Research On The Influences Of Customer's Positive Feedback Behaviours On The Frontline Employee

Although customers are the important ingredient of the fontline service employees'(FLSE) daily dealings, up to now the research is scare on customers' behaviors affecting the forntline service employees'behaviours or behavioural intentions. This thesis presented the concepts of the customer's positive appraisal behaviours on employee's service quality(CPA) and the customer's relationship building behaviours with the frontline service employee(CRB), namely, the customer's positive feedback behaviours(CPFB). The first kind of customer behaviour referred to the customers'direct or indiret activities showing their recognition of the frontline service employee's service quality, and the second kind of customer behaviour referred to the customers'voluntary activities during or outside of the service process to build a good relationship with the frontline service employee. This thesis mainly addressed how the two kinds of customer behaviours influencing three kinds of outcome variables important to the service organizations including the forntline service employee's effort intention, the frontline service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at the organization and their extra-role behaviours directed at the customers as well as the mechanism of the above factors functioning. Also this thesis compared the influencing power of the two kinds of customer's positive feedback behaviours with that of the other antecedent variables including the frontline service employee's affective organizational commitment and social norms. Two theoretical models were produced. The first was the integrated model on the frontline service employee's effort intention and extra-role behaviours directed at the organization,and the second was the integrated model on the frontline service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at the customers.With the help of the research questionnaires, matched data were collected from the samples of the university teachers and their students, the doctors and their patients, and the hairdressers and the beauticians and their customers. From the analysis of the structural equation models by the Amos7.0statistical software, the empirical research results are as following:1) CPA had significant positive direct impact on the service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at the organization, and had significant positive indirect impacts on the service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at the organization and service employee's effort intention through the mediating of the two positive affects, namely, the service employee's sense of achievement in the service work and their feeling of respect from the customers;2) CRB had significant positive direct impact on the service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at the customers, but the two positive affects did not play significant mediating role in the above relationship;3) the feeling of respect from customers played an mediating role during the course of CPA affecting FLSE's extra-role behaviours directed at the customers;4) when promoting service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at the organization,the customer's positive appraisal behaviours on employee's service quality had almost similar influencing power to the service employee's affective organizational commitment;5) with respect of the relative influencing power on the service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at the customers, social norms was the largest influencer, the two kinds of customer positive feedback behaviours was the inferior one, and the service employee's affective organizational commitment had no impact;6) the customer's relationship building behaviours with the service employee had unexpectedly (but nearly significant) negative influence on the service employee's effort intention, and then the customer's relationship building behaviours could be said to have both positive and negative (or two-side)influence on the service employees when considering their significant positive impact on service employee's extra-role behaviours directed at customers as well as negative impact on employees extra-role behaviours directed at the organization(although this negative impact was not significant).