Michael D. Hartline

The Management of Customer-Contact Service Employees: An Empirical Investigation

The authors develop and test a model of service employee management that examines constructs simultaneously across three interfaces of the service delivery process: manager-employee, employee-role,...

Corridors of Influence in the Dissemination of Customer-Oriented Strategy to Customer Contact Service Employees

It is widely held that a customer-oriented firm is more likely to deliver exceptional service quality and create satisfied customers. However, little research has addressed the question of how the orientation can be disseminated among employees throughout the firm. This dissemination is especially important in service firms in which frontline, customer contact employees are responsible for translating a customer-oriented strategy into quality service. The authors propose a structural model that explains how service firms can disseminate their customer-oriented strategy by aligning the strategy with specific management- and employee-initiated control mechanisms (i.e., formalization, empowerment, behavior-based employee evaluation, and work group socialization) that lead to increased commitment and shared values on the part of customer contact employees. The findings indicate that there are three “corridors of influence” between customer-oriented strategy and shared employee values. The dominant corridor, which focuses on dual (management- and employee-initiated) control, emphasizes the importance of work group socialization and organizational commitment in the dissemination of customer-oriented strategy. A secondary corridor focuses on two management-initiated control mechanisms: formalization and behavior-based evaluation. The final corridor, which focuses on the empowerment of customer contact employees, has a more limited impact than originally hypothesized. The authors discuss implications for the implementation of customer-oriented strategy and the management of customer contact employees, along with several directions for further research.

Employee performance cues in a hotel service environment: Influence on perceived service quality, value, and word-of-mouth intentions

Abstract Whereas the performance cues of tangible goods have been studied extensively, very little research has examined performance cues within service environments. Performance cues play an important role within the service encounter, because they serve as signs of quality and value to consumers. One particularly important cue is the performance of customer-contact employees as they create and deliver service quality. The study reported here was designed to investigate employee performance cues within a hotel service environment. The results indicate that front desk, housekeeping, and parking employee performance have significant effects on perceived quality, whereas front desk and room service employee performance have significant effects on perceived value. The only performance cue having a direct effect on word-of-mouth intentions is the performance of housekeeping employees. Both quality and value increase word-of-mouth intentions; however, the effect of value is large relative to the effect of quality. The findings are discussed with respect to two conditions that may affect the relative importance of each performance cue: (1) the frequency of employee-customer interaction and (2) the tangibility of each performance cue. The authors also discuss managerial implications and directions for future research.

Brand equity: is it more important in services?

While the brand equity associated with tangible goods has received a great deal of attention in the literature, a basic understanding of the nature of brand equity for services has yet to emerge. Most of what is known about brand equity for services is based on theoretical or anecdotal evidence. In addition, the presumed differences in brand equity associated with search‐dominant, experience‐dominant, and credence‐dominant services has yet to be empirically examined. The objectives of this study are threefold: to empirically test whether brand equity is more important for services than for tangible goods, to test whether the presumed differences in brand equity for search‐, experience‐, and credence‐dominant services can be confirmed in an empirical examination, and to assess whether consumer knowledge of a product category has an effect on the importance of brand equity across product types. Contrary to suppositions in the literature, the results indicate that brand equity is more important for tangible ...

Customer and Frontline Employee Influence on New Service Development Performance

Service firms recognize the key role that product and process innovation play in building and sustaining competitive advantage in the marketplace. This empirical study tests a model of new service development (NSD) that enhances performance outcomes by prescribing specific roles for customers and frontline employees in the NSD process. Findings are based on in-depth managerial interviews and survey data collected from 160 organizations across a variety of service sectors. The results support hypotheses that customer and frontline employee participation in specific stages of the NSD process indirectly affects sales performance and project development efficiency outcomes. Positive effects are mediated by the new service success factors of service marketability and launch preparation. To produce successful new services, firms should involve customers in the design and development stages to help identify market opportunities, generate and evaluate new service ideas, define desired benefits and features of the potential service, and provide extensive feedback for product and market testing. Frontline employees are less effective than previously thought as a source of new service ideas. Firms should instead focus on incorporating those personnel in the full launch stage to effectively promote and deliver the new service.

