Abstract:

With transition of marketing science from goods-dominant logic to service-dominant logic, how to value “knowledge and skills” exchange for acquiring core competitive advantage become a hot topic for both academic and practical departments. This study explores the antecedents of frontline employees’ customer need knowledge (CNK) at both team level and the individual level. Using employees and customers’ matched-questionnaires data collected from 36 travel agency outlets in Guangzhou, the authors test the impacts of team learning climate and employee predispositions to adapt (learning goal orientation, service orientation and self-monitoring) on CNK. The results of Multivariate Data Analysis indicate that team learning climate, learning goal orientation, service orientation and self-monitoring are important antecedents to CNK. Implication of the findings, contributions and limitations, and direction for future research are also discussed.