A Dyadic Model of Customer Orientation: Mediation and Moderation Effects
| Author | Simon Brach,Thorsten Hennig‐Thurau,Markus Groth,Gianfranco Walsh |
| Published date | 01 April 2015 |
| Date | 01 April 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12049 |
A Dyadic Model of Customer Orientation:
Mediation and Moderation Effects
Simon Brach, Gianfranco Walsh, Thorsten Hennig-Thurau1and
Markus Groth2
Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Carl-Zeiss-Straße 3, 07743 Jena, Germany, 1Marketing Center
Muenster, University of Muenster, Am Stadtgraben 13–15, 48143 Münster, Germany, and 2Australian School
of Business, The University of New South Wales, Kensington NSW 2035, Australia
Corresponding author email: walsh@uni-jena.de
This research distinguishes between employees’ customer orientation (ECO) and cus-
tomer orientation as perceived by customers (COPC) to investigate the contingencies of
the relationship between these two constructs. Drawing on emotional contagion theory
and using a dyadic field study design, the authors examine whether ECO affects COPC,
as well as whether the link between ECO and COPC might be mediated by employees’
authentic emotional displays. They also examine service scripts and the accuracy with
which customers detect employees’ authentic emotional displays as moderators of this
mediated link. The findings confirm the important role of ECO as an influence on COPC
and provide evidence that employees’ authentic emotional displays mediate the effects of
ECO. In addition, service scripts and customers’ detection accuracy have moderating
effects.
Introduction
Service employees’ customer orientation, which
reflects their attitudes and predispositions to meet
customer needs on the job (Brown et al., 2002;
Harber and Fried, 1975), has been identified as a
key driver of customer outcomes, such as satisfac-
tion, commitment and loyalty (Dean, 2007; Goff
et al., 1997; Hennig-Thurau, 2004). Customer ori-
entation from a customer’s perspective is the
extent to which customers believe that the service
provider is committed to understanding and
meeting their needs (Dean, 2007). Despite sub-
stantial research into the correlates of employee–
customer orientation, the extent to which
customers recognize these customer-oriented atti-
tudes during real-life service encounters remains
unclear. With a few exceptions (e.g. Stock and
Hoyer, 2005), extant research almost exclusively
measures customer orientation from the service
employee’s or customer’s perspective and in
relation to customer outcomes, such that both
independent and dependent variables rely on
same-source data, from either the employee or
the customer. Some studies attempt to avoid
percept–percept correlations by using dyadic data
(e.g. Homburg, Müller and Klarmann, 2011;
Homburg, Wieseke and Hoyer, 2009), but they
do not specifically investigate the relationship
between employees’ customer orientation (ECO)
and customer orientation as perceived by custom-
ers (COPC), so they cannot reveal how these con-
structs differ, theoretically or empirically. Also
missing from the extant literature are studies that
examine the nature of the relationship between
ECO and COPC. In a practical sense, studying the
ECO–COPC link can also provide managers with
insights into ways to strengthen this relationship.
Despite some valuable advances in customer
orientation literature, including investigations
of the relationship between ECO and import-
ant service outcomes, two substantial gaps
persist in current literature. First, few studies
We thank anonymous BJM reviewers for their helpful
comments.
© 2013 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 26, 292–309 (2015)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12049
examine how employees’ self-reported customer
orientation relates to customers’ perceptions of
those ECO. Employee and customer perceptions
do not always match; the theoretical mechanisms
that describe how each side assesses employee
behaviours might even differ (Groth, Hennig-
Thurau and Walsh, 2009; Wieseke. Geigenmüller
and Kraus, 2012). This research gap appears to be
largely due to methodological reasons: Most
studies into the correlates of ECO use single-
source data, raising concerns about common
method variance, inflated correlations between
customer orientation and outcomes, and exagger-
ated customer orientation effects (Podsakoff
et al., 2003). But understanding the relationship
between ECO and COPC is theoretically impor-
tant for determining a firm’s ability to influence
customer outcomes.
Second, most knowledge about the effects of
customer orientation on relevant downstream
variables relies on bivariate findings. However,
once an association between two constructs has
been established, it is important to explicate the
processes by which one construct affects the other
(Bono and McNamara, 2011). To gain a more
complete understanding of the effects of ECO and
the ECO–COPC link, scholars need to examine
the contingencies of this relationship, including an
emphasis on its mediators and moderators.
Against this background, we seek to make three
contributions. First, we investigate the extent to
which ECO and COPC, as conceptually distinct
concepts, relate to each other. Do customers rec-
ognize ECO as such, or is there a substantial gap
between the perceptions of employees and the per-
ceptions of customers when it comes to customer
orientation? Second, noting the importance of
employee authenticity in employee–customer
interactions (e.g. Pugh, Groth and Hennig-
Thurau, 2011; Van Gelderen, Konijn and Bakker,
2011), we examine the impact of the authenticity
of employees’ emotional displays on the ECO–
COPC link. Do authentic emotions displayed
during service encounters mediate the relation-
ship between ECO and COPC? Employees’
authentic emotional display (i.e. acting sincerely
and expressing genuine emotions when interact-
ing with customers) has been regularly discussed
(e.g. Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006; Pugh, Groth
and Hennig-Thurau, 2011) but not empirically
linked to customer orientation. Third, we examine
whether organizational controls, in the form of
service scripts, affect the influence of ECO on
authentic emotional displays and whether the
latter effect on COPC depends on the customer’s
ability to detect employees’ emotions accurately.
In summary, we contribute to the literature by
developing and testing a model that depicts medi-
ated and moderated relationships between ECO
and COPC, using dyadic data, and thereby offers
implications at both conceptual and managerial
levels.
Distinguishing between ECO and COPC is
theoretically meaningful, because we cannot
simply assume that ECO is perceived as such.
Similarly, we cannot simply assume that only
COPC determines value creation with unique
influences on key service marketing outcomes.
This conceptual differentiation also gains value
when we couple it empirically with dyadic data
that can link ECO and COPC to important
mediator and moderator variables associated with
service performance: employees’ authentic emo-
tional displays, service scripts and customers’
ability to detect authentic employee emotions
accurately. The direct and indirect links of ECO
with customers’ perceptions of ECOs can guide
managers in their efforts to improve the customer-
oriented behaviour of their frontline employees.
Theoretical background and hypothesis
development
Frontline employees’ customer orientation
Zablah et al. (2012) show that customer orienta-
tion is associated with various antecedents
and multiple performance outcomes. However,
because most existing studies do not distinguish
between ECO and COPC, their findings might be
inflated by common method variance. Existing
studies also cannot reveal the actual impact of
ECO on customers, because customers’ percep-
tions of employee behaviour depend on their own
perceptual processing (Groth, Hennig-Thurau
and Walsh, 2009). For example, using a sample of
522 new car purchasers, Goff et al. (1997) test
whether salespeople’s customer orientation has a
positive effect on customer satisfaction with the
salesperson and the dealer. In the customer data,
they find a strong positive effect of COPC on
customers’ satisfaction with the salesperson and a
limited direct effect on satisfaction with the deal-
ership. Yet in acknowledging their single-source
© 2013 British Academy of Management.
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A Dyadic Model of Customer Orientation
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