Employee Attitudes, Customer Satisfaction, and Sales Performance: Assessing the Linkages in US Grocery Stores

Using store-level panel data for a major supermarket company, we investigate the linkages between employee attitudes, customer satisfaction, and sales performance, while controlling for observed and unobserved differences across stores. We find that employee attitudes positively affect customer satisfaction with service but do not affect customer satisfaction with quality or value. Additionally, we find that customer satisfaction with service positively affects sales performance. Our results suggest that employee attitudes affect sales performance through their impact on customer service. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.