Crítica de la vida cotidiana en el espacio-tiempo social

Social cognitive theory dictates that individuals judge progress towards their goals based on personal standards that are influenced by the social environment or established societal norms (Bandura, 1991). Since the customer is the best person to evaluate the quality of service delivered by the FLE, the customer’s judgment becomes the standard by which the employee must also evaluate themselves. In striving towards a goal of excellence in customer service, the employee must behave in ways that align with the customer’s standards of good quality service. Thus, proactive customer orientation should dictate that the FLE behaves in ways that ultimately put the customer’s needs first, creating a favourable opinion of the FLE in the eyes of the customer and the product they sell (Homburg et al. 2012).

A proactive employee who is customer oriented is ultimately focused on meeting customers' needs. Consistent with social cognitive theory, the goal-directed behaviour of proactive individuals and the desire to serve customers should be a motivating factor to reach performance goals resulting from customer engagement behaviour. As customer-oriented FLEs are better service providers, customer orientation is expected to have a positive impact on customer relationship quality with the employee and with the firm (Mullins et al., 2014; Bateman and Valentine, 2015; Menguc et al., 2016).

Employees can seek feedback on behalf of the firm as part of the firm’s communication strategy and formal feedback system to elicit crucial information that can help improve service quality and innovation. As mentioned earlier, this act of asking the customer’s opinion concerning the firm’s performance signals to the customer that firm has the customer’s best interests at heart. Additionally, a customer- oriented employee who also has the customer’s best interest at heart is likely to make past positive experiences regarding the firm’s products and service quality more salient.

Although customer oriented behaviour usually results in positive outcomes, it can be detrimental to the FLE or firm when combined with negative feedback seeking. Customer oriented employees are more likely to pay attention to negative social cues than positive ones to satisfy customers (Mullins et al., 2014). Therefore, when customer-oriented FLEs seek negative feedback on their own performance or on behalf of the firm, they are more likely to side with the customer in emphasizing negative aspects of their own performance or the firm’s service quality and policies, thus worsening the customer’s impression of the FLE and the firm.

In summary, the combination of the customer’s positive impression of the employee, and the company’s service based on the FLE’s customer oriented behaviour, as well as the mere measurement effect of positive FSB, will amplify the positive effect of positive FSB on both customer relationship quality with the employee and with the firm. Conversely, customer oriented FLEs, when seeking negative FSB will empathise with the customer, and stress negative aspects of their own performance and the firm’s service quality, which consistent with mere measurement effects will diminish the customer’s relationship quality with the FLE and with the firm. Hence, I propose the following hypotheses:

H2a: Employee customer orientation will strengthen the positive effect of employee self-positive feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the employee.

H2b: Employee customer orientation will strengthen the negative effect of employee self-negative feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the employee.

H2c: Employee customer orientation will strengthen the positive effect of employee firm-positive feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the selling firm.

H2d: Employee customer orientation will strengthen the negative effect of employee firm-negative feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the selling firm.

While customer oriented FLEs give priority to the customer’s well-being, selling oriented proactive employees may be self-centred, thinking only of their career progression or compensation, and may make self-interested choices that favour contribute their own personal goals whether or not it aligns with the customer’s well- being. Customer service performance is only one aspect that employees are evaluated on. Service employees are also evaluated on their ability to capitalise on their customer relationships to make sales. Thus, not only does the proactive employee need to strive for goals based on customer standards, but they also need to strive for goals based on organizational standards. However, if the employee bases their relationship with the customer solely on making sales to the detriment of service quality, this attitude would result in behaviours that are less likely to please the customer. Hence, where the

employee is more focused on their performance outcomes than with customer well- being, it is expected that SO will have a negative impact on relationship quality (Kadic-Maglajlic et al., 2017; Gabler et al., 2017).

FLEs high in customer orientation give more energy to customer satisfaction and problem solution (Saxe and Weitz, 1982). It follows then that individuals that tend more towards selling oriented behaviours will devote less time and energy to ensuring customer satisfaction and customer-focused problem solving. These selling oriented characteristics will then be reflected in the FLE’s communication with customers; such as a lower interest in finding out positive outcomes of the FLE’s own performance or the company’s service quality. The reduced efficacy of positive feedback seeking by a selling oriented FLE will thus result in a lower level of the customer’s relationship quality with the FLE and with the firm.

Just as a selling oriented FLE will devote less time and energy to seeking feedback on positive aspects of performance in order to increase customer satisfaction and solve customer problems, they will also devote less energy in seeking negative feedback which has informational value, and is necessary to make improvements. However, the lower propensity to seek negative feedback in service interactions makes negative customer experiences less salient, reducing the negative mere measurement effect of negative feedback seeking. In essence, selling orientation reduces the negative impact of negative feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the FLE and with the firm.

In summary, the selling oriented FLE’s reduced propensity to highlight the customer’s positive experiences through positive feedback seeking will reduce the positive bias of mere measurement effects and result in a lower level of the customer’s relationship quality with the employee and with the firm. Conversely, the mere

measurement negative bias of negative feedback seeking is less effective on diminishing relationship quality since the selling oriented FLE is less interested in the informational value of negative feedback to make improvements to their customer service performance or the customer’s perception of the firm. Hence, I propose the following hypotheses:

H3a: Employee selling orientation will reduce the positive effect of self-positive feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the employee.

H3b: Employee selling orientation will strengthen the negative effect of self-negative feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the employee.

H3c: Employee selling orientation will reduce the positive effect of firm-positive feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the selling firm.

H3d: Employee selling orientation will strengthen the negative effect of firm- negative feedback seeking on the customer’s relationship quality with the selling firm.