The Impact Of Customer Interest And Brand Interest Psychological Ownership Of Front-line Sales Staff On Their Performanc

Front-line service personnel are the window for each enterprise to directly face customers,and their services directly affect the image of the enterprise and the impression of customers on the enterprise,thus indirectly affecting the overall performance of the enterprise.Front-line service personnel(generally refers to the staff who can directly contact with customers,including sales staff and customer service staff)represent the interests of the brand on the one hand,and the interests of customers on the other hand.Only when the interests of both parties are satisfied can transactions be promoted.Whether the interests of both parties can be satisfied will affect the performance of front-line service personnel.Based on the collected data,this paper has carried out the following three aspects of research:Study 1: Research on the influence of customer benefit psychological ownership on sales staff’s job performance in traditional manufacturing enterprises.By collecting performance evaluation data of sales personnel in traditional manufacturing enterprises,this study examined the positive impact of customer stewardship control(psychological ownership of customer rights and interests)on the work performance of front-line sales personnel in this type of enterprises,in which employees’ extra-role behavior plays an intermediary role.The research conclusion is consistent with the basic framework of the main effect path of customer stewardship control(psychological ownership of customer rights and interests)proposed by predecessors,indicating that customer butler control,as an informal control system,can affect work performance by influencing employees’ role behaviors,and can be an effective supplement to the formal control system.Theoretical contributions of Study 1: This is mainly reflected in the expansion of outcome variables in existing theories.Previous studies on the influence relationship between empirical variables on customer stewardship control(psychological ownership of customer rights and interests)stopped at the variable stages of in-role behavior(task performance)and out-of-role behavior(relationship performance).Research has not been conducted on the impact of in-role and out-of-role behaviors on employee job performance(e.g.,contribution to sales performance).The results of this empirical study show that customer benefit psychological ownership has a positive impact on employee performance.Study 2: Research on the influence of customer benefit and brand benefit psychological ownership on job performance of service personnel in platform-based enterprises.By collecting job performance data of front-line service personnel of ride-hailing platform enterprises,this study once again tested that the psychological ownership of customer interests of front-line service personnel would have a positive impact on their job performance.Different from the previous study,employees’ in-role behavior played an intermediary role.At the same time,this study also examined the positive impact of brand benefit psychological ownership on the work performance of front-line service personnel,in-role behavior plays an intermediary role,and customer benefit psychological ownership plays a positive moderating role in the influence of brand benefit psychological ownership on out-of-role behavior.In traditional organizational management research,the application scenarios of formal control systems based on principal-agent theory,such as activity control,outcome control and capability control,all require the existence of organizational managers.The analysis results of this study show that platform enterprises adopt digital "algorithm control" to manage front-line employees,and employees are no longer under the management of superior managers,and the assignment of work is also transferred from the hands of managers to computer algorithms.Therefore,due to the absence of managers,the formal control effect of platform enterprises on front-line employees may be weakened.At this time,employees play a major formal control role in the psychological ownership of brand interests of platform-type enterprises.At the same time,since customer stewardship control(psychological ownership of customer rights and interests)emphasizes the relationship between employees and customers,it also plays a supplementary control role in the informal control system,which can strengthen the positive effect.Theoretical contribution of Study 2: found the differences of existing theories in different application contexts,that is,compared the differences in the mediating role of in-role behavior and out-of-role behavior in the influence of customer benefit psychological ownership on employee performance among different types of enterprises(traditional manufacturing enterprises and digital platform enterprises).This study finds that in traditional manufacturing enterprises where front-line employees can exert their autonomous sales ability,extra-role behavior plays an intermediary role;In platform-type service enterprises with high normative requirements for employee behavior,in-role behavior of front-line service personnel plays an intermediary role.This interesting discovery has extended the theoretical boundaries of the application of customer butler theory in different types of enterprises.In view of this discovery,this paper discusses and suggests the possibility of further research in the future.Study 3: Research on the influence of psychological ownership of brand benefits on job satisfaction of service personnel in platform-based enterprises.By collecting job satisfaction data of front-line service personnel in ride-hailing enterprises,this study tested the positive impact of front-line service personnel’s psychological ownership of brand interests on their job satisfaction.Organizational identity played an intermediary role,and customer psychological ownership of customer interests played a moderating role in the impact of brand psychological ownership on organizational identity.The biggest difference between platform-based enterprises and manufacturing enterprises is that they use digital "algorithmic control" to manage front-line employees,and the distribution of work is transferred from the hands of managers to computer algorithms.Enterprises without grass-roots managers also lose the promotion space for front-line service employees.Therefore,the job satisfaction of front-line employees becomes particularly important.The analysis results show that brand benefit psychological ownership is a formal control system based on the principal-agent theory,while customer stewardship control(psychological ownership of customer rights and interests)is an informal control system based on the butler theory.They play a synergistic and complementary role and jointly affect the organizational identity,thus affecting the job satisfaction of employees.Theoretical contribution of Study 3: It is found that brand benefit and customer benefit psychological ownership jointly affect organizational identity and positively affect employee job satisfaction through organizational identity.These findings are cross-boundary research results in the fields related to sales management and organizational behavior,which belong to marketing management,and lay the foundation for further cooperation between these two fields in the future.The existing research on front-line employee management mainly focuses on the applicability of principal-agent theory and butler theory model.On the contrary,this paper studies the performance of front-line service employees from the integrated perspective of principal-agent theory and butler theory.The innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in the following aspects:(1)More and more scholars in the academic circle believe that breakthroughs in a field often come from outside this field and from the combination of research achievements in other fields.This is often referred to as "crossover" research.From another perspective to study and solve problems,often can get unexpected results.The research findings of this paper are the cross-boundary research results in the fields related to sales management theme and organizational behavior,which belong to marketing management,and lay the foundation for further cooperation between sales management and role behavior of front-line service personnel in the future.(2)Domestic academic literature on the management of front-line service personnel in digital platform enterprises is still lacking.The introduction of customer stewardship control(psychological ownership of customer rights and interests)into this field is innovative.(3)Previous studies on the control of customer butler paid more attention to the main effect.In this paper,the original main effect boundary was expanded.Customer stewardship control(psychological ownership of customer rights and interests)is an informal control system,which can strengthen the positive effect and weaken the negative effect on the original formal control system.This paper empirically tests the strengthening effect of customer butler control on the formal control system of psychological ownership of brand interests in the context of platform-type enterprises,which is an expansion of the main effect boundary.(4)Many of the original research theories were put forward based on manufacturing enterprises.In the current environment of platform enterprise operation in the era of digital economy,many theories need to be re-verified.Based on the combination of the butler theory and the principal-agent theory,this paper explores the impact of psychological ownership on employee performance in the context of platform enterprises,which is a re-verification of the original theory in different situations and also has some innovation.From the perspective of the integration of the principal-agent theory and the butler theory,this study not only expands the outcome variables of the existing theories,finds the theoretical boundaries in different application situations,but also lays the foundation for cross-border studies in the field of sales management and organizational behavior.The research conclusion also further proves that under the background of platform enterprises,the principal-agent theory and the butler theory are mutually integrated without being mutually exclusive,which not only shows the challenges that traditional marketing theories meet under the background of platform enterprises,but also provides the direction for future research from the perspective of theoretical integration.