Effects of Retail Employees' Behaviours on Customers' Service Evaluation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual model of the effects of customer and service orientation behaviours of individual retail employees on individual customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality, service quality, value, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions.Design/methodology/approach – The sample (n = 271) was customers of a supermarket in Central India, and they completed questionnaires following mall intercept. To test the hypotheses, structural equation modelling using LISREL 8.7 was employed.Findings – 1) service and customer orientation behaviours are positively related to service encounter quality and service quality, 2) service encounter quality is positively related to service quality and customer satisfaction; 3) service quality is positively related to value perceptions and customer satisfaction; and 4) customer satisfaction is positively related to retail customers’ behavioural intentions. However, value is not related to customer satisfaction.Research limitations/implications – More research is needed on customer perceptions of value in non-Western contexts and service evaluation frameworks in other cross-cultural contextsPractical implications – Retail managers need to train or select retail personnel that are able to perform their roles in a service oriented and customer oriented way, and value does not appear to be as important to Indian retail customers as it is to Western retail customers.Originality/value – This study extends current service evaluation frameworks by including service orientation and customer orientation as antecedents, and it analyses an Indian retail context