Antecedents and outcomes of customer incivility: a study of frontline employees in Vietnam’s retail industry

Abstract

One of the big challenges of retail industry is improve the service quality to catch up with the growth of economics. In order to improve the service quality, mandatory corporate emotional expression rules commonly employed; which is in turn, affect the frontline employee emotional well-being and increase turn-over intention – another big challenge of retail industry. Workplace incivility and emotional labor somehow exist in the middle of this conflict; where they have been attended by researchers, and receiving more attention as its practical potential and importance. The study examined five constructs including: experienced supervisor incivility, experienced co-worker incivility, customer incivility, emotional labor and quality of work life; which are possible antecedents,mediators and outcome of customer incivility. A face-to-face survey with the target of 300 valid samples conducted with frontline employees in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.The results support all hypotheses; whereas experienced supervisor incivility and experienced co-worker incivility are antecedents of customer incivility; customer incivility is found related to quality of work life – a non-negative outcome. Surface acting and deep acting, the two dimensions of emotional labor are found as mediators in the relation between customer incivility and quality of work life with inconsistent effects addressing the importance of workplace incivility and positive roles of emotional labor which further study should attend.