Incongruent advertising's effect on service boundary spanner intention to perform extra-role customer service: an experimental investigation

Abstract

Front-line service employees play a key role in influencing customer service quality perceptions. However, due to the nature of services, organisations rely heavily on indirect control mechanisms and spontaneous employee behaviour, particularly extra-role customer service. Despite the wealth of research outlining the influence culture and climate have on employee attitudes and behaviour, little research has addressed advertising as a communication that carries strong cultural messages. This study sought to address this gap by investigating the effect of incongruent advertising on front-line service employee intention to perform extra-role customer service. An organisation's culture and climate guide the development of employee cognitive schemata, which are used to process external stimuli (such as advertising). When the functional and relational messages of an advertisement do not match the relevant employee cognitive schemata, a state of cognitive dissonance exists. It was hypothesised that front-line service employees resolve such cognitive dissonance by reducing extra-role customer service. Using the theory of planned behaviour, it was further hypothesised that changes in behavioural intention resulting from advertising incongruity would be due to lower behavioural beliefs and attitude, not subjective norm or perceived behavioural control. Adopting an experimental research design, data collection took place among front-line branch staff of a major New Zealand retail trading bank and involved a series of in-depth interviews, which guided development of the main mail survey. Analysis of the hypotheses was undertaken using both linear regression and two-way analysis of variance. The findings supported the theory of planned behaviour and, as hypothesised, indicated that while subjective norm and perceived behavioural control remain stable, incongruent functional advertising perceptions negatively affect behavioural beliefs, attitude, and intention. Incongruent relational advertising perceptions did not significantly affect any of the study constructs. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications, including the need for advertising decision makers to understand the functional and relational messages in advertisements to both external and internal audiences.