Taeshik Gong

An integrated model of customer social exchange relationship: the moderating role of customer experience

This article addresses how the customer social exchange relationship affects customer satisfaction and, in turn, repurchase intention. On the basis of the stimulus–organism–response model, this article argues that perceived organisational support, perceived customer support, and perceived service provider support influence customer satisfaction, which in turn affects repurchase intention. Furthermore, this study argues that perceived organisational support is the most important predictor of customer satisfaction for high-experience customers, whereas perceived customer support is the most important predictor of customer satisfaction for low-experience customers. A survey of 144 users of the foreign language institute on a university reveals that most of these hypotheses are supported.

Helping employees deal with dysfunctional customers: the underlying employee perceived justice mechanism

While considerable research explores job stress interventions for employees dealing with legitimate customer complaint behavior, managerial interventions relating to illegitimate, unreasonably dysfunctional customer behavior have been largely overlooked. Drawing on justice theory and using survey and experimental data, this study investigates perceived justice as the underlying mechanism through which managerial interventions affect satisfaction and loyalty among employees exposed to dysfunctional customer behavior. In addition, this study explores the contingency factors that affect this relationship. The findings offer managerial insights into how to protect employees from detrimental consequences of highly negative interactions with dysfunctional customers. This research suggests that managers should continually reinforce employees’ perceptions of fairness through interventions such as social support, participation, empowerment, and reward. Results also indicate that managers particularly need to direct intervention efforts to employees who are exposed to frequent and seriously negative interactions with dysfunctional customers.

Effects of task complexity on creative customer behavior

Purpose Improving the creative performance of customers is critical to improving the competitive advantage of service firms. Customers that perform creatively and generate novel and useful ideas contribute to firm profitability by helping the firm save on costs and improve its services rather than merely relying on its employees. This paper aims to focus on creative customer behavior and examine its antecedents. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on a dyadic data set involving salespeople and their customers, collected over two periods across various industries in the context of business-to-business service deliveries. Findings Results indicate that customer task complexity affects creative customer behavior not through intrinsic motivation but through customer stress, and reveal that customer learning orientation and customer creative ability positively moderate these relationships. Originality/value Customers, salespeople and their managers should enrich the customers’ tasks with core job characteristics, in particular significance and feedback, and treat task stress as a positive, surmountable challenge that facilitates customer value creation. The results also indicate that to enhance creative customer behavior, managers should appreciate and develop customers’ learning orientation and creative ability, which in turn leads to increased sales performance and service quality.