• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.15-25
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• 2021

Purpose: Current research aimed at exploring whether group entitativity and satisfaction to becoming the member of group have positive effects on group identification, and whether group identification has positive effects on within-in-group domain consumption. This research focused on the mediation role of group identification in the effects of the group entitativity and the satisfaction to becoming the member of group on the within-in-group domain consumption. Research design, data, and methodology: We selected Shandong Province as our experimental target group and people living in Shandong province as our respondents. 316 questionnaire data were collected. The structural equation model in AMOS 26 were used to verify hypotheses. Results: First, group entitativity affected group identification positively. Second, satisfaction to becoming the member of group affected group identification positively. Third, group identification positively influenced on the within-in-group domain consumption. Fourth, the group identification played the full mediation roles in the effects of both the group entitativity and the satisfaction on the within-in-group domain consumption. Conclusions: marketers should highlight the group identification with their target group by stimulating the perception of the consumer's group entitativity and satisfied feelings about the group to induce the intent to purchase their brand as within-in-group domain consumption object.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.35-45
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• 2020

Purpose: Do close linkages among employees during service encounters always enhance customer satisfaction? Drawing on literature in social psychology, this research argues that under certain circumstances close linkages among employees undermine customer satisfaction. More specifically, this research explores a service failure context and shows that higher task interaction among employees during service encounters leads to higher perceived firm entitativity, resulting in an individual employee's service failure being detrimental to customer satisfaction with the firm. Data and research methodology: A series of experiments using scenarios across different service contexts was used in order to test hypotheses. Data was collected via Amazon Mechanical Turk and the models were tested using Hayes PROCESS. Results: The results show that interactions among employees during service result in 1) lower satisfaction with the firm and 2) lower revisit intentions in the future when there is a service failure by an individual employee. Following the main effects analysis, mediation analysis shows that the effect of employee interaction on customer satisfaction with the firm and revisit intention is mediated by perceived firm entitativity. Implications: By examining contexts where employee interaction may be detrimental to firms, this research provides novel insights on how to manage communications among service employees.