Abstract

Research on service employee emotions has gained much attention since the quality of service delivery relies heavily on frontline employees. The impact of frontline employees’ emotions on customer outcomes as well as service organizations’ financial and long-term benefits may be the reasons of the attention.

The main purpose of the current study is to investigate the associations of customer perceived emotional labor strategies and customer outcomes, specifically, customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth recommendation in the travel and tourism industry. Data for this study was collected from international tourists who used group package tours with tour guide services during their visits in Malaysia. The results point out that all three emotional labor strategies have significant effects on customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth recommendations. The results suggest significant implications for service managers and organizations.

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