IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v46y2019icp1-10.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How uncivil customers corrode the relationship between frontline employees and retailers

Author

Listed:
  • Gaucher, Benoît
  • Chebat, Jean-Charles

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of customers’ uncivil treatments on frontline retail employees’ emotions, deviant behaviors and relationship with the retail organization. Our theoretical model is based on both marketing and personnel management literatures. 415 frontline retailing American employees answered our questionnaire. Employees treated uncivilly by customers feel angry but have to hide their negative emotions, which leads them to emotional exhaustion and deviant behaviors. Paradoxically, employees’ strong commitment to their retailing organization brings about more deviant behaviors. We propose some managerial strategies to cope with uncivil customers, as well as future research on this important and under-researched topic.

Suggested Citation

  • Gaucher, Benoît & Chebat, Jean-Charles, 2019. "How uncivil customers corrode the relationship between frontline employees and retailers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-10.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:46:y:2019:i:c:p:1-10
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.09.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698918305113
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.09.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:cup:judgdm:v:5:y:2010:i:5:p:411-419 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Grandey, Alicia A. & Fisk, Glenda M. & Mattila, Anna S. & Jansen, Karen J. & Sideman, Lori A., 2005. "Is "service with a smile" enough? Authenticity of positive displays during service encounters," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 38-55, January.
    3. Mulki, Jay Prakash & Jaramillo, Fernando & Locander, William B., 2006. "Emotional exhaustion and organizational deviance: Can the right job and a leader's style make a difference?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(12), pages 1222-1230, November.
    4. Rupp, Deborah E. & Cropanzano, Russell, 2002. "The mediating effects of social exchange relationships in predicting workplace outcomes from multifoci organizational justice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 925-946, September.
    5. Chebat, Jean-Charles & Slusarczyk, Witold, 2005. "How emotions mediate the effects of perceived justice on loyalty in service recovery situations: an empirical study," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(5), pages 664-673, May.
    6. Baker, Thomas L. & Meyer, Tracy & Chebat, Jean-Charles, 2013. "Cultural impacts on felt and expressed emotions and third party complaint relationships," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(7), pages 816-822.
    7. Zourrig, Haithem & Chebat, Jean-Charles & Toffoli, Roy, 2015. "“In-group love and out-group hate?” A cross cultural study on customers' revenge, avoidance and forgiveness behaviors," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 487-499.
    8. John Hulland, 1999. "Use of partial least squares (PLS) in strategic management research: a review of four recent studies," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 195-204, February.
    9. Mitchell Neubert & Dawn Carlson & K. Kacmar & James Roberts & Lawrence Chonko, 2009. "The Virtuous Influence of Ethical Leadership Behavior: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 90(2), pages 157-170, December.
    10. Berinsky, Adam J. & Huber, Gregory A. & Lenz, Gabriel S., 2012. "Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 351-368, July.
    11. Reinartz, Werner & Haenlein, Michael & Henseler, Jörg, 2009. "An empirical comparison of the efficacy of covariance-based and variance-based SEM," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 332-344.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mortimer, Gary & Fazal-e-Hasan, Syed Muhammad & Strebel, Judi, 2021. "Examining the consequences of customer-oriented deviance in retail," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    2. Lee, Tingko & Sam Liu, Chih-Hsing & Li, Pei-Hsun, 2021. "The influences of cooperative climate, competitive climate and customer empowerment on service creativity," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    3. Castaldo, Sandro & Ciacci, Andrea & Penco, Lara, 2023. "Perceived corporate social responsibility and job satisfaction in grocery retail: A comparison between low- and high-productivity stores," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    4. Fellesson, Markus & Salomonson, Nicklas, 2020. "It takes two to interact – Service orientation, negative emotions and customer phubbing in retail service work," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    5. Gong, Taeshik & Park, JungKun & Hyun, Hyowon, 2020. "Customer response toward employees’ emotional labor in service industry settings," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    6. Kushagra Bhatnagar & Julien Cayla & Delphine Dion & Gregorio Fuschillo, 2024. "Consumer Sovereignty and the Ethics of Recognition," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 1-19, June.
    7. Alain Debenedetti & Damien Chaney, 2024. "From feeling like home to being at home: The negative outcomes of attachment to commercial places," Post-Print hal-04355633, HAL.
