| In professional service industries,to gain a competitive advantage and overcome the intangible nature of service,professional service firms usually adopt branding strategies.In the era of stakeholder-focused branding,brand co-creation is becoming a widespread practice.It results from dynamic social interactions between multiple stakeholders,including customers,employees,organizations,and brand partners.Recent marketing studies have recognized the critical role of customers in brand co-creation.Some marketing scholars have highlighted that firm employees constitute critical resources for brand creation and development.Good employee-customer interaction is a central premise of brand co-creation.However,there is a lack of in-depth research on the impact of employee-customer interaction in professional service industries on brand co-creation.The types of employee-customer interactions are not fully clear.Prior studies mainly focused on the effect of employee-customer interaction on corporate brands,leaving the impact on employee brand unexplored.This paper explores the types of employee-customer interaction in professional services.It examines the mechanism of the influence of employee-customer interaction on brand advocacy for the employee and organization from the theoretical and empirical aspects.Based on reviewing the related literature and theories,first,we chose graduate education as a scenario example of professional service.We conducted intensive individual interviews about the interaction behaviors between employees and customers in the higher education industry.Using the grounded theory from collected data,we identified three types of employee-customer interactions:functional,social,and ethical,and presented the concepts of the three interactions.We constructed a conceptual model of the effect of employee-customer interactions on consumer brand advocacy.We took the healthcare industry as another service scenario example based on this.We carried out field investigations of the interaction behaviors between employees and customers.We exploited the grounded theory to verify the three types of interactions.Second,taking healthcare service and tour service as scenario examples,we conducted quantitative empirical studies on the conceptual model in the healthcare and tourism industries,respectively.Through teasing out prior literature in the contexts of healthcare and tour services,we proposed the hypotheses of the relationships between latent variables in the conceptual model.We presented the measurement scales of all latent variables in the model.In order to examine the conceptual model of the effects of employee-customer interactions on consumer brand advocacy,we conducted questionnaire designs,questionnaire surveys,and quantitative analysis in the healthcare and tourism industries,respectively.We assessed the reliability and validity of the measurement scales.We used structural equation modeling to conduct the significance tests for multivariate causal relationships.We applied a series of nested models to compare the effects of the three types of employee-customer interactions on experiential quality and perceived value effects on employee and organization brands.We used the bootstrap method to assess the significance of the indirect effects of both mediating variables,including experiential quality and perceived value.Based on the empirical results in the above three professional service industries,we identified and verified the three types of employee-customers in the professional services,examined the role and mechanism of employee-customer interactions in brand advocacy,and illustrated the influence mechanism of employee-customer interactions on brand co-creation.Third,we presented the conclusions and gave the managerial implications,limitations,and future research prospects.The main conclusions are as follows.(1)In professional service industries,employee-customer interactions positively affect consumer brand advocacy for employees and organizations.Functional,social,and ethical interactions between employees and customers are positively affect the customers’ experiential quality.(2)Employee-customer interactions simultaneously enhance brand advocacy for the guide and travel agency through the mediating effects of experiential quality and perceived value.(3)Employees are important brand facilitators,and brand advocacy for the employee positively affects brand advocacy for the organization.(4)The perceived value has a stronger positive effect on brand advocacy for the employee than for the organization.(5)According to different service scenario,the three types of employee-customer interactions have different effects on experience quality.There are three main theoretical contributions of this study.First,this research identifies and verifies three types of employee-customer interactions in the above three professional service industries.Functional,social,and ethical interactions between professional employees and customers significantly impact experiential quality.The different effects of the three interactions on experience quality depend on the different service scenario.This finding extends research on employee-customer interaction models.Second,this study reveals how employee-customer interaction affects consumer brand advocacy,extending the brand research.Previous studies are aware of the vital role of employee-customer interaction in brand creation and mainly focused on the effect of customer-employee interaction on corporate brands,leaving the impact on employee brand unexplored.Our findings show that employee-customer interactions simultaneously foster consumer brand advocacy for the employee and organization through the mediating effects of experiential quality and perceived value.Our study contributes empirical evidence to service interaction impact on brand co-creation.Third,our findings reveal that professional employees act as brand facilitators.Brand advocacy for the employee positively affects brand advocacy for the firm.Our study enriches the brand co-creation literature in professional service industries.Our research findings offer important implications for corporate managers and employees in the professional service industries.(1)Firm managers should be aware of professional employees’ significant role in fostering corporate brand advocacy and employee brand advocacy.Employees should recognize that employee-customer interaction is reciprocal.Engaging customers in positive interaction can encourage them to promote brand advocacy for the corporate and its employees.(2)Based on the three aspects of interaction,our findings provide corporate with implications in the recruitment and training process on employees’ ability.(3)The three dimensions of interaction and the measurement of related variables provide valuable metrics to assess employee performance in customer interactions.It is helpful in understanding to standardize the behaviors of internal employees and establish assessment metrics.(4)Managers should encourage professional employees to actively develop personal brands and pay attention to employee retention. |
