Impact of Service Orientation on Frontline Employee Service Performance and Consumer Response

As product and price become less important, managers search for new ways to differentiate themselves in a buyer-seller relationship. Increasingly, businesses have to focus on service orientation to differentiate themselves from their competitors. As consumer loyalty depends primarily upon rendering quality service, the delivery process among business service orientation, frontline service employee performance and consumer response deserves more attention. This article explores some of the ways in which service orientation can be used as an appropriate alternative to the more traditional business methods. This study analyzes the dyadic data collected from 247 questionnaires distributed to consumers and employees across 17 branches of a financial service company. The results show that service orientation positively affects employee service performance but negatively affects consumer loyalty. Employee service performance positively influences consumer loyalty and indirectly positively influences word-of-mouth of consumers.