and PI) and OTI.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether individual market orientation facilitates the development of learning orientation before influencing business-to-business (B2B) salespeople’s performance within the banking industry.

Data were gathered from 539 B2B salespeople from 18 licenced local and foreign financial institutions in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by means of a structured survey. The individual market orientation (I-MARKOR) scale was used to measure their market-oriented behaviour specifically in terms of information acquisition, information dissemination and coordination of strategic response. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis via structural equation modelling to examine the hypothesized relationships.

Information Dissemination and Coordination of Strategic Response are reported to impose significant intervention effects on the relationship between learning orientation and job performance. Salespeople who embrace positive learning values are in a favourable position to disseminate and respond to new market information. Subsequently, these behaviours helped them to achieve higher levels of job performance.

By assessing and profiling the market-oriented behaviour of their salespeople, firms will be able to focus on the right competencies training and market-focussed performance appraisal.

This paper contributes to the enrichment of the existing literature on individual market orientation and learning orientation by proposing a model that was empirically tested to be a valid and reliable predictor of job performance.

Grounded on resource-advantage (R-A) theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer orientation, as a higher-order or interconnected operant resource, enhances firm performance through creativity capability (i.e. idea generation and problem solving) and innovation capability (i.e. the implementation of creative ideas) – among firms of different sizes and within different market contexts. The authors conceptualize customer orientation as a firm’s capacity to create and deliver superior customer value through the processing of market intelligence, as demonstrated by the firm’s composite operant resources of market-sensing, customer-relating and customer-response capabilities.

Data were collected via qualitative in-depth interviews for scale development followed by a mail questionnaire survey for quantitative responses. A final sample size of 190 firms based in Thailand participated and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping multi-group comparisons to investigate the hypothesized mediation and moderation effects.

Customer orientation enhances organizational creativity and innovation capabilities, which improve firm revenue and financial performance. The relationships among customer orientation, creativity capability, innovation capability and firm performance vary depending on firm size, market dynamism and customer type.

Managers need to consider contextual factors, particularly firm size, market dynamism and the nature of their buyer markets as key contingencies in their resource deployment decisions intended to develop customer orientation and innovation capabilities.

This study advocates R-A theory by empirically revealing how different hierarchical resources within a firm are intertwined to provide firms with competitive R-A. The findings further highlight a contingent nature of customer orientation–innovation–performance relationships among firms in an emerging economy.

Research on the commitment to customer service (CCS) typically considers either trainable behavior or external stimuli such as financial incentives vital to CCS. Utilizing the cultural context of Confucian Asia, this study proposes a novel approach that shifts the focus towards the antecedents of the informal institutional environment.

This research considers four informal institutions typical for Confucian Asia about their influence on CCS: power distance, perceived individual independence, openness to change, and informal network ties. Hypotheses are tested in a structural equation model using data obtained from a South Korean subject pool.

Results show that informal institutions like power distance and network ties, and mediators like perceived individual independence and openness to change are positively related to CCS. Power distance and network ties also have a direct positive effect on openness to change. Moreover, power distance negatively affects perceived individual independence.

The authors' findings contribute to the service management literature by showing that a given CCS of service employees can be explained by antecedents of the company's informal institutional environment.

From a human resource perspective, the informal institutional environment should be taken into account when establishing a supporting organizational culture and designing management training programs.

This research introduces the institutional view to services management research, focusing on the role that informal institutions play. In particular, factors like power distance and network ties that influence CCS are tested for the first time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of internal marketing orientation, external marketing orientation, and subjective well-being on the affective organizational commitment of frontline employees.

Previous research was used to develop hypotheses and develop a questionnaire for this project. An online survey was completed by 108 frontline employees.

The hypothesized model of all three variables having positive effects on organization commitment was supported. Internal marketing orientation, external marketing orientation, and subjective well-being were significant predictors of affective organizational commitment.

A key limitation of this study is the cross-sectional, data collection design. A longitudinal study would allow for increased confidence when evaluating causal inferences with this type of data.

