Service Orientation and Customer Performance: Triad Perspectives of Sales Managers, Sales Employees, and Customers

Abstract

This study examines how shop managers’ attitudes toward customers are transferred to sales employees, and thus affect customer performance. We surveyed shop managers, sales employees, and customers in five department stores in Seoul, South Korea, in June 2021 to determine the relationships among service orientation, customer orientation, customers’ perceptions of sales employees’ authenticity, and customer performance. We found that sales managers’ service orientation positively influences sales employees’ service and customer orientation. Furthermore, this orientation positively correlates with customers’ perceptions of sales employees’ authenticity, thereby improving service performance and customer loyalty. Few studies have examined how institutional-level capacity and attitudes influence employees within organizations and how this, in turn, affects service performance. Thus, this study theoretically and empirically explores how sales managers’ attitudes and sales behaviors are transferred to sales employees and how this affects customer performance. The research findings fill a gap in the current understanding of customer performance in the service industry.

The relationship among relationship-selling, celebrity attachment and customer engagement

“…Cooperative intention has a positive and significant impact on the emotional attachment with Internet celebrities. This result echoes that of Yi et al. (2022), that is, if two interacting parties can provide mutual assistance and cooperation, friendship and emotional attachment between them will also be relatively high.…”

“…Among buyers, who feel that their suppliers are providing a symbolic, long-term, particularistic benefit, this mutualism is explained entirely by the mediating effect of the relationship's cooperative norms (Vieira et al, 2023). When customers perceive sales employees' attitudes and activities as authentic, rather than calculated or mechanical, they are more likely to associate positive emotions with the acquired products and services (Yi et al, 2022). Positive emotions and attachment lead to greater commitment to products, services, or brands, yielding customer loyalty (Yi et al, 2022).…”

“…When customers perceive sales employees' attitudes and activities as authentic, rather than calculated or mechanical, they are more likely to associate positive emotions with the acquired products and services (Yi et al, 2022). Positive emotions and attachment lead to greater commitment to products, services, or brands, yielding customer loyalty (Yi et al, 2022). This study argues that cooperation intention can enhance customers' emotional attachment to Internet celebrities; additionally, it enables the celebrity to provide superior services to help solve customers' problems, reduce insecurity and build confidence.…”

Emotional intelligence and boundary‐spanning behavior among door‐to‐door salespeople

“…Equally, in their study that assessed “Service orientation and customer performance: Triad perspectives of sales managers, sales employees and customers, Yi et al. (2022) used triadic data from sales managers, sales employees, and customers.…”

Personal Workplace Relationships: Unifying an Understudied Area of Organizational and Personal Life

“…It is the focus of Henningsen and Henningsen’s [ 78 ] experimental investigation of flirting in task groups, research that extends their prior work on attraction and flirting in the group context [ 79 , 80 ]. Instrumentality is also implicit in Yi et al’s [ 81 ] survey study on interpersonal attention and communication in sales settings, complementing their prior research on sales personnel and organizational performance [ 82 ].…”