Anna Zarkada

Value co-destruction between customers and frontline employees

Purpose – The incidents of customer abuse of frontline service employees during service encounters are increasing which has led to co-destructruction of value. The service strategists makers are struggling hard to frame a holistic picture of such incidents to be able to reduce the number of misbehaviour incidents but still are unable to achieve success. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate a social system perspective to study in detail customer misbehaviour incidents from the perspective of frontline banking employees and customers. Design/methodology/approach – The data from 33 frontline banking employees and 22 customers, 55 in total was collected by structured interviews. The data collection focused a critical incident technique and for the purpose of analysis, thematic analysis was optioned. Findings – The employees and customers both blame each other to trigger a misbehaviour incident during banking transactions. The results reveal a clear communication gap between employees and customers as n...

A philosophical investigation of the transition from integrated marketing communications to metamodern meaning co-creation

This article contributes to the recent problematisation of the co-evolution of philosophy and marketing thought as we experience a transition from the deification of greed, individualism and hedonic consumption seen during the postmodern period of the twentieth century to the brutal class restructuring and shattering of a number of illusions of metamodernity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It examines the philosophical foundations of advertising and communication and demonstrates the ways in which current technological and socio-political advances are rendering traditional approaches obsolete. As marketing is now recognised to be the mechanism par excellence for value co-production, so advertising – and communication in general – are but mechanisms of meaning co-production through a dialogue between the disillusioned but empowered consumer and the brand and corporation on solidarity, responsibility, morality, dignity and the sense of belonging in a community. It is hereby argued that values are far more relevant to contemporary consumers than the pursuit of an idealised lifestyle based on celluloid images of the imaginary Joneses, and thus it is advocated that discipline-wide changes need to be made.

The moderating effect of religiosity on ethical behavioural intentions: An application of the extended theory of planned behaviour to Pakistani bank employees

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate Pakistani bank front-line employees’ intentions to behave ethically by using the extended theory of planned behaviour (ETPB) into which religiosity (i.e. religious activity, devotion to rituals and belief in doctrine) is integrated as a moderating variable. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected 234 self-administered questionnaires and analysed them using SmartPLS 2.0, a second generation structural equation modelling technique. Findings This paper demonstrates that the ETPB can explain intentions to behave ethically. Moral norms (i.e. the rules of morality that people believe they ought to follow) and perceived behavioural control (i.e. people’s perceptions of their ability to perform a given behaviour) are the best predictors of ethical behavioural intentions. The effects of injunctive norms (i.e. perceptions of which behaviours are typically approved or disapproved in an organisation) and of perceived behavioural control on behavioural intent are moderated by religiosity. Practical implications Leading by example, providing ethics training, empowering employees and encouraging the expression of religiosity are proposed as ways to foster an ethical culture in the workplace. Originality/value Even though numerous empirical studies have utilised variants of the theory of planned behaviour to explain consumer behaviour, its applicability to ethical behaviour in the workplace has scarcely been explored. Moreover, its tests in non-western contexts are scant. This study demonstrates the applicability of the ETPB in a broader circumstantial and cultural context and enriches it with religiosity, a pertinent characteristic of billions of people around the world. Finally, this is one of the very few ethics studies focusing on banking, an industry fraught with allegations of moral breaches.

The impact of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control on managers’ intentions to behave ethically

This study employs a well-established psychosocial theory of a western, advanced economies-based model, that of the Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour, to study the intentions to behave ethically of Telecom and Bank managers. A researcher-administered paper-based survey was conducted among 484 managers working in banking and telecom organisations in Pakistan. The collected data were analysed by means of second-order confirmatory factor analysis. The results reveal three independent variables of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control to strongly influence the ethical intentions of customer service managers. The relationship between customer service managers and their customers is more than anything else based on trust which cannot become established without not only an image of ethicality in the eyes of customers but also by clear demonstrations of ethical behaviours by frontline. The findings of this study are helpful in guiding customer service managers from banking and telecom sectors to foster an ethical workplace culture based on strengthening their staff sense of control and support in applying ethical norms. This is the first application of the extended Theory of Planned Behaviour model to predict ethical intentions of frontline customer service managers working in high-contact service organisations in a developing, Asian country.

