Do Employee Citizenship Behaviors Lead to Customer Citizenship Behaviors? The Roles of Dual Identification and Service Climate

Abstract

This study pertains to whether and how employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers (OCB-C) influence customers’ citizenship behaviors (CCB) directed toward the firm, employees, and other customers. Drawing on a social exchange perspective, this study proposes that a dual identification mechanism—spanning customer-employee identification (C-EI) and customer-firm identification (C-FI)—mediates the social exchange relationship between OCB toward customers (OCB-C) and CCB. Service climate as a key contextual factor moderates the mediating mechanisms of identification. With data collected from a field survey and an experiment, the findings confirm that the dual identification mechanism mediates the effect of OCB-C on customers’ reciprocation with CCB. The results also reveal a moderating effect of service climate, such that the positive effect of OCB-C on C-EI and C-FI grows stronger when the service climate is at low and high levels, respectively. In addition, the empirical results demonstrate that the underlying motive attribution explains the moderating effect of service climate. This work paints a more nuanced picture of the missing link in the OCB-C-CCB interface by identifying a mediating mechanism and boundary condition. To promote CCB, managers should leverage their employees’ OCB-C as well as their firms’ service climate.

Keywords

organizational citizenship behaviors customer citizenship behaviors customer identification service climate

Researchers have paid considerable attention to organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) defined as discretionary behaviors that an organization’s reward system does not formally recognize but that promote organizational effectiveness (Organ 1988; Podsakoff et al. 2000). While previous research has considerably examined the effects of employees’ OCB on targets such as the firm and coworkers (e.g., Williams and Anderson 1991), scholars have recently acknowledged the important role of employees’ OCB toward customers (OCB-C; Podsakoff et al. 2000; Schneider et al. 2005), which is a highly relevant type of employee extra-role performance in customer service settings (Bettencourt, Gwinner, and Meuter 2001). This concept mirrors customer-directed extra-role performance; it reflects employees’ extra efforts (i.e., “going the extra mile”) to serve customers in the employee-customer interface (Netemeyer, Maxham, and Pullig 2005).

Meanwhile, increased recognition of customers as “partial employees” or human resources of the organization (Bowen, Schneider, and Kim 2000) encourages firms to find ways to get customers to exhibit discretionary forms of engagement behaviors, such as by giving feedback, spreading positive word of mouth, or helping other customers (Verleye, Gemmel, and Rangarajan 2016). In this sense, customers can display OCBs, in the form of customer citizenship behaviors (CCBs),¹ defined as voluntary, helpful behaviors enacted toward the firm, employees, and/or other customers that are not required for the core service delivery or related directly to an enforceable requirement but that are essential to firms’ effective functioning (Bove et al. 2009). With these key features of CCB, researchers have conceptualized it with a comprehensive set of dimensions encompassing customer voice, suggestions for service improvements, positive word of mouth, participation in the firm’s activities, display of relationship affiliation, being flexible, benevolent acts of service facilitation, and policing of other customers (Bettencourt 1997; Groth 2005; Verleye, Gemmel, and Rangarajan 2014). These behaviors help create a desirable setting for the parties to the service encounter and also provide the firm with competitive advantages (Bove et al. 2009).

Although the importance of fostering OCB-C and CCB has been well-documented, theoretical and empirical views of how OCB-C influences CCB remain unclear. We aim to build on these two streams of research by adding new insights about the underlying mechanism by which employees’ OCB-C affects CCB. Specifically, we adopt social exchange and identity theories as theoretical lenses and propose that employees’ OCB-C positively influences CCB through the formation of a customer’s dual identification with service employees (customer-employee identification [C-EI]) and the service firm (customer–firm identification [C-FI]).

“Identification” refers to the degree to which customers identify with a party to fulfill their self-definitional needs, at least partially, through the clarification of their self-concept and resultant emotional reactions to this identification (Netemeyer, Heilman, and Maxham 2012). It represents a key “macromotive” for the emergence and sustainability of social exchange (Blau 1964; Konovsky and Pugh 1994). When customers feel helped and valued by employees’ OCB, they likely develop a strong attachment to both employees and the firm, and this identification may subsequently drive their reciprocation in the form of CCB. Moreover, in view of recent criticisms of social exchange theory that an actor’s reciprocation decision is not made in isolation of the environment (Wilson 2000), we also consider the firm’s service climate as a key contextual factor that could alter the effect of employees’ OCB-C in social exchange processes. In this sense, the “service climate” refers to one’s perceptions of the practices, procedures, and behaviors that are rewarded, supported, and expected for customer service quality (Schneider, White, and Paul 1998). We therefore use the motive attribution to posit that the service climate influences customers’ causal inference of employees’ citizenship behaviors according to different motives (i.e., egoistic or altruistic). If the service climate is perceived to be of a high (low) level, customers more likely attribute an employee’s citizenship behaviors to egoistic (altruistic) motives, so their identification with the firm (employee) is stronger, whereas their identification with the employee (firm) is weaker.

Accordingly, we contribute to extant literature in three main ways. First, this study enriches marketing and organizational behavioral literature by applying social exchange theory to investigate the relationship between employees’ OCB-C and CCB. We identify employees’ OCB-C as a salient factor that helps promote CCB in services. This finding uncovers a potential way managers can leverage the citizenship behaviors of their internal and external customers to enhance their competitive advantage, given that citizenship behaviors are profitable but difficult to attain. Second, this study represents an initial effort to confirm that identification is a key macromotive that provides a basis for the emergence and maintenance of reciprocation in social exchange relationships. Examining the mediating role of identification enhances understanding of the underlying process of social exchanges such that reciprocation requires the establishment of identification. Specifically, we enrich existing service literature streams by identifying a dual identification mechanism: Customers can simultaneously develop identification with two separate but important entities in service transactions (C-EI and C-FI) while they interact with employees who display OCB-C. Third, we shed new light on the effects of employees’ OCB-C according to a contingency approach. The service climate provides a contextual cue that influences customers’ inferences about the underlying motives for the employees’ citizenship behaviors, which then influence their identification formation and reciprocation. Therefore, this study has significant implications for helping firms manage their employees’ behaviors and the service environment to sustain social exchange relationships between employees and customers.

Figure 1 presents an overview of our conceptual framework. We build on social exchange and identity theories to develop hypotheses pertaining to the effect of employees’ OCB-C on CCB through the underlying mediation of the dual identification of C-EI and C-FI. We also incorporate motive attribution to posit moderating effects of the service climate. Study 1 relies on multilevel survey data to examine both the indirect role of C-EI and C-FI on the relationship between employees’ OCB-C and CCB and the moderating effect of service climate on customers’ identification formation. Study 2 employs an experiment to investigate the underlying motive attribution process, by which customers infer employees’ motives for citizenship behaviors at various levels of the service climate.

