Author(s): Bejoy John Thomas
The recognition of consumer needs plays a pivotal role in assessing the effectiveness of retail enterprises operating in the retail industry. In this context, the importance of customer orientation is widely acknowledged as a crucial factor in attaining success within the realm of retail sales personnel. The employees in retail stores may occasionally encounter supervisors who abuse their authority and engage in abusive behaviour. The study tries to investigate how customer orientation influences the job performance of retail salespeople under oppressive supervision and also investigates the potential moderating influence of contingent penalization and contingent rewards on the impact of harsh leadership. With the aid of the affective events theory (AET) as a theoretical foundation, we propose that abusive supervision is a contextual event that is connected to subordinates' affective responses, such as customer orientation and corresponding evaluative judgements of their workplace in the form of their job performance. Furthermore, an examination was conducted to ascertain the impact of contingent rewards and penalties on the association between abusive leadership