Customer mistreatment and employee customer-focused voice: the bright and dark sides of felt trust
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
ISSN: 0959-6119
Article publication date: 5 August 2021
Issue publication date: 20 October 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to assess a moderated-mediation model to account for the relationship between customer mistreatment and frontline hotel employees’ customer-focused voice, where their organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) served as a mediator and their felt trust (reliance and disclosure) by supervisors served as a moderator.
Design/methodology/approach
The data were collected through paper-based questionnaires in a cross-sectional survey, consisting of 319 valid supervisor-employee-paired responses from 33 international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Regression analyses were used for hypothesis testing.
Findings
OBSE mediates the negative effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice. Employee felt reliance intensifies the negative impact of customer mistreatment on OBSE, and this interaction effect, in turn, reduces customer-focused voice through OBSE. The employee felt disclosure marginally significantly buffers the effect of customer mistreatment on OBSE.
Practical implications
Given the adverse effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice through OBSE, hotels should strengthen employees’ service mindset and value their suggestions. The double-edged effects of felt trust suggest that managers should form a trusting relationship with their subordinates and reassure them that isolated incidents of customer mistreatment will not jeopardize their reputation.
Originality/value
This study integrated sociometer and self-consistency theories to examine OBSE as a psychological mechanism to explain the mistreatment-voice process. Besides assessing felt trust’s two-dimensional effects, this research is possibly the first attempt to examine felt trust as an enabling force or a threat to OBSE in the context of customer mistreatment.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology. Reference No. MOST 104–2410-H-032–093.
Disclosures: The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Citation
Huang, Y.-K. and Kwok, L. (2021), "Customer mistreatment and employee customer-focused voice: the bright and dark sides of felt trust", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 33 No. 10, pp. 3379-3399. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-12-2020-1497
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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