Figure 1.

Conceptual framework. The solid line represents a positive effect. The dotted line represents a negative effect. ^aResponses from customers. ^bResponses from employees.

Theoretical Background and Hypotheses

Social Exchange Theory and Citizenship Behaviors

According to social exchange theory, if one party provides a benefit or favorable treatment, the receiving party feels obligated to reciprocate or repay in kind, a situation termed the “norm of reciprocity” (Blau 1964; Gouldner 1960). Social exchange is also foundational to the concept of OCBs in which employees voluntarily help others. According to Gouldner (1960), when formal obligations for reciprocity are absent, the involved parties are likely to rely on norms of reciprocity to govern their interactions and maintain the stability of their social groups. If an employee displays citizenship behaviors toward the customer (i.e., OCB-C), the customer feels helped and valued; the norm of reciprocity then suggests that he or she reciprocates by exhibiting CCB toward the employee or the group to which that employee belongs (e.g., the firm) to preserve the social exchange (Blau 1964; Deckop, Cirka, and Andersson 2003).

Dual Identification (C-FI and C-EI)

Reciprocity is important to social exchange not only because it explains repayments but also because it helps the transacting parties build a trusting social relationship that is characterized by strong, high identification (Walumbwa, Cropanzano, and Hartnell 2009). According to Konovsky and Pugh (1994), social exchange relationships are based on macromotives that provide the basis for relational contracts and their sustainability (Blau 1964). Macromotives are sets of attributes that characterize people’s feelings and beliefs about their exchange partners (Konovsky and Pugh 1994). Among these attributes, identification is particularly critical to social exchange (Lavelle, Rupp, and Brockner 2007), such that the development of strong identification with the other party provides an impetus to reciprocate favorable treatments.

Social identity theory defines identification as a feeling of psychological inclusion or belongingness that conveys a sense of being part of a particular target group, such that the person’s self-definition becomes tied up with membership in that group (Tajfel and Turner 1986). Experienced as a feeling of “oneness” (Smidts, Pruyn, and van Riel 2001), identification causes people to regard the successes and failures of the group as their own (Ashforth and Mael 1989).

In services context, firms represent meaningful social identities to customers, displaying features such as a culture, strategy, or structure that help customers satisfy their self-definitional needs (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003). Customers seek out firms for identification purposes, even if they are not formal firm members (Ashforth and Mael 1989). C-FI is the degree to which customers identify with a company to fulfill self-definitional needs through a clarification of their self-concept and the resultant emotional reactions (Netemeyer, Heilman, and Maxham 2012). With a high level of C-FI, customers can obtain a positive self-appraisal through a positive firm appraisal, which leads them to engage in favorable firm-related behaviors (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003; Homburg, Wieseke, and Hoyer 2009).

Apart from C-FI, customers can also form identification with service employees (i.e., C-EI), which pertains to the degree to which customers identify with the service employees to fulfill self-definitional needs and the resultant emotional reactions. Although employees are representatives of the firm, research shows consistently that customers can distinguish employees and the firm as two separate entities. For example, Reynolds and Beatty (1999) categorize customers’ satisfaction as satisfaction with salespeople versus satisfaction with the store. Similarly, Yim, Tse, and Chan (2008) test the effect of service quality on customers’ trust and loyalty toward the firm and toward the employee. We therefore propose that in their roles as customers, people form relationships with the firm and with its employees to develop deeper, more meaningful connections. With these two foci, and with identification functioning as a macromotive in social exchange processes, we posit that both C-EI and C-FI mediate the effect of employees’ OCB-C on customers’ reciprocation in the form of CCB.

Mediating Role of C-EI

We hypothesize that OCB-C will increase customers’ identification with the employee (C-EI) through enhanced self-worth and closer emotional and social bonds. First, receiving an employee’s voluntary helping behaviors makes customers feel valued and exclusively treated, and it enhances their sense of self-worth, thereby adding admirable attributes to the formation of an identity related to that employee (Ashforth, Schinoff, and Rogers 2016). Second, identification embodies a significant hedonic element, in the sense that social identification directly involves favorable feelings and emotions (Homburg, Wieseke, and Hoyer 2009). Employees’ display of care through OCB-C could enhance customers’ emotional bonds and feelings of social integration, which increase customers’ sense of attachment toward the employee and thereby helps fulfill customers’ self-definitional needs and strengthens their C-EI (Fombelle et al. 2012). With this established, intimate tie and enhanced feeling of psychological inclusion with the employee, customers should reciprocally display citizenship behaviors for three reasons. First, when customers perceive themselves as sharing self-defining characteristics with the employee—reflecting the extent to which customers consider their role overlapping with that of the employee—their role relationship may generate mutual support, so that customers are inspired to dedicate more efforts to repaying the employee’s efforts (Sluss and Ashforth 2007). Second, C-EI makes the distinction of in-group versus out-group membership more salient, prompting a positive bias toward in-group members, such as the presentation of a favorable image of this particular employee to others (Korschun, Bhattacharya, and Swain 2014). These cooperative, altruistic, and citizenship behaviors are expressions of in-group favoritism (Bergami and Bagozzi 2000). Third, when customers identify strongly with an employee, they likely consider behaviors that benefit that employee as means to benefit themselves too. As customers want to affiliate with employees whose identities they find attractive, so they aim to enhance their self-concepts through C-EI by engaging in citizenship behaviors (Dukerich, Golden, and Shortell 2002). We thus posit:

Hypothesis 1: C-EI mediates the positive impact of OCB-C on CCB.

Mediating Role of C-FI

By a similar logic, the positive effect of OCB-C should apply to customers’ identification with the firm (C-FI), because employees’ citizenship behaviors convey a firm’s identity of being customer or service oriented (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003). The greater the attractiveness of this perceived identity of the firm, due to its employees’ display of citizenship behaviors, the more the customers identify with the firm. Employees’ OCB-C thus foster a close connection between customers’ sense of self and the firm (Wolter and Cronin 2016).

