The antecedents of customer mistreatment: a meta-analytic review

Abstract

Purpose Frontline service employees are often subjected to customer mistreatment and considerable studies have tested outcomes of customer mistreatment. However, the importance of its antecedents is particularly underestimated. This meta-analytic paper aims to develop an overarching framework that identifies the antecedents of customer mistreatment as well as potential boundary conditions to account for observed variations reported in extant studies. Design/methodology/approach Comprehensive electronic and manual searches were performed to retrieve relevant studies on customer mistreatment, which yielded 125 articles, including 141 independent samples. Altogether, these studies included 40,151 participants. The data were analyzed through random-effect meta-analytic methods in R using the psychmeta package. Findings Three types of antecedents were identified. In particular, regarding employees’ demographic characteristics, age was found to be negatively correlated with customer mistreatment. Employees’ personality traits such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, positive affectivity, emotion regulation ability and self-efficacy were found to be negatively correlated with customer mistreatment, while neuroticism and negative affectivity were positively correlated with customer mistreatment. In terms of contextual factors, perceived social support and service climate were negatively related to customer mistreatment, whereas job demands were positively related to customer mistreatment. Moreover, the power distance culture and types of service industries moderated some relationships. Originality/value This meta-analytic research, drawing upon the perpetrator predation framework, proposed a new and comprehensive framework to explain why customer mistreatment occurs. It not only promoted the advancement of literature on customer mistreatment but also provided effective and targeted guidance for helping frontline service employees reduce such negative experience.

The effects of job autonomy and customer service self-efficacy on negative mood following customer aggression: A trajectory perspective.

“…These findings highlight the importance of examining customer aggression from different perspectives. Past research from a between-person perspective has found that employees with high job autonomy may experience lower customer aggression overall, potentially because they use their autonomy to more effectively meet customer needs (see a meta-analytic review by Liu et al, 2022). Existing research has also shown that employees with high level of job autonomy may feel less threatened by aggressive customers (Grandey et al, 2004).…”

Dealing with hotel customer stealing practices: a managerial perspective

“…Furthermore, Booyens et al (2022) called the ignorance of customer misbehavior a form of “social washing” and considered it crucial to investigate the hospitality industry's toxic organizational cultures and preventative measures. The recent studies by Huang and Kwok (2021) and Liu et al (2022) emphasized the uniqueness of examining customer mistreatment in service industries by focusing on the predictors.…”

Guest editorial: The past, present and future of hospitality research

“…The paper by Liu et al (2022) titled “A systematic review of work-family enrichment in the hospitality industry” used 23 studies on work–family enrichment (WFE) published from 2000 to 2021 and systematically analyzed the articles following the guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses. A framework was developed including the antecedents and outcomes of WFE at the organizational, job and individual levels.…”

“…In the last paper titled “The antecedents of customer mistreatment: A meta-analytic review,” Liu et al (2022) conducted a meta-analytic review to develop an overarching framework that identified the antecedents of customer mistreatment as well as potential boundary conditions. The study used 125 articles involving 141 independent samples.…”