The impact of customer organization socialization: a moderated mediation model

Abstract

PurposeBased on a dyadic perspective, the purpose of this paper is to include the contributions of employee and customer in a service process and to examine the underlying mechanism of customer organization socialization on service performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a unique survey data pertaining to the service industry. The authors collected their data from multiple sources (customers, front-line employees and these employees' managers) in the divisions of a large service organization – Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China. The authors adopted hierarchical regression moderated path analysis approach to examine our moderated mediation model.FindingsThe authors find that both the quality of customer service and the quality of employee service play as moderators in the relationship between customer organization socialization and service performance. And quality of customer service moderates the relationship between customer organization socialization and quality of employee service.Originality/valueThe literature has focused primarily on service performance improvement based on the dyadic perspective of customer and employee. The research develops a moderated mediation model and contributes to the literature by empirically examining customer organization socialization.