Research from organizational psychology indicates that people who feel emotionally attached to or identify with organizations show more citizenship behaviors (Meyer et al. 2002). In services settings, customers who identify with the firm are more likely to engage in citizenship behaviors, such as preserving, supporting, and improving the firm (Ahearne, Bhattacharya, and Gruen 2005), because they want to validate their feeling of belongingness, express identification with the firm, and raise its status (Homburg, Wieseke, and Hoyer 2009). As their identification with the organization becomes more firmly established, they also incorporate the organization’s interests into their self-concept. Thus, customers will be highly motivated to align their sense of self with the organization and act in its best interest. For example, Bhattacharya and Sen (2003) suggest that C-FI results in various positive consequences, such as promoting the firm to others and active involvement in recruiting other customers. This finding echoes Lavelle, Rupp, and Brockner’s (2007) findings that a worker’s strong identification with the firm or supervisors promotes citizenship behaviors and job performance. Formally:

Hypothesis 2: C-FI mediates the positive impact of OCB-C on CCB.

Moderating Role of Service Climate

A major criticism of social exchange theory is that it assumes that actors make decisions in isolation without assessing their environments (Wilson 2000). But even if the norm of reciprocity is universal, it is not unconditional (Lambert 2000). Following these arguments, we posit that employees’ OCB-C might engender customers’ different obligations or responses toward reciprocity, depending on their attribution of the underlying motives for employees’ citizenship behaviors (Allen and Rush 1998; Peloza, Hudson, and Hassay 2009). Therefore, we integrate the social influence outlined by Blau (1964) and the concept of motive attribution to investigate the contextual influence of service climate for moderating the effect of employees’ OCB-C on customers’ identification formation and reciprocity. Climate pertains to the environment surrounding employees and customers, which provides cues, norms, and expectations that constrain the process of rationalization or justification of employees’ work behaviors (Lam, Hung, and Janssen 2010). It refers to individual (e.g., employee, customer) beliefs about an organization’s customer service practices, procedures, and behaviors (Schneider 1990). That is, the service climate signals which service-focused behaviors an organization’s top management expects, values, and rewards.

People are social perceivers, prone to making causal inferences about the motives for others’ behaviors in social interactions (Heider 1958). Such motive attributions also emerge from perceptions and inferences of others’ citizenship behaviors in various contexts. For example, Rifon et al. (2004) argue that motive attribution provides the foundation for sponsor credibility, which subsequently increases customers’ positive attitudes toward a sponsor. In the workplace, supervisors likely infer motives for employees’ citizenship behaviors (e.g., good citizenship, ingratiation) before making performance judgments (Eastman 1994).

Prior studies mostly classify these inferred motives of others’ citizenship behaviors as egoistic or altruistic (Peloza, Hudson, and Hassay 2009). An egoistic motive means that the person’s ultimate goal is to increase his or her own welfare, gain rewards for helping, or avoid punishment for not helping (Bendapudi, Singh, and Bendapudi 1996). In contrast, an altruistic motive implies that the person’s ultimate goal is to enhance the welfare of others (Martin 1994), even at the expense of his or her own welfare. This latter motive also implies that people gain an intrinsic reward from giving for the benefit of others (Allen and Rush 1998). Applied to employees’ OCB-C, egoistic motives might include a desire to impress the boss, avoid punishment, or obtain recognition or other rewards, whereas altruistic motives would include personal values, moral standards, or an employee’s true commitment to serving customers.

In services contexts, we expect that the service climate could act as a salient environmental cue that helps convey the company’s core values, so it should trigger and influence customers’ inferred motives for employees’ citizenship behaviors (Rifon et al. 2004). As Schneider and Bowen (1985) and Johnson (1996) also note, organizational climate (manifested in the organization’s service system, policies, and procedures) is an apparent source of cues that are visible to customers and affect their service-related perceptions, attitudes, and intentions. Accordingly, we propose that service climate moderates the effects of employees’ OCB-C on C-EI and C-FI, through customers’ causal inferences of employees’ motives for displaying the citizenship behaviors. Specifically, the positive effect of employees’ OCB-C on C-EI should be strengthened when the service climate is low, because such a service climate signals that employees’ voluntary helping behaviors are more altruistic; they are not likely to be recognized, valued, or rewarded by top management. Customers might also consider employees’ OCB-C as sacrificial, in that they must devote more resources and efforts to serve the customers’ needs. Given that social exchange involves calculations of the efforts devoted to others, so customers might view employees’ citizenship behaviors as more costly and involving more effort, such that they might be more likely to feel a connection with that employee (Konovsky and Pugh 1994) rather than with the firm. Moreover, customers may feel enhanced self-worth, because they have received exclusive treatment from that particular employee (Flynn 2005). Therefore, they likely sense psychological inclusion; employees’ individual membership is more psychologically relevant to their identification formation. As customers infer the motive of the employee’s citizenship behaviors as of altruistic when service climate is low, so we expect that the employee’s OCB-C will more likely influence customers’ identification with that particular employee rather than with the firm. Formally:

Hypothesis 3: Service climate moderates the effect of OCB-C on C-EI, such that the positive impact of OCB-C on C-EI becomes stronger when service climate is at a low level.

On the contrary, when the service climate is at a higher level—that is, employees’ service behaviors are perceived as more likely to be rewarded, valued, and supported by the organization—customers may attribute employees’ OCB to being more egoistically motivated, because they will tend to view employees’ behaviors as efforts to impress a manager, obtain recognition or rewards, and avoid punishment (Allen and Rush 1998). Bendapudi, Singh, and Bendapudi (1996) suggest that when people’s OCB results from egoistic motives, it represents a means to an end; if they find alternative ways to reach their goals, they will abandon the needy target (e.g., customers). In that case, customers likely make identification decisions based more on their anticipated future dealings with the firm, not with the particular employee, whose behaviors they perceive as less likely to endure.

In addition, if customers understand a company’s identity as internally consistent and a coherent whole (e.g., the firm’s action matches its employees’ behaviors), those customers can better discern the company’s distinctiveness, prestige, and similarity to their own identity (Kristof 1996). Following this logic, if customers perceive a high service climate in addition to the displays of employees’ OCB-C, they sense a more coherent image and distinctive identity for the firm, so they attribute more credits of the employee’s OCB-C to the firm’s policies, reward system, or service training rather than to that employee. In this case, the employee’s OCB-C functions as a communication cue of the company’s identity; it conveys the company’s willingness and effort to improve customer service (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003). Accordingly, firm membership (cf. individual employee membership) offers greater psychological relevance, leading customers to strengthen their identification with the firm. Hence, as customers infer the motive of the employee’s citizenship behaviors as of egoistic when service climate is high and so we expect that the employee’s OCB-C will more likely strengthen customers’ identification with the firm, rather than with that employee. Formally:

Hypothesis 4: Service climate moderates the positive effect of OCB-C on C-FI, such that the positive impact of OCB-C on C-FI becomes stronger when service climate is at a high level.