This paper identifies how managers may be able to use internal marketing orientation, external marketing orientation, and subjective well-being as potential tools to increase the affective organizational commitment of frontline employees.

This paper demonstrates the importance of subjective well-being as an important component of life for an employee and success of the organization.

This paper extends current research on affective organizational commitment by testing a new model that includes internal marketing orientation, external marketing orientation, and subjective well-being as predictor variables.

This study aims to investigate the reliability of a mystery client (MC) as a service evaluation technique taking into consideration personal differences of the MC agents.

The ratings from 144 MCs from 355 evaluations of computer and electronic stores were cross analyzed with eight psychographic and demographic profile variables.

MCs who were highly involved in the product category were more critical of service responsiveness with respect to product demonstrations and listening to customer requirements. On the other hand, MCs with stronger faith in intuition were more inclined to rate services higher on empathy with respect to employees making a conscientious effort to understand customers’ needs.

Depending on the service marketing goals, managers learn to define which aspects of MC profile they should consider or avoid during the recruitment as well as becoming more critical when they analyze the evaluation reports to avoid an interpretation bias.

The usefulness of the MC tool relies on its reliability and credibility as a marketing research technique. It was identified that the MC personality traits are more likely associated with marketing service evaluation variability.

The purpose of this study is to explore how service employee choice and use of language to initiate and maintain conversation with second generation immigrant customers (SGIC) influence customer evaluation of the service encounter, and whether such employee acts may lead customers to employee switching, branch switching (i.e. switching from one to another location within the same brand) and/or brand switching (switching to another brand altogether).

A scenario-based between-subjects experiment of 4 (employee: match, adapt, bilingual, no adapt) × 2 (fast food, post office) × 2 (English, Spanish) was used to examine the SGIC response to service encounters in different contexts arising from employee choice and use of language. These scenarios were complemented with a series of measurement scales. The instruments, which were identical except in scenario sections, were administered on 788 second-generation Mexican American customers, resulting in 271 (fast food) and 265 (post office) effective responses.

In both service contexts, when employees initiated conversation that matched (English or Spanish) the customer expectations, the SGIC perceptions of interaction quality was higher as compared to other scenarios, leading to subsequent satisfaction and lower switching intentions (employee and branch). Similarly, interaction quality was higher for adapt scenarios as compared to bilingual or no adapt scenarios. Bilingual customers perceived higher interaction quality in bilingual/no-adapt scenarios when compared to monolingual customers. In both contexts, service quality and satisfaction were associated with employee switching and branch switching, but not with brand switching.

By utilizing interaction adaptation theory to conceptualize the effects of employee choice and use of language, the study grounds the model and the hypotheses in theoretical bases and provides empirical corroboration of the theory. The study also contributes toward understanding the service encounters from the perspective of an overlooked group of vulnerable customers: second-generation immigrants.

Service research cautions service providers that a key factor in attracting and retaining customers is having detailed communication guidelines and empowering employees to follow those guidelines. The findings go a step further and underscore the critical role of communication from a managerial standpoint. It is in the interest of service organizations to develop guidelines that will govern employee choice and use of language during service encounters. So doing is commercially justified because unguided employee choice and use of language can result in customer switching and attrition.

The juxtaposition between assigned versus asserted identities is an important one not only in social sciences but also within service research. As service encounters grow increasingly multicultural, the need to educate employees on multiculturally appropriate communication etiquette rises in importance. The findings should encourage service firms and local governments to develop formal communication guidelines that begin with multiculturalism as a central tenet permeating all aspects of employee–employee, employee–customer and customer–customer communications. Service providers ought to take precautionary measures to ensure customers will be empowered to assert their identities in their own terms, if they wish so.

The study demonstrates how employee choice and use of language during service encounters may thwart SGIC, who might view such employee behaviors as acts of identity assignment and, consequently, feel stigmatized, marginalized and offended; and links such customer experiences to switching behavior through mediatory mechanisms.