Is the Customer Always Right? The Influence of Customer Aggression on Work Emotional Exhaustion of Front-Line Service Employees

Yi-Ran Shi and Gui-Cheng Shi ()
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Yi-Ran Shi: Macau University of Science and Technology, School of Business
Gui-Cheng Shi: Macau University of Science and Technology, School of Business

A chapter in Proceedings of the 2025 3rd International Academic Conference on Management Innovation and Economic Development (MIED 2025), 2025, pp 1076-1083 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In the field of relationship marketing, the concept that “the customer is always right” is not always reasonable, especially when facing aggressive customer behavior. Based on previous research on uncivilized behaviors of customers in the workplace, this paper selects the front-line service staff in the hotel industry as the research object. Customer attacks negatively affect the emotional exhaustion of front-line service staff, which has important cognitive value and practical significance. Based on the above background, this paper sorts out and analyzes the related research on customer aggression, cultural ability, negative reciprocity concept, work emotional exhaustion, etc. It is found that the current research on customer aggression in the hotel industry is relatively limited, and the research on the boundary conditions of customer aggression within the industry is few and far between, lacking theoretical guidance and practical significance. Therefore, this study will take previous and current research as the foothold and be based on social cognitive theory to explore which boundary conditions are the main factors affecting customer attacks and the work emotional exhaustion of front-line service staff, and to study the relationship among the three. This study will use Spss and Amos to verify the data of the model and hypotheses and then put forward specific suggestions on how to alleviate the work emotional exhaustion of front-line service employees.

Keywords: Social cognitive theory; Customer aggression; Cultural competency; Negative reciprocity beliefs; Work emotional exhaustion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.2991/978-94-6463-835-6_115

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