The above hypotheses with motive attribution arguments also echo the premises of the theory of situational strength; in “strong” situations, if expectations of desirable behaviors are uniform and unambiguous, individual behavior is more constrained by psychological pressures to engage in or refrain from particular behaviors (Mischel 1977). In “weak” situations in contrast, there is less structure and more ambiguity surrounding which behaviors to perform, so personal characteristics are stronger determinants of behaviors. Therefore, if the situational cue provided by the service climate is strong, with a clear emphasis, requirements, and incentives for high-quality service performance, the behaviors that employees engage in will be constrained (Liao and Chuang 2004). Customers then may perceive employees’ OCB-C as a behavioral outcome, reflecting their intentional efforts to comply with the firm’s existing policies, procedures, and practices so as to avoid being punished or to be rewarded by the top management (i.e., egoistic motive). In contrast, a low-level service climate represents a weak situation, in which the firm does not provide clear behavioral guidelines, so employees rely more on their individual predispositions to direct their service actions (Liao and Chuang 2004). Their citizenship behaviors are perceived to reflect their own will, and customers thus likely attribute employees’ OCB-C to altruistic motives, and subsequently increase their identification with the employees.

Integrating this reasoning with Hypotheses 3 and 4, we propose a mediated moderation effect: The interaction effect of employees’ OCB-C and service climate on customers’ identification formation with the employee (C-EI) and the firm (C-FI) is mediated by the customers’ inferences of employees’ motives for displaying citizenship behaviors. Specifically, the positive effect of employees’ OCB-C on C-EI is mediated by customers’ attributions of altruistic motives for employees’ citizenship behaviors when the service climate is low; the effect of employees’ OCB-C on C-FI is mediated by customers’ attributions of egoistic motives when the service climate is high. Formally:

Hypothesis 5: The interaction effect of employees’ OCB-C and service climate on customers’ C-EI and C-FI is mediated by motive attributions, such that (a) an altruistic motive mediates the effect of OCB-C on C-EI when the service climate is at a low level and (b) an egoistic motive mediates the effect of OCB-C on C-FI when the service climate is at a high level.

Overview of Studies

We conducted two studies to test our hypotheses. Study 1 tested Hypotheses 1–4 with nested data collected in a field setting (i.e., beauty salon) that offers naturally varying levels of OCB-C and service climates. Study 2 aimed to (1) examine customers’ attribution process for employees’ motives for displaying citizenship behaviors, using a scenario-based experiment (Hypothesis 5), (2) enhance the validity of our findings by manipulating OCB-C and service climate and also measuring the service climate according to customers’ perceptions, and (3) replicate the findings of Study 1 as a robustness check.

Study 1: Field Study

Sample and Sampling Procedures

The sample comprised 398 customers and 227 employees from 31 beauty chain stores located at a metropolitan city adjacent to Hong Kong. Beauty salon services provide an appropriate context for this study because the intense customer-employee interactions make the influences of others’ behaviors more salient and allow customers to assess the company’s service climate more accurately (Dietz, Pugh, and Wiley 2004).

For the data collection, we first contacted the senior manager of the beauty salon chain, who endorsed the survey among employees (i.e., beauticians) and customers. Customers in different stores were approached to participate in the survey immediately after they received the beauty services. To encourage active participation, we offered these customers a cash coupon for HK$30, in addition to a complementary facial treatment after completing the questionnaire. We approached 640 customers in 31 stores, of whom 428 agreed to participate (response rate of 67%). They completed measures evaluating their perceptions of the OCB-C of employees as well as their identification (with both the firm and employees), satisfaction, citizenship behaviors, and demographic characteristics. After removing participants with missing data, we retained 398 completed customer questionnaires. We then solicited the help of the corresponding beautician of each customer, who rated the service climate of the company. Given that a beautician might serve more than one customers, we relate those 398 customers back to 247 beauticians, from whom we successfully collected 227 usable responses (92% response rate). We offered beauticians a cash coupon valued at HK$50. Taken together, we obtained 398 customers who matched with 227 beauticians in 31 beauty salon chain stores for our data analysis.

To assess nonresponse bias, we compared demographic data from customer and employee respondents with company data for similar customers and beauticians. We found no significant differences in terms of customer age, gender, or education level or employee age and gender.

Regarding customers’ education level, 82.4% had a high school degree, 14.5% had a junior college degree, and 3.1% had a college degree.

Measure Operationalization

The questionnaire was prepared in English and translated into Chinese using standard back-translation methods (Brislin 1980). We pretested the questionnaire with 10 beauticians and 10 customers, who noted any items they found ambiguous or difficult to understand; no major changes were required. The items came from previous research, with minor modifications to fit the study context. All items used a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Appendix Table A1 provides the scales, measurement reliability, and validity checks.

We measured OCB-C perceived by customers with 3 items adopted from Netemeyer, Maxham, and Pullig (2005) and Bettencourt and Brown (1997), which capture customers’ perceptions of employees’ willingness to exert extra effort to help them and satisfy their needs. For the identification measures, we followed Homburg, Wieseke, and Hoyer (2009) and measured C-FI with 5 items (e.g., “I feel attached to the beauty salon”); similar items measured C-EI (e.g., “I strongly identify with this beautician”).

We follow prior studies (Bettencourt 1997; Bove et al. 2009; Groth 2005; Verleye, Gemmel, and Rangarajan 2014) to capture a more comprehensive operationalization of CCB by including multiple dimensions: spreading positive word of mouth, displaying affiliation, participating in the firm’s activities, engaging in benevolent acts of service facilitation, being flexible (i.e., adapting to situations beyond their control), suggesting service improvements, customer voicing, and policing other customers. Regarding measures of service climate, we adapted 4 items from Dietz, Pugh, and Wiley (2004) that capture employees’ perceptions of the importance of customer service in their respective stores, such as the priority of delivering high service quality. Due to the nested data structure, we aggregate employees’ perceptions of the service climate to the store level (Johnson 1996).

Control variables

We control for the length of each customer’s relationship with the store, because a longer relationship likely induces stronger customer loyalty (Bove and Johnson 2000) and identification (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003). We also control for the effect of customer satisfaction as a key driver of customers’ service evaluations and behavioral intentions (Homburg, Wieseke, and Hoyer 2009). Finally, we include customer age and education as control variables, because both can reflect a person’s experiences and knowledge and are influential cues in customer-employee interactions (Yim, Chan, and Lam 2012).