    8. Mayr, Kathrin & Teller, Christoph, 2023. "Customer deviance in retailing: Managers’ emotional support and employees’ affective wellbeing," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    9. Stephan Olk & Dieter K. Tscheulin & Jörg Lindenmeier, 2021. "Does it pay off to smile even it is not authentic? Customers’ involvement and the effectiveness of authentic emotional displays," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 247-260, June.
    10. Mortimer, Gary & Wang, Shasha & Osorio Andrade, María Lucila, 2023. "Measuring customer aggression: Scale development and validation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. S. Hansen & Bradley Alge & Michael Brown & Christine Jackson & Benjamin Dunford, 2013. "Ethical Leadership: Assessing the Value of a Multifoci Social Exchange Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 115(3), pages 435-449, July.
    2. Petschnig, Martin & Heidenreich, Sven & Spieth, Patrick, 2014. "Innovative alternatives take action – Investigating determinants of alternative fuel vehicle adoption," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 68-83.
    3. Abdul Alem Mohammed & Basri B. Rashid & Shaharuddin B. Tahir, 2017. "Customer relationship management and hotel performance: the mediating influence of marketing capabilities—evidence from the Malaysian hotel industry," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 335-361, September.
    4. Shenjiang Mo & Junqi Shi, 2017. "Linking Ethical Leadership to Employee Burnout, Workplace Deviance and Performance: Testing the Mediating Roles of Trust in Leader and Surface Acting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 144(2), pages 293-303, August.
    5. Christian Nitzl & Wynne W. Chin, 2017. "The case of partial least squares (PLS) path modeling in managerial accounting research," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 137-156, May.
    6. Suning Zhu & Ashish Gupta & David Paradice & Casey Cegielski, 2019. "Understanding the Impact of Immersion and Authenticity on Satisfaction Behavior in Learning Analytics Tasks," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 791-814, August.
    7. Andreas Strobl & Jessica Niedermair & Kurt Matzler & Tobias Mussner, 2019. "Triggering Subordinate Innovation Behavior: The Influence Of Leaders’ Dark Personality Traits And Level 5 Leadership Behavior," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 23(05), pages 1-37, June.
    8. Waseem Ul Hameed & Muhammad Haseeb & Jawad Iqbal & Leonardus W. W. Mihardjo & Kittisak Jermsittiparsert, 2022. "Environmental disaster and women self‐sustainability—A survey study on microfinance female clientele in Pakistan," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 3599-3622, July.
    9. Abdullah Hamoud Ali Seraj & Syed Ali Fazal & Ali Saleh Alshebami, 2022. "Entrepreneurial Competency, Financial Literacy, and Sustainable Performance—Examining the Mediating Role of Entrepreneurial Resilience among Saudi Entrepreneurs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-17, August.
    10. Pablo Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara & Mercedes Viera-Armas, 2019. "Does Ethical Leadership Motivate Followers to Participate in Delivering Compassion?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 195-210, January.
    11. Jinhwan Kim & Hyeob Kim & HyukJun Kwon, 2020. "The Impact of Employees’ Perceptions of Strategic Alignment on Sustainability: An Empirical Investigation of Korean Firms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-23, May.
    12. Stephan Kramer & Frank Hartmann, 2014. "How Top-down and Bottom-up Budgeting Affect Budget Slack and Performance through Social and Economic Exchange," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 50(3), pages 314-340, September.
    13. Zapata-Phelan, Cindy P. & Colquitt, Jason A. & Scott, Brent A. & Livingston, Beth, 2009. "Procedural justice, interactional justice, and task performance: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 93-105, January.
    14. Kuo, Ying-Feng & Wu, Chi-Ming, 2012. "Satisfaction and post-purchase intentions with service recovery of online shopping websites: Perspectives on perceived justice and emotions," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 127-138.
    15. Shike Li & Kriti Jain & Konstantina Tzini, 2022. "When Supervisor Support Backfires: The Link Between Perceived Supervisor Support and Unethical Pro-supervisor Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 133-151, August.
    16. Tobias Roeth & Patrick Spieth & Verena Joachim, 2019. "The Interaction Of Intuition And Rationality During Escalated Npd Decisions: An Investigation Of Decision-Makers’ Affective States," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 24(04), pages 1-31, June.
    17. Xiaofei Li & Baolong Ma & Rubing Bai, 2020. "Do you respond sincerely? How sellers’ responses to online reviews affect customer relationship and repurchase intention," Frontiers of Business Research in China, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    18. Nitzl, Christian, 2016. "The use of partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) in management accounting research: Directions for future theory development," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 19-35.
    19. Linder, Christian, 2019. "Customer orientation and operations: The role of manufacturing capabilities in small- and medium-sized enterprises," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 105-117.
    20. Han, Jeong Hugh & Wang, Yingli & Naim, Mohamed, 2017. "Reconceptualization of information technology flexibility for supply chain management: An empirical study," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 196-215.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:46:y:2019:i:c:p:1-10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.