| Summary: | Frontline employees (FLEs) play a crucial role in face-to-face sales and service encounters as
they not only sell products and services (Levy and Sharma 1993) as well as deliver service
quality, satisfaction and value to their customers (Brady and Cronin 2001) but also act as a
buffer between the customers and the organization (Singh 2000), help customize the service
experience (Bettencourt and Gwinner 1996) and implement service innovations (Cadwallader
et al. 2010) and improvements (Lages and Piercy 2012). However, there are many research
gaps in this area, which we address in this paper. First, we investigate the combined influence
of personal characteristics and service behaviors (perceived by the customers) and their role
stressors and work-related attitudes (perceived by them) on their performance and customer
outcomes. Second, we explore the combined dyadic influence of employees’ personal
characteristics, role stressors and work-related attitudes on their service behaviors, service
quality, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Third, we examine how the
employees’ service-role behaviors (in-role and extra-role) as perceived by the customers, may
affect their formal performance evaluations by their supervisors.
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