Measurement model tests

We conducted confirmatory factor analysis with LISREL Version 8 (Jöreskog and Sörbom 1996) with the five focal variables (OCB-C, C-FI, C-EI, service climate, and CCB) at the individual level. The five-factor model yielded a goodness-of-fit index of .90, a confirmatory fit index of .95, and a root mean square error of approximation of .05 (χ² = 588.30, df = 289). The factor loading of each item on its corresponding construct was significant at the .01 level in support of convergent validity (Anderson and Gerbing 1988). Moreover, our constructs have satisfactory reliability: The composite reliabilities for each factor exceeded .70, and the average variance extracted (AVE) of all constructs was greater than .50. Regarding discriminant validity, the shared variance between all pairs of constructs was lower than the AVE of each construct (Fornell and Larcker 1981). The validity and reliability of our key constructs thus are satisfactory. Finally, common method bias was not a notable concern.²

Analytical Strategy

Because of the hierarchical nature of the data set (customers nested within stores), we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; see Raudenbush and Bryk 2002) to test our hypotheses. Data at the lower level (Level 1) were customers’ perceptions of employees’ OCB-C, C-EI, C-FI, and CCB. The upper level (Level 2) comprised employees’ perceptions of the service climate at the store level. To assess the appropriateness of aggregating employees’ individual perceptions of service climate to the store level, we needed to examine both between-group differences and within-group agreements using the two intraclass correlations (ICCs) recommended by James (1982). The results show significant between-store variances in service climate, ICC(1) = .54 and ICC(2) = .90, above the acceptable level of .70, justifying the appropriateness of analyzing the service climate data at the store level as well as the use of HLM as our analytic technique.

Results

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations (SD), and correlations. As the values on the diagonal reveal, each study variable has an acceptable range of internal consistency reliabilities. The correlations among the study variables are consistent with prior research in terms of their direction and magnitude; the key variables of OCB-C, C-EI, C-FI, and CCB are significantly and positively correlated, and two control variables—relationship length with the store and satisfaction—have significant correlations with these key variables.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Variables (Study 1).

Variables	Mean	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. OCB-C	3.69	.72	(.76)
2. C-FI	3.90	.57	.38**	(.88)
3. C-EI	3.93	.57	.46**	.54**	(.85)
4. Service climate	3.96	.65	.03	−.08	−.05	(.89)
5. CCB	3.97	.48	.37**	.54**	.51**	−.04	(.87)
6. Customer age	2.86	.78	.07	.08	.09^†	.09^†	.08
7. Customer education	2.41	.83	.08	.06	.09^†	.08^†	.07	.16**
8. Customer satisfaction	4.12	.58	.37**	.49**	.47**	−.05	.47**	.06	.10^†
9. Customer relationship length with the store	2.40	.80	.52	.21**	.24**	−.08	.12*	.22**	.16**	.20**

Note. n = 398 customers and 31 stores. Service climate score refers to the individual level. Internal consistency reliabilities are shown on the diagonal in bold. OCB-C =organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers; C-FI = customer–firm identification; C-EI = customer-employee identification; CCB = customers’ citizenship behaviors. SD = standard deviation.

^† p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.

Individual-Level Hypotheses (i.e., Indirect Effects of OCB-C on CCB Through the Dual Identification of C-EI and C-FI)

Hypotheses 1 and 2 predict that C-EI and C-FI mediate the effect of OCB-C on CCB, respectively. As Table 2, Panel a, shows, C-EI and C-FI were positively associated with CCB (C-EI: b = .18, p < .01; C-FI: b = .40, p < .01), and the significant direct effect of OCB-C on CCB (b =.10, p < .05) became nonsignificant when we controlled for C-EI and C-FI (b = .04, ns). To examine the significance of the indirect effects, we estimated confidence intervals (CI) using the RMediation package (Version 1.1.4) (Tofighi and MacKinnon 2011); the 95% CI of the indirect effects of OCB-C on CCB through C-EI and C-FI were [.01, .04] and [.01, .07], respectively, which excluded zero, in support of the mediation effects proposed in Hypotheses 1 and 2.

Table 2.

Hierarchical Linear Modeling Results.

(a) Predicting CCB (Mediation Effect; Study 1)
	Direct Effect Model		Mediated Model
Predictor	b	SE	b	SE
Level 1: Control variables
Age	.03	.02	.04†	.02
Education	.01	.03	−.01	.03
Length of relationship	−.01	.03	−.01	.03
Customer satisfaction	.16*	.07	.16*	.07
Level 1: Independent variables
C-EI	.18**	.04	.19**	.04
C-FI	.40**	.07	.40**	.07
OCB-C			.04	.03

(b) Predicting C-EI and C-FI (Moderation Effect; Study 1)
	Outcome: C-EI		Outcome: C-EI		Outcome: C-FI		Outcome: C-FI
	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3		Model 4
Predictor	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE
Level 1: Control variables
Intercept	3.92**	.05	3.92**	.05	3.90**	.04	3.96**	.04
Age	0.03	.04	0.2	.03	0.04	.04	0.04	.04
Education	0.02	.03	0.2	.03	−0.02	.04	−0.01	.03
Length of relationship	0.06	.04	0.8	.03	0.10†	.05	−0.08*	.04
Customer satisfaction	0.43**	.07	0.40**	.07	0.43**	.07	0.45**	.07
Level 1: Independent variable
OCB-C	0.08*	.04	0.04	.05	0.09**	.04	0.11†	.04
Level 2: Independent variable
Service climate			−0.8	.10			−0.16**	.05
Cross-level interaction
OCB-C × Service Climate			−0.20*	.90			0.27*	.15

Note. OCB-C =organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers; C-FI = customer–firm identification; C-EI = customer-employee identification; CCB = customers’ citizenship behaviors; SE = standard error.

†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01 (two-tailed tests).

Cross-Level Hypotheses (i.e., the Moderation Effect)

Hypotheses 3 and 4 predict that the individual-level relationship between employees’ OCB-C and C-EI and C-FI is stronger when the service climate (Level 2) is low and high, respectively. As Table 2, Panel b, shows, the slopes-as-outcomes regressions revealed service climate as a significant predictor of the individual-level slopes between employees’ OCB-C and C-EI (b = −.20, p < .05) and employees’ OCB-C and C-FI (b = .27, p < .05). Figure 2 presents plots of these interactions; OCB-C has a positive and significant relationship with C-EI when service climate is low (−1 SD from the mean; b = .14, p < .05) but not when it is high (b= −.06, ns), in support of Hypothesis 3 (see Panel a). In contrast, OCB-C has a positive and significant relationship with C-FI when service climate is high (b = .25, p <. 01) but not when it is low (b = −.03, ns), in support of Hypothesis 4 (see Panel b).

