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Technology has advanced and led the revolution of the online e-commerce industry through various online platforms. These online platforms were integrated to enhance customer's shopping experience, promoting different business models including consumer-to-consumer (C2C) secondary e-commerce market. This new online business model has been gaining interest in both academia and industry due to potential opportunities and challenges to serve customers effectively. This study aims to draw upon the means-end theory to test a conceptual model to understand the role of engagement between different types of trust and satisfaction toward shopping on C2C e-commerce.

A quantitative survey method was developed to test the antecedents and mediator of C2C customer satisfaction. A panel service was used to collect the dataset (n = 294) to test the proposed extended means-end chain theory (MEC) model.

The authors found that the role of trust toward the platform provider and the third-party seller differs based on the perceived value (functional and emotional) and impact of trust on satisfaction. This study provides a rich conceptualization of an instrument for a C2C experience that can serve as a starting point for future research to investigate the antecedents and impacts of the C2C context.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses further in a different context (e.g. country).

The paper includes implications for a guide to designing an effective online C2C retailing strategy.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how engagement serves different role depending on the trust consumers have toward the intermediary vs the seller, which has a subsequent effect on consumer's satisfaction.

Frontline service employees’ (FLEs) positive personality traits enhance service experiences, for both employee and customer outcomes. Yet, limited research addresses negative personality traits. Drawing on the emotion regulation framework, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model in which three negative personality traits – Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism (the so-called dark triad (DT)) – represent antecedents, and FLE emotion regulation strategies (surface and deep acting) are mediators, all of which predict job satisfaction.

The test of this model includes occupationally diverse samples of FLEs from an individualistic (the USA) and a collectivistic (Japan) country, to assess the potential moderating role of culture.

The findings suggest that Machiavellianism relates more positively to surface and deep acting in Japan, whereas psychopathy relates more negatively to surface acting than in the USA. Unexpectedly, narcissism exhibits mixed effects on surface and deep acting in both countries: It relates positively to surface acting in the USA but prompts a negative relationship in Japan. The positive narcissism–deep acting relationship is also stronger for Japanese than for US FLEs. These findings help specify the effects of negative personality traits on important employee outcomes.

This is the first study that relates service employees’ DTs with emotional labor resulting in new avenues for further research. The findings are managerially relevant because they help specify the effects of negative personality traits on important employee outcomes.