Service with improper requests: How fellow customers interpret Employee's judgment call

Lanlan Zhou, Min Gao, Yan Kou and Jianchun Yang

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2021, vol. 62, issue C

Abstract: In this paper, we examined the impact of different judgment calls by service personnel on service satisfaction, in response to inappropriate requests from customers. Based on the stereotype content model, we propose that employees servicing with these requests are often evaluated on two fundamental dimensions, warmth and competence, and the accessibility of one dimension over the other determines overall service satisfaction of fellow customers. Through three experiments, the current research shows that fellow customers perceive service employees who consent to an improper request as higher in warmth but lower in competence than those who reject the request. However, when the compliance has serious consequences for a fellow customer, this negatively affects the competence evaluation but not the warmth evaluation, which in turn reduce customer satisfaction. When the focal customer suffers from the serious consequences, this positively affect both competence and warmth perception, which in turn enhance fellow customer satisfaction. This research could be used to identify ways to handle improper requests made by customers.

Keywords: Inappropriate requests; Judgment call; Warmth; Competence; Customer satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:62:y:2021:i:c:s0969698921002137

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102647

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