Figure 2.

Interaction plots (Study 1). (a) Interaction effect of organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers (OCB-C) and service climate on customer-employee identification. High service climate (+1 SD), b = −.06, t = −0.81, ns. Low service climate (−1 SD), b = .14, t = 2.04, p < .05. (b) Interaction effect of OCB-C and service climate on customer–firm identification. High service climate (+1 SD), b = .25, t = 3.60, p < .01. Low service climate (−1 SD), b = −.03, t = −0.57, ns.

Discussion

Study 1 demonstrates the indirect influence of OCB-C on CCB through the dual identification process of C-EI and C-FI, in support of Hypotheses 1 and 2.³ Furthermore, we establish the service climate as a moderator that alters the effect of employees’ OCB-C on customers’ identification formation. Specifically, service climate negatively (positively) moderates the relationship between OCB-C and C-EI (C-FI), in support of Hypotheses 3 and 4. However, Study 1 does not empirically examine the underlying attribution process by which customers infer the motives for employees’ citizenship behaviors as proposed by our mediated moderation Hypothesis 5.

Study 2: Experimental Study

In this study, we aim to replicate our Study 1 findings and also examine the motive attribution argument that the interaction effect of employees’ OCB-C and service climate on customers’ identification formation (i.e., C-EI and C-FI) is mediated by customers’ causal inferences about employees’ motives for displaying citizenship behaviors (Hypothesis 5).

Participants and Experimental Design Procedure

Participants were students enrolled in MBA courses at a university in South Korea. They participated voluntarily and were assured of the anonymity of their answers. Respondents ranged in age from 30 to 49 years (M = 37.16, SD = 5.02), and 40% were men. We developed a scenario to represent four conditions by manipulating OCB-C (high vs. low) and service climate (high vs. low) with a between-subjects design (please refer to Online Appendix A for two pretests that we used to validate our manipulations). Following Cohen’s (1992) recommendation for obtaining a power of 80, the cell sizes were 40 subjects, for a total sample of 160. Instead of following the general practice of measuring service climate from employees’ perspective, as in Study 1, we captured customers’ direct perceptions of the service climate, which might better support our arguments about their internal inferences for the underlying motives of employees’ OCB-C.⁴

Participants were welcomed and seated in separate cubicles. Each participant read a general introduction, then the randomly selected service climate condition, at either a low (describing the firm’s lack of focus and attention to customer services) or high (describing the firm’s efforts and attention to providing high customer service quality through environmental cues such as receptionists’ badges and notice boards) level. After reading the manipulated service climate condition, participants read that they settled in to the office and then received the other randomly selected manipulation of the employee’s OCB-C as either low or high, such that we described the absence or presence of employees’ extra effort to deal with the participant’s inquires and questions. Online Appendix B details all the conditions.

After reading the assigned scenario, participants answered questions related to our key constructs: motives (altruistic and egoistic), C-FI, C-EI, and CCB. They also answered OCB-C and service climate manipulation check questions. Specifically, we followed Williams and Anderson (1991) and measured OCB-C with 3 items (e.g., “This employee assists me when not asked,” “This employee voluntarily takes time to solve the customer’s problem”). We measured service climate with 6 items adapted from Schneider, White, and Paul (1998; e.g., “This bank places service quality as its top priority,” “Employees who deliver superior services are recognized and rewarded in this bank”). These items capture customers’ perceptions of management’s emphasis on the importance of customer service, which reflects the service climate level. The participants also indicated the realism of the experimental design with 2 items (α = .88, r = .76; e.g., “I could imagine a real situation like the one described in the scenario,” 1 = very unlikely, 7 = very likely). The results suggest that participants perceived the experimental design as realistic (M _composite = 6.57, p < .05).

We measured inferred motives with a 12-item scale used by Allen and Rush (1998) and Rifon et al. (2004). The items were designed to measure attributions of motives to altruistic causes (6 items, e.g., “This employee has a genuine concern for the welfare of his or her customers”) and to egoistic causes (6 items, e.g., “This employee seems to desire to impress the boss”), using 7-point scales (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). These items were preceded by the instructions: “Please indicate the extent to which you agree that each of the following may be the reason for or cause of this employee’s actions on occasions when he or she exhibits behaviors considered ‘above and beyond the call of duty.’”

For the identification measures of C-EI and C-FI and the CCB measures, the items were similar to those from Study 1, with some minor wording modifications to fit the banking context.

Results

Manipulation Checks

We formed the service climate score by averaging six manipulation check questions (α = .76). We also averaged the three manipulation check questions for OCB-C to form a manipulation check score (α = .84). To ensure that the service climate and the OCB-C worked as intended, we first subjected the service climate manipulation check score to a 2 (service climate: low vs. high) × 2 (OCB-C: low vs. high) factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA). This analysis revealed a significant main effect of the service climate manipulation; people in the high service climate condition were more likely to perceive the firm as more attentive to providing superior customer services (M = 6.05) than those in the low service climate condition, M = 2.18, F(1, 158) = 600.63, p < .01. The main effect of employees’ OCB-C manipulation and its interactive effect with service climate were not significant (p > .10). Likewise, we subjected the OCB-C manipulation check score to a 2 × 2 ANOVA, which revealed only a significant main effect of the OCB-C manipulation, such that people in the high OCB-C condition were more likely to perceive the employee as displaying more citizenship behaviors (M = 5.95) than those in the low OCB-C condition, M = 2.19, F(1, 158) = 566.26, p < .001. The main and interactive effects of the service climate manipulation were not significant (p >.10). Thus, our manipulations should operate largely as intended.

Mediation and Moderation Effects on C-EI and C-FI

We used SPSS version 24 (Hayes 2013) to test the mediation and moderation effects. We replicated the hypotheses tested in Study 1. First, C-EI mediates the impact of OCB-C and CCB; the 95% CI did not include zero [.72, 1.31], in support of Hypothesis 1. Second, C-FI mediates the impact of OCB-C and CCB, in that this 95% CI also did not include zero [.75, 1.25], in support of Hypothesis 2. In line with Hypotheses 3 and 4, we find that the simple moderating effect of service climate for the effect of OCB-C on C-EI was negatively significant (β = −1.16, p < .001), whereas the moderating effect of service climate for the effect of OCB-C on C-FI was positively significant (β = 0.53, p < .001).

