How situational circumstances modify the effects of frontline employees’ competences on customer satisfaction with the store

Laura Lucia-Palacios, Pérez-López, Raúl and Yolanda Polo-Redondo

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2020, vol. 52, issue C

Abstract: This article aims to analyze whether the effectiveness of frontline employees' competences (task and interaction) at managing customer satisfaction with the store differ depending on situational circumstances, specifically, on type of query (consultation vs. assistance) and store crowding. A qualitative study was used to investigate the importance of these two situational circumstances in sales encounters. Subsequently, the hypotheses were tested by a quantitative study based on a survey of 575 customers about their shopping experience. The findings indicate that the effect of frontline employees’ task competence on customer satisfaction increases when the store is crowded, while the effect of interaction competence is stronger in relation to consultation queries than to assistance queries. Important theoretical and practical implications for frontline employees and store managers are outlined.

Keywords: Customer satisfaction; Frontline employee competences; Situational circumstance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698918311135
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:52:y:2020:i:c:s0969698918311135

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.101905

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans

More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().