Hosting a Successful Metamodern Party: Mixed Methods Management Research on the Web 2.0+

There is an academic consensus that mixed methods designs can help overcome the inherent limitations of single method protocols because they simultaneously provide data depth and breadth whilst safeguarding generalisability and transferability of results. Still, their use in academic research remains limited due to the high costs involved. In this chapter it is argued that a large part of the resource restrictions can be reduced by using the internet for sampling and data collection.

Customer aggression and organizational turnover among service employees: The moderating role of distributive justice and organizational pride

Purpose The episodes of customer rage with employees during service encounters are common and adversely affect the long-term commitment of employees with an organization. The service organizations, in an effort to control employee turnover, are striving hard but have failed. There are a wide variety of studies that address employee turnover but the research which encapsulates a combined effect of perceived justice and organizational pride to study exhaustion-turnover path are almost scant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of customer aggression on the frontline food service managers’ emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions. The mitigating effects of perceived distributive justice and emotional organizational pride are also investigated. Design/methodology/approach Survey data were collected from 250 frontline employees of global fast food chain outlets located in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling by AMOS. Findings The customer aggression is found to influence emotional exhaustion which in turn reduces job satisfaction and increases turnover intentions among frontline food service managers. The mitigating effects of distributive justice on the customer aggression to emotional exhaustion path and of emotional organizational pride on the job satisfaction to turnover intentions path are confirmed. Practical implications The results reveal importance of maintaining a supportive and justice-oriented organizational culture. Rewarding frontliners, celebrating the organizational successes that build pride, and acknowledging the emotional burden misbehaving customers place on employees are identified as shields to guard against employee dissatisfaction and turnover. Originality/value The turnover intentions resulting from the emotional exhaustion caused by customer aggression in the global fast food industry is studied for the first time. Furthermore, the inclusion of distributive justice and emotional organizational pride as cognitive and affective factors that reduce the effects of customer aggression on frontliners is unique to this study.

EXPLORING SOCCER FANS’ SCHEMATA REGARDING GLOBAL VS LOCAL HUMAN BRANDS

Via an exploratory survey we decoded the interplay of the multiple points of attachment leading the consumer to the soccer field. Results indicate that local soccer player brands’ conceptual property which lies with the shared bond of team identification and is leveraged reciprocally, adds both to the human and the organizational brand equity.

Training Young Female Entrepreneurs on a National-Scale: The Greek 'Genesis' Project Case Study

This paper presents a model of training for young females in metropolitan as well as semi-urban and rural areas addressing the barriers and skill and competencies needs of a generally disadvantaged social group. The model formed the basis of a large scale intervention implemented through a partnership between the largest in terms of research output and student numbers Greek universities and government. The development, deployment and evaluation process are detailed and conclusions and recommendations on how this project can serve as a blueprint for other countries wishing to address the problem of female employment and economic development through entrepreneurship with an emphasis on new technologies.

The Effect of Performative and Social Legitimation on Brand Equity: A Customer – Based Approach

Customer brand support is intensively used among marketers and marketing academics. It designs the support that the consumer markets give to the brand building thus or enhancing brand equity variables. This support refers mainly to the brand equity variables as they have been introduced by Aaker (1992). Consumer based brand equity is not only a financial indicator for contemporary companies balance sheets; it a leading factor for companies’ social and performative legitimation, leading the company to a unique brand orientation, which makes it more competitive. This brand orientation is examined in this research paper as an outcome of both legitimation types previously mentioned, and customer based brand equity stemming from customers based support. The paper empirically explores these relationships based on researcher administered questionnaire survey of 244 British and Greek easy jet customers.