Moderation of the Indirect Effect of OCB-C on Identification Through Motives

As Table 3 shows, results the PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes 2013) show that when service climate is low, the indirect effect of OCB-C on C-EI through the altruistic motive was significant (95% CI [1.78, 2.50]), but when the service climate is high (95% CI [−0.07, 0.04]), it was not significant, in support of Hypothesis 5a. In contrast, the indirect effect of OCB-C on C-FI through the egoistic motive was significant when the service climate was high (95% CI [0.67, 1.34]) and not when the service climate was low (95% CI [–0.25, 0.10]), in support of Hypothesis 5b.

Table 3.

Conditional Indirect Effects of OCB-C on Customer Identification at Low and High Levels of Service Climate (Study 2).

Mediator	Service Climate	Effect	Boot SE	CI [Lower, Upper]
(a) On C-EI
Altruistic motive	−.50	2.14	.19	[1.78, 2.50]
Altruistic motive	+.50	−0.00	.03	[−0.07, 0.04]
(b) On C-FI
Egoistic motive	−.50	−0.05	.09	[−0.25, 0.10]
Egoistic motive	+.50	0.98	.16	[0.67, 1.34]

Note. OCB-C =organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers; C-FI = customer–firm identification; C-EI = customer-employee identification; SE = standard error; CI = confidence interval.

Mood Effect

Previous research indicates that mood influences prosocial or citizenship behaviors and a person’s attribution motives (Organ and Konovsky 1989). Thus, we included a mood score, with 3 items (α = .88) adopted from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Scales (Watson, Clark, and Tellegen 1988): “I felt joyful/delighted/happy” (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). Because we observed no treatment effects (all p > .10), our proposed effects cannot be explained by customers’ mood.

Discussion

The findings from Study 2 confirm the simultaneous positive effects of employees’ OCB-C on customers’ identification formation toward both the employee and the firm; they also reaffirm the service climate as a boundary condition for customer identification formation in social exchange processes. In line with our findings from Study 1, these analyses show that the service climate weakens the effect of OCB-C on C-EI but strengthens the effect of OCB-C on C-FI. In addition, our findings reveal the existence of an attribution process that underlies customers’ perceptions of employees’ citizenship behaviors. Customers attribute employees’ OCB-C to altruistic (egoistic) motives if the service climate is low (high). Altruistic (egoistic) motives thus mediate the positive effect of employees’ OCB-C on C-EI (C-FI) when the service climate is low (high), confirming our mediated moderation Hypothesis 5.

General Discussion

According to the service-dominant view of marketing, customers and employees are active value creators, participating in the service creation process by applying their knowledge and skills (Vargo and Lusch 2004). In recent years, academics and practitioners increasingly have acknowledged that citizenship behaviors by both employees and customers (Verleye, Gemmel, and Rangarajan 2014) can contribute to firms’ sustainable competitive advantage. To contribute to this research area, we leverage social exchange and identity theories to understand social exchange processes between customers and employees and thereby address questions regarding whether and how employees’ citizenship behaviors might influence customers’ reciprocation with CCBs, the underlying mechanisms that might mediate the relationships, and how service climate can serve as a contextual factor in this social exchange process. Our findings in turn offer several significant research and managerial implications.

Research Implications

We bridge organizational behavior and services marketing literatures, by introducing an OCB-C as a salient factor that can drive CCB. To address the dearth of research examining OCBs’ effect on CCB, we adopt social exchange theory as a theoretical basis and posit that employees’ OCB-C and CCB relate, according to the norm of reciprocity. This reciprocal exchange of citizenship behaviors might represent a key form of value cocreation between employees and customers, enhancing the effectiveness of their interaction and improving the firm’s performance.

We also extend social exchange theory by investigating the role of customer identification as a basis for relational contracts and the sustainability of the social exchange relationships in services. Specifically, we predict a dual mediation of customer identification, with the firm or with employees, on the relationship between OCB-C and CCB. Researchers increasingly consider customer identification with the firm, especially following Bhattacharya and Sen’s (2003) flagship research on C-FI. However, the role of C-EI in services remains unclear. This void is troubling, because customers can maintain different perceptions of multiple foci, including the firm and its employees (Yim, Tse, and Chan 2008). With this study, we extend services marketing research by considering C-FI and C-EI in parallel, which produces a more comprehensive understanding of customer identification in social exchange processes.

Our research also responds to criticisms of social exchange theory, namely, that the norm of reciprocity is universal but not unconditional and that a person’s reciprocation depends on his or her assessment of the environment (Peloza, Hudson, and Hassay 2009; Wilson 2000). By building on service climate literature and motive attributions, we examine the service climate as a key contextual cue that influences customers’ attribution of motives for employees’ citizenship behaviors. We thus uncover a double-edge sword effect of service climate: When service climate is high, customers attribute the employees’ OCB-C to an egoistic motive and identify more with the firm but less with the employee; when the service climate is low, customers infer that employees’ OCB-C has an altruistic motive and form stronger identification with the employee. This interesting finding moves beyond research that mostly advocates the benefits of high service climates, because when a high service climate occurs together with employees’ OCB-C, customers’ identification with the employees will suffer, while their identification with the firm will be strengthened.

Finally, our examination of service climate as a moderator enriches understanding of its impacts on customers’ identification and reciprocation. Study 1 also extends prior CCB research to a multilevel perspective. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine how social contexts, such as the service climate that operates at the store level, jointly interact with employees’ OCB-C at the individual level to predict customers’ identification (C-EI and C-FI) and reciprocation (CCB). This multilevel approach enables a more fine-grained understanding of the influence of the service climate on the exchange of citizenship behaviors.

Managerial Implications

Our findings have several implications for firms considering ways to motivate customers to engage in citizenship behaviors. First, the social exchange relationship, and particularly the norm of reciprocity, can exist in customer-employee interactions. A few prior studies have demonstrated that employees’ citizenship behaviors enhance customers’ service evaluations such as perceived higher service quality (e.g., Bell and Menguc 2002); we further reveal that firms can leverage employees’ OCB-C to motivate customers’ CCB—a critical but difficult-to-achieve service outcome that goes beyond customers’ general service evaluations of the firm (Groth 2005).

