• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.45 no.11
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• pp.1673-1680
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to examine how customer orientation (CO) reduces employee stress to customers (CSS). As emotional labor strategies [surface acting (SA) and deep acting (DA)] may mediate a role between CO and CSS, we verified multiple parallel mediator roles of SA and DA between CO and CSS. Our survey was administered to 323 school foodservice employees in Daegu and Gyeongbuk. The results show that CO increased DA but did not decrease SA, and SA had a positive effect on CSS while DA did not influence CSS. These results did not support the parallel multiple mediator model. We conducted post-hoc model modification and proposed the serial multiple mediator model as a modified model. As a result, CO increased DA, DA reduced SA, and SA showed a positive relation with CSS. This double mediating effect through DA and SA between CO and CSS was significant. Based on these results, we found that CO did not have a direct effect on SA and CSS. DA did not directly reduce CSS while CO reduced SA and CSS through DA indirectly. DA had a negative effect on CSS through SA indirectly. Finally, implications and limitations of this are discussed.