Managing the Ethical Climate of Customer-Contact Service Employees

Marketing control theory serves as the framework for the development and testing of a model that examines factors (code enforcement, ethical discussions, and punishment for ethical violations) involved in the internalization of ethical codes by customer-contact service employees. The authors argue that code internalization and perceived ethical climate serve as social and cultural control mechanisms that enhance the attitudinal responses (role stress, job satisfaction, and commitment to service quality) of service employees. The findings suggest that enforcing ethical codes and discussing ethical issues on the job enhance code internalization, which in turn enhances perceptions of the ethical climate, reduces role conflict, and increases commitment to service quality. Ethical climate increases job satisfaction and indirectly affects commitment to service quality by reducing role conflict. Implications for controlling code internalization and managing the firm’s ethical climate are provided, along with suggested avenues for future research.

Guest Perceptions of Hotel Quality Determining Which Employee Groups Count Most

Understanding how guests evaluate service quality is important in designing an effective hotel strategy. Because guests base their evaluations on their perceptions of the service encounter, it is important that hotels manage those perceptions as effectively as possible. Arguably, the most important factor present within the hotel service encounter is the performance of customer-contact employees. Grönroos, in fact, argues that employee performance constitutes the service, as far as most customers are concerned. Thus, employee performance is an important cue used by guests to infer the overall quality of a hotel. Hotel competitiveness ultimately depends on the management of human resources. Hotels spend roughly 1 to 5 per-

Employee Collaboration, Learning Orientation, and New Service Development Performance

Businesses rely on knowledge interfaces to gather and integrate knowledge that drives innovation and builds competitive advantage. But key knowledge interfaces such as cross-functional teams (CFTs), frontline employees (FLEs), and learning orientation have not shown consistent effects on innovation outcomes in prior research. This study addresses that problem by testing a mediation model that extends the service-dominant logic service innovation framework developed by Ordanini and Parasuraman. Based on analyses of 160 new service development (NSD) projects, the authors find that CFTs, FLEs, and learning orientation consistently influence NSD sales and process efficiency outcomes when they first create a service having (1) superior attributes and expert frontline employee service delivery (service marketability) and/or (2) a well-targeted launch with formal promotion to internal and external markets (launch effectiveness). Those NSD project characteristics in turn yield favorable new service performance results. Specifically, service marketability and launch effectiveness mediate the influence of CFTs on NSD outcomes. Launch effectiveness mediates the influence of learning orientation, and service marketability mediates the impact of FLEs. In ranking the organizational resources, the study finds that CFTs and learning orientation have greater effect on NSD sales performance than do FLEs. The results highlight the importance of aligning CFTs, FLEs, and learning orientation with NSD project characteristics in order to maximize sales performance and process efficiency.

Customer and employee co-creation of radical service innovations

Purpose – The study demonstrates that firms can effectively involve customers in new service development (NSD) to create radically innovative, high-performing new services. Prior research found no effect of customer involvement on radicalness in NSD programs, but the current study provides evidence that customer involvement in the design stage of NSD projects can increase the radical innovativeness of a new service. Design/methodology/approach – Surveys from 160 firms captured information on the development process, participants and outcomes of recent service innovation projects. Direct effect and mediation hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Findings – Customer involvement in the NSD process increases the innovativeness of a new service when customers are involved in the design stage and when the influence is mediated by process complexity. Customer involvement in the development stage has no significant effect on service innovativeness. Process complexity also mediates the positiv...

Codes of ethics among corporate research departments, marketing research firms, and data subcontractors: An examination of a three-communities metaphor

Despite the importance of the interorganizational nature of the marketing research process, very little research has addressed how research organizations differ and how they affect each other in the conduct of ethical marketing research. The purpose of this study is to examine differences among three typical participants in the research process: corporate research departments, marketing research firms, and data subcontractors. These organizations were examined with respect to having and enforcing internal codes of conduct and the awareness and enforcement of external codes of conduct. By exploring these differences, this study should help marketing researchers better understand the relationships among participants in the research process. Understanding these differences is the first step toward controlling the potential for ethical conflict among research participants.