Second, managers should recognize the difficulty of directly transferring employees’ OCB-C to CCB, because customers’ reciprocation requires motivation. In this study, we demonstrate that customers’ formation of identification is a key motivator for the emergence and sustainability of reciprocation in customer-employee social exchange processes. Specifically, customers have dual targets for identification (i.e., the firm and the employee), and these separate identifications could simultaneously drive customers’ reciprocation with CCB in response to OCB-C. Therefore, managers should pay equal attention to and encourage customers’ formation of both C-FI and C-EI. Prior research has shown that events that promote a sense of organizational membership through shared experiences (e.g., Harley-Davidson communities), along with close relationships and feelings of similarity, are essential for creating organizational identification (Algesheimer, Dholakia, and Herrmann 2005). Customers are also more likely to identify with a company that has a prestigious identity, because it enables them to view themselves in the reflected glory of the company and fulfill their self-enhancement needs (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003). Extending these approaches, our study reveals that employees’ voluntary behaviors can serve as another salient cue that not only helps convey and promote the firm’s identity to customers but also cultivates customers’ identification with employees (i.e., C-EI). To understand customers’ identification formation, firms should regularly conduct customer surveys that include measures of C-EI and C-FI to gain insights into their customers’ perceptions and attachment to both the firm and its employees (Haumann et al. 2014).

Third, managers need to be cognizant of the potential opposing effects of service climate on the relationship between employees’ OCB-C and customers’ identification with the firm and its employees. Our results challenge the generally accepted notion that the service climate enhances customer experiences, such as customer satisfaction and loyalty (Bowen and Schneider 2014). Instead, service climate can have contrasting effects on CCB through its opposing, interaction effect with employees’ OCB-C, on C-EI and C-FI. Therefore, managers must be aware of the potential dysfunctional impact of service climate and pay close attention to the level of the service climate in their workplace to assess which type of customer identification is more likely to suffer due to encouragement of employees’ OCB-C. For example, in a high service climate, employees’ OCB-C drives C-FI to grow stronger, but C-EI might suffer, so managers should devote more effort to strengthening customers’ sense of identification with employees, such as by fostering closer rapport to enhance customers’ sense of oneness with employees (Yim, Tse, and Chan 2008). In an ambiguous or weak service climate though, the positive effect of OCB-C on C-EI is stronger, so to enhance C-FI, managers might seek to establish communication cues through product offerings, corporate social initiatives, and media that convey and enhance the image and prestige of the firm’s identity (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003). Of course, all these efforts impose costs too, so managers must carefully balance the trade-off between higher levels of C-EI or C-FI. For example, a higher (lower) level of C-EI might be more critical (tolerable) in relational (transactional) service contexts, such as hair salons (fast food restaurant), in which customers’ relationships with employees are (not) the key.

Fourth, managers can manage the firm’s service climate level to alter customers’ inferences about employees’ motives. To increase C-FI, they might foster a higher service climate by promoting employees’ OCB-C, to lead customers to attribute employees’ citizenship behaviors to egoistic motives, such that they will be more likely to identify with the firm rather than a particular employee. Conversely, to increase C-EI, the firm can lower the service climate to encourage customers to attribute employees’ OCB-C to their altruistic motives so as to enhance customers’ identification with the employee.

Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research

Several limitations suggest additional research opportunities. First, recent studies propose that customers can influence the operations and outcomes of the firm. For instance, Frey, Bayon, and Totzek (2013) highlight reciprocal effects of the customer side (e.g., customer satisfaction) on the employee side (e.g., employee satisfaction). Hence, longitudinal data would be required to test the causality of our proposed effects as well as explore the reversed causal effects of CCB on OCB-C. Second, we follow Bove et al. (2009) and other researchers’ work (e.g., Bettencourt 1997; Groth 2005) to include measures of CCB with several dimensions; however, our current conceptualization of CCB as unidimensional might neglect the potential formative nature of those dimensions (Jarvis, MacKenzie, and Podsakoff 2003) and so one should interpret our findings with caution. Future work, particularly with the use of structural equation modeling, should use a multidimensional conceptualization of CCB and explore the potentially differential effects of each dimension. Third, though we have conducted pretests that included control conditions and successful manipulation checks, further research should replicate our work with different types and levels of manipulations embedded differently, perhaps involving real participants in more naturalistic settings. Fourth, we examine the effect of employees’ OCB on CCB through dual identification mechanisms; additional research could investigate customers’ motives for identification formation. Finally, the beauty salon and bank contexts entail one-to-one service relationships. Further studies might test whether our proposed customer identification phenomenon also generalizes to situations in which the same customer is served by more than one employee.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A1.

Measurement Items and Validity Assessment (Study 1).

	SFL
Employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward customers^a: CR = .77, AVE = .53, and HSV = .35
1. This beautician voluntarily assists me even if it means going beyond job requirements	.604
2. This beautician helps me with problems beyond what is expected or required	807
3. This beautician often goes above and beyond the call of duty when serving me	.763
Customer–firm identification^a: CR = .88, AVE = .59, and HSV = .36
1. I strongly identify with this beauty salon	.797
2. I feel good to be a customer of this beauty salon	.801
3. I like to tell that I am a customer of this beauty salon	.812
4. This beauty salon fits well to me	.784
5. I feel attached to this beauty salon	.638
Customer-employee identification^a: CR = .87, AVE = .58, and HSV = .35
1. I strongly identify with this beautician	.808
2. I feel good to be a customer of this beautician	.836
3. I like to tell that I am a customer of this beautician	.775
4. This beautician fits well to me	.772
5. I feel attached to this beautician	.572
Customer citizenship behaviors^a: CR = .91, AVE = .53, and HSV = .36
1. If I had a problem I would contact this beautician and ask her to take care of it	.719
2. I would make suggestions to this beauty salon as to how the service could be improved	.698
3. I encourage friends and relatives to go to this beauty salon	.804
4. I would try out new products or services that introduced by this salon.	.768
5. I am happy to use any souvenirs or gifts that advertised by this beauty salon	.721
6. I would be willing to wait for the beauty services of this beauty salon	.727
7. I go out of my way to treat this beautician with kindness	.697
8. I would give constructive beauty advice to other customers of this beauty salon	.692
9. I would help introduce the new products/services of this salon to other customers even though I do not have to	.712
Service climate^b: CR = .90, AVE = .70, and HSV = .01
In this store,…
1. Employees work hard to meet the need of the customers	.918
2. It has clear performance standards for service quality	.807
3. Delivering high service quality is a top priority	.846
4. Employees’ contribution in delivering good service quality will be recognized	.756

Note. Overall model fit: χ²(289) = 588.30, p < .001; goodness-of-fit index = .90; comparative fit index = .95; and root mean square error of approximation = .05. SFL = standardized factor loading; CR = composite reliability; AVE = average variance extracted; HSV = highest shared variance with other constructs.

^aRated by the customer. ^bRated by the frontline service employee.

Authors’ Note

The first and second authors contributed equally.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is supported by the Hong Kong SAR GRF research grants awarded to the first author (590613H/HKBU590613) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) grant awarded to the last author (No. 70702010).

Supplemental Material

The online appendices are available at .

Notes

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