Frontline employees’ personality traits: customer preferences and the homophily effect

Abstract

Consistent with Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) premise that “the customer is always a co-producer”, understanding customer’s evaluations of the service encounter is crucial in managing the value co-creation process. Moreover, as service organizations increasingly rely on technology-mediated customer contact, there is a strong need for research that assesses the formation of customer evaluative judgments of these technology-mediated service experiences. The aim of the current research is to develop and empirically test a framework that helps to gain insight in the relationships of customer beliefs, Our proposed conceptual model departs from Froehle and Roth’s (2004) conceptual framework of technology-mediated customer service which will be extended by integrating findings from the customer value literature.