Abstract
In a world in which customers are increasingly looking for solutions to their own concerns on how to make a better globalized world, new organizational strategies are emerging to approach the customer in the current third millennium. Servant leadership, which involves putting employees’ needs first and serving the broader society, is emerging as a new strategic mechanism to approach the customer in line with the new social values-driven Marketing 3.0 era. Yet research has ignored the role and the various mechanisms servant leadership might utilize to improve customer service performance of their service units. Spanning 185 hotels located in Spain, a sample of 247 service units –in close contact with customers– was used to investigate whether servant leadership enhances customer service performance through shaping a service climate within the service unit. Results revealed that service climate mediates the positive influence of servant leadership on customer service performance. Managers can use these findings to note the value of leading the service unit in a servant friendly direction, which is better aligned with the new aspirations of customers today.
Highlights
Recent marketing literature has begun to nurture from a new, very incipient perspective, the social values-driven Marketing 3.0 paradigm (Kotler et al, 2010), which proffers the idea that customers are increasingly seeking solutions to their own concerns and are interested in building a better world
In addition to making purchase decisions with an eye on external benefits gained or the pleasure acquired from the purchase decision itself, customers are more and more concerned about whether their purchase decisions contribute to solving the problems of someone else
Measurement Model By following the recommendations of Conway and Lance (2010), we present information related to good reliability and validity for our reflective measures as an additional test to show that common method bias (CMB) is not an issue in our study
Summary
Recent marketing literature has begun to nurture from a new, very incipient perspective, the social values-driven Marketing 3.0 paradigm (Kotler et al, 2010), which proffers the idea that customers are increasingly seeking solutions to their own concerns and are interested in building a better world. Looking at external performance outcomes, various studies have revealed clear positive effects of service climate on customers (Bowen and Schneider, 2014), such as, for example, customer service (e.g., Schneider and Bowen, 1985), customer satisfaction (e.g., Schneider et al, 1996), and customer loyalty (e.g., Salanova et al, 2005) This is because in scenarios where service climate is perceived, workers share the understanding that the behavioral norms and expectations are to prioritize the needs of others (Liden et al, 2014), customers, which encourages employees’ strong engagement in high-quality service behavior directed to the customer (Liao and Chuang, 2007).
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