CUSTOMER ORIENTATION OF SERVICE EMPLOYEES IN FAMILY BUSINESSES IN THE HOTEL SECTOR

The business interactions between front-line employees and customers are crucial to evaluating service quality and for a business’ performance. A gap has been identified in the literature on both the customer orientation of service employees (COSE) and family businesses (FBs); both concepts never have been studied together before. Due to this fact, we present a concept that develops a theoretical model based on Hennig-Thurau (2004). This model drives research about the COSE and FBs in the hotel sector. The two main contributions are the following: (1) electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is proposed as a consequence of COSE within FBs and (2) a questionnaire has been developed from relevant subscales to measure COSE and two possible consequences derived from it (Customer Satisfaction and eWOM). A database from Iberic Balance Analysis System (SABI) has been selected to study these variables in the hotel sector, and it will be used in a proposed future empirical study that is expected to provide support for the theory.