Search results

Do customers recognize the effort and abilities of employees in service encounters? If so, to what extent do their perceptions influence customer satisfaction? The paper seeks to answer these questions.

Two empirical studies, including a critical incident study and a video‐based experiment. Theoretically, this paper builds on motivation theory, naïve psychology, and attribution theory.

Customers spontaneously and explicitly judge service encounters on the basis of service employees' effort and abilities, perceived through certain behavioral cues. The specific, direct impact of perceived effort and abilities on customer satisfaction varies for different service types.

Taking different dependent variables into account (e.g. customer emotions, customer loyalty and brand perceptions) might offer a valuable contribution to the fields of service or brand research.

Companies must examine customers' perceptions of their employees' encounter behavior in depth to evaluate and effectively and efficiently manage perceived effort and abilities as the main determinants of customer satisfaction. They should acknowledge behavioral training represents a significant satisfaction management approach.

The paper offers interdisciplinary theoretical foundation, brings in innovative research methods and combines content and methodology to a new scientific framework for the field of service research as well as practical application for companies.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the effects of organizational and technological barriers to knowledge sharing between large and small firms through the lens of attribution theory.

The structural equation modeling approach was applied to estimate the conceptual model by using survey data from a list of Taiwan’s top 1,000 manufacturing and 500 service companies. A total of 229 valid questionnaires were collected.

The empirical results show that both organizational and technological barriers have relationships with an individual’s effort and ability with regard to knowledge sharing behavior. When organizational barriers occur, the perceived lack of effort has a direct effect on knowledge sharing behavior for large firms, while negative sharing behavior among employees of small firms is influenced by the perception of low ability through the perceived lack of effort.

A review of the literature reveals organizational and technological barriers that lead to the negative influences of internal attributions on knowledge sharing. This study, therefore, contributes to a comprehensive perspective on how to encourage knowledge sharing behavior at different sizes of firms.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to identify the relationship, if any, between customers’ perceptions of justice (functional element) and employee effort (symbolic element) and their effects on satisfaction and loyalty in the context of service recovery and, second, to determine the impact of cross-cultural differences on these relationships.

Survey data from actual customers were gathered in three countries (n = 414) and analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results demonstrate the role of the constructs of perceived employee effort and perceived justice in influencing post-recovery satisfaction and loyalty across cultures. While perceived justice is valued across cultures, customers from feminine (masculine) cultures require more (less) employee effort to influence post-recovery satisfaction positively. Customers from low (high) uncertainty cultures are more (less) willing to give the provider another chance after a service recovery.

The study shows that both functional and symbolic elements of service recovery are important determinants of customer satisfaction and loyalty and that their influence can be significant in a cross-cultural context.

International service managers must consider the nature of cultural differences in their markets to develop and implement tailored recovery strategies that can result in satisfied customers.

This study is the first to integrate the functional and symbolic elements of service recovery, their impact on customers’ behavioral responses and the influence of cultural variations.

This study seeks to examine the effect of work-related boredom and a perceived lack of external stimulation on benevolent and entitled employees' perceived inequity and discretionary workplace behaviors.

A total of 668 useable three-wave panel data were obtained via Amazon Mechanical Turk during a three-month period. The hypothesized model was tested using a latent growth curve modeling via EQS 6.4 for Windows.

This study finds the following results. First, benevolent employees who experience higher initial work-related boredom report positive inequity. Second, entitled employees who experience higher initial work-related boredom and a perceived lack of external stimulation report negative inequity. Third, increases in work-related boredom and a perceived lack of external stimulation result in a faster increase in entitled employees' perceived negative inequity. Fourth, entitled employees who perceive higher negative inequity at the initial measurement period report higher interpersonal deviance. Finally, increases in entitled employees' perceived negative inequity result in a faster increase in interpersonal deviance.

This study highlights how employees may assess their effort and rewards when experiencing boredom. This study also offers some practical recommendations that help human resource managers manage boredom in the organization effectively.

This paper examines several sources of support for contact employees in service encounters. These sources of support, including organization support, supervisory support, and customer's participation, are proposed to affect the attitudes and behaviors of employees, and consequently affect customer's perceptions of employees' service quality. This study, which combines perceptions from customers and their contact employees, shows that three sources of support for employees contribute significantly to job satisfaction and employee service quality, while perceived organizational support and customer participation affect service effort. Also, the empirical results indicate that both employee service effort and job satisfaction play strong, central roles in determining customers' perceptions of employee service quality. They were found to be effective mediators linking employees' cognitive appraisal of various sources of support to service quality.

Despite the increased attention being paid to service delivery, lengthy waits for service are still common. This paper provides a conceptual and empirical examination of the effects of perceived employee action and customer prior experience, on reactions to service delays. The results of a field study of customers experiencing actual delays in a major retail bank are then discussed. The findings indicate that events and actions taking place prior to, during, and after the delay, affect consumer response. First, customers’ prior experience with that service provider is critical. Contrary to much of the literature on expectations, customers who had frequently experienced delays in the past were even more angered by the current service failure. Second, perceived employee effort during the delay had a tremendous impact on customers’ reactions. Irrespective of the length of the delay, when employees are perceived as not making a real effort, customer anger is high. Third, the impact of an apology is more complex. An apology is not a substitute for genuine employee effort. An insincere apology may even backfire, especially when customers experience frequent delays and believe employees are not making a concerted effort to help. Managerial implications for addressing this problem, before, during and after the delay, are discussed.

This research paper aims to provide an understanding of how customers evaluate other customers’ misbehavior, considering the attribution of responsibility and how service employees should react in the respective situation.

Two sequential studies using written scenarios are conducted, including manipulations for responsibility (deviant customer vs employee) and employee effort (high vs medium).

The results show that observing customers perceive misbehavior caused by the deviant customer as more severe and feel more intense negative emotions than when an employee is attributed as being responsible. Employee responsibility, however, elicits higher recovery expectations, which in turn decide the level of employee effort required to ensure observing customers’ satisfaction.

Due to the exploratory research objective and the use of a restricted sample and written scenarios, the studies may be subject to restrictions. Further studies will ensure generalizability.

Because different customer expectations arise from the respective responsibility for customer misbehavior, service employees should be encouraged to differentiate their efforts when approaching misbehavior. In case of their own responsibility, employees need to exert higher efforts to restore a functional service encounter, whereas in cases of customer responsibility, medium efforts are sufficient to stop the misbehaving customer.

This research contributes to understanding of cognitive and emotional responses to customer misbehavior considering the attribution of responsibility and indicates how service employees may handle these situations.

Although the effort‐reward imbalance (ERI) model of job stress has gained support in predicting employee health, it has rarely been examined in the context of the work‐home interface. This study aims to test an expanded ERI model in predicting work‐life conflict (WLC) in university employees. Three hypotheses relating to the ERI are tested. It is also predicted that lower organisational support for work‐life balance, less schedule flexibility and lower levels of separation between work and home life will lead to increased work‐life conflict.

In this cross‐sectional study, 1,108 employees working in UK universities completed questionnaires assessing ERI, WLC, schedule flexibility, employer support and work‐life separation/integration.

Strong main effects of job‐related efforts, rewards and over‐commitment on WLC are found. A significant two‐way interaction (effort×reward) and some evidence for a three‐way interaction effort×reward×over‐commitment) are observed. Perceived schedule flexibility and work‐life integration also make significant contributions to the variance in WLC. The final model explains 66 per cent of criterion variance.

As the study is cross‐sectional, causal relationships cannot be established.

This study extends knowledge of the ERI model as a predictor of WLC. More research is required into ways in which effort‐reward inequity and over‐commitment might threaten work‐life balance, together with the working practices and organisational factors which might modify this threat.

The ERI model has rarely been examined in the context of the work‐home interface. The importance of effort‐reward imbalance and over‐commitment to WLC has been highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the organizational recovery response to other‐customer failure influences the affected customer's level of satisfaction, unfavorable word‐of‐mouth (WOM), and repurchase intentions toward the firm.

Two experimental studies: 2 (complaint versus no complaint)×3 (employee effort (EE): high versus low versus no)×2 (compensation versus no compensation) were used to test the research hypotheses in a restaurant context.

In cases of other‐customer failure, the outcome valence (failure discontinues versus continues) influences how complainants and non‐complainants rate their perceptions of satisfaction and subsequent behavioral intentions toward the firm. Customers who perceive that there has been good EE made to help solve the problem of other‐customer failure give higher service evaluations than those who perceive little or no EE. Additionally, there are insignificant differences in the rating of satisfaction, repurchase intention, or negative WOM from customers in the latter group. Offering compensation is not a cure‐all. It has the strongest effect on non‐complainants in the low EE scenario.

Service managers need to design well‐balanced organizational recovery systems in terms of the outcome of recovery (i.e. compensation) and the way in which the recovery process is delivered (i.e. EE) to the affected customers in response to other‐customer failures. Since the influence of compensation on service evaluations is largely dependent on customer perceptions of employee‐effort, providing employees with the appropriate problem‐solving skills for working with both problem‐causing customers and the problem‐affected customers is a key issue for service marketers in cases of other‐customer failure.

The paper examines the importance of the as yet under‐researched issue of how organizational recovery responses to other‐customer failure influence a customer's service evaluations of the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying mechanism of customer co-creation in service recovery (co-recovery), and investigates the impact of initiation on customer post-recovery evaluations and behavioural intentions.

Researchers used a 3 (no co-recovery vs employee-initiated co-recovery vs customer-initiated co-recovery)×2 (male vs female)×2 (western vs eastern customers) between-subject experiential study in a hotel setting.

When a service employee initiates a co-recovery, customers perceive higher justice, greater satisfaction and a higher tendency to repurchase in the future. But if the customer initiates such a co-recovery, little improvement on these outcomes is found compared to a recovery entirely managed by the company. The effect was moderated by culture: western customers were more sensitive to initiation in the co-recovery process than eastern customers.

Written scenarios using a hotel setting and a technical error were used, and may reduce the applicability of the findings to real life or other service categories or types of error. Subjects used may not be representative of other population groups. Further studies using real life situations, human error and a more diverse population group are recommended.

A positive co-recovery can be achieved by service employees taking initiatives when a problem occurs.

This study extends previous research on co-recovery by investigating the effect of initiation by service employees on customers’ perception of co-creation. Service companies can improve customers’ post-recovery evaluations by inviting them to co-create a feasible solution, and potentially reduce the company's compensation costs.