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This research investigates the impact of customer rule violation issues on frontline employees' (FLEs’) burnout due-to-customers. A model and hypotheses are developed using COR theory and past literature on misbehaving customers and their effects on customer-facing employees.

The proposed model was assessed using a survey of 840 frontline retail, restaurant, service and caregiving employees and their reactions to the issue of misbehaving customers (i.e. rule breaking and/or rude customers).

FLEs' perceived frequency of customer rule violations, FLEs' concerns with misbehaving customers and FLEs' concerns with enforcing rules with these customers increased FLEs' burnout due-to-customers, while FLEs' customer orientation decreased it. Interactions among several antecedents were found relative to their effects on burnout. Burnout due-to-customers decreased FLEs' organizational commitment and increased quitting intentions. Additionally, this burnout mediated the relationships between our studied antecedents and job outcome variables (either partially or fully), with organizational commitment also mediating the relationship between burnout and quitting intentions.

The impact of FLEs' concerns relative to customers' rule breaking, which has not been previously addressed, is shown to increase FLEs' burnout due-to-customers, while FLEs' customer orientation buffered and reduced burnout, with frequency of violations interacting with several antecedents, and ultimately affecting burnout and several dependent variables—organizational commitment and quitting intentions. These FLE rule violation and enforcement concerns, captured at the height of the pandemic, are new variables to the literature. These issues have important implications for managers as to their treatment and training of FLEs in the future.

The purpose of this study is to explore consumers’ overall attitude toward relationship marketing and to determine the influence of consumers’ overall attitude on consumers’ intentions and behaviors. Many services companies practice relationship marketing and customer relationship management. Although the benefits and drawbacks of relationship marketing for consumers have been established, little is known about whether consumers have a relatively positive or negative attitude toward relationship marketing practices.

This research investigates consumers’ attitudes toward relationship marketing using a national survey of 245 consumers and a survey of 417 consumers living in the southern region of the USA.

Although approximately 70 per cent of our national consumer sample had a somewhat positive attitude toward relationship marketing, about 30 per cent had a somewhat negative or neutral attitude. Furthermore, approximately 39 per cent of consumers in the study would choose a company that does not engage in relationship marketing over a company that does. The results also indicate that consumers’ overall attitude toward relationship marketing impacts their likelihood to respond favorably to specific relationship marketing tactics.

Some limitations should be noted. First and not uncommon to most survey research in marketing, the relationships between constructs in this study may be inflated because of common methods bias. Second, this research reports the results from two studies. Although one of the studies represents a national sample, additional research using the scales developed in this research is needed.

This research indicates that consumers’ attitudes toward relationship marketing impacts their willingness to engage in relationships with service companies and their response to specific relationship marketing tactics. Because consumer attitudes toward relationship marketing vary, companies should consider segmenting their customer base using this information.

This study extends previous research by using quantitative techniques to measure consumers’ overall attitudes toward relationship marketing and assessing the influence of those attitudes on intentions and behaviors.

Shoppers often shop for and purchase products for other individuals during the course of routine shopping experiences. The purpose of this study is to investigate differences in the shopping trip based on whether the shopper is purchasing a product for him/herself, purchasing a product for someone else’s use that is not intended as a gift and gift purchases.

This research utilizes a survey of shoppers to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results of the study indicate differences in positive affect, flow, fantasy, satisfaction, hedonic shopping value and utilitarian shopping value across the three groups of shoppers. Individuals shopping for themselves generally have the lowest overall shopping trip outcomes, followed by those shopping for a non-gift product for another person. Those making gift purchases have highest shopping trip outcomes.

While existing shopping research generally assumes the shopper is making a purchase for him/herself, this study shows previous research by showing differences in the shopping trip based on who the shopper is making a purchase for, either him/herself or someone else. Additionally, this research also shows differences between shoppers making gift and non-gift purchases for another person.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how shoppers’ expectations regarding the amount of search and disconfirmation of these search expectations affect outcomes of the shopping trip.

A survey of shoppers is used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Survey results indicate that search disconfirmation is conceptually distinct from but related to search effort and search regret. The results show that negative search disconfirmation mediates the relationship between search effort and shopper satisfaction, hedonic and utilitarian shopping value, choice confidence, search regret and negative word-of-mouth intent.

The findings underscore that search effort itself is not negative for shoppers. However, when search effort is perceived as excessive compared to shoppers’ expectations, negative retail outcomes can occur. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

This paper aims to explore the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip to better understand the experiences and process that occur during these shopping trips. Adolescent girls and their mothers are an important shopping companion pair that has received minimal study.

This research investigates the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip using in-depth interviews with 28 mothers, adolescent daughters and retail employees in the USA.

The interviews reveal that the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip consists of three important developmental experiences: conflict and struggle, education and influence and bonding between mother and daughter. Similarities and differences between middle- and high-school daughters relative to these issues are explored.

This study is the first to bring together the interplay processes of conflict, education and influence and bonding during mother–adolescent daughter shopping trips. This study extends research regarding family identity interplay, companion shopping, adolescent identity development and consumer socialization. The authors find that the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip involves daughters’ efforts to separate from their mothers and form their own identities, often producing struggle and conflicts; daughters developing as consumers and individuals; and an opportunity to bond.