Effects of retail employees' behaviours on customers' service evaluation

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual model of the effects of customer and service orientation (SO) behaviours of individual retail employees on individual customers' perceptions of service encounter quality (SEQ), service quality (SQ), value, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions (BI).Design/methodology/approachThe sample (n=271) was customers of a supermarket in central India, and they completed questionnaires following mall intercept. To test the hypotheses, structural equation modelling using LISREL 8.7 was employed.FindingsIt was found that: service and customer orientation (CO) behaviours are positively related to SEQ and SQ; SEQ is positively related to SQ and customer satisfaction; SQ is positively related to value perceptions and customer satisfaction; and customer satisfaction is positively related to retail customers' BI. However, value is not related to customer satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsMore research is needed on customer perceptions of value in non‐Western contexts and service evaluation frameworks in other cross‐cultural contexts.Practical implicationsRetail managers need to train or select retail personnel who are able to perform their roles in a service‐oriented and customer‐oriented way, and value does not appear to be as important to Indian retail customers as it is to Western retail customers.Originality/valueThis paper extends current service evaluation frameworks by including SO and CO as antecedents, and it analyses an Indian retail context.