Satisfying Customers Through Satisfied Service Employees: Integrating the Emotional Labor and Emotional Contagion Perspectives

The importance of service employee satisfaction in enhancing customer satisfaction has been emphasized, yet there is limited research exploring the mechanism linking them. Research indicated that employee satisfaction will influence service employee’s emotional labor (Austin et al., 2008; Cheung and Tang, 2009; Diefendorff et al., 2005; Groth et al., 2009; Kiffin-Petersen et al., 2011; Tan et al., 2003). In turn, emotional labor affects the emotional contagion between service employees and customers (Gosserand and Diefendorff, 2005; Grandey, 2000; 2003), which eventually influences customer satisfaction (Bettencourt et al., 2001; Pugh, 2001; Tsai, 2001; Tsai and Huang, 2002). In other words, the relationship between employee and customer satisfaction can be mediated by emotional labor and contagion. However, little empirical research has been done to explore such a mechanism. This research attempts to fill the research gap by developing and testing an empirical model that examines the new emotional mechanism through which satisfied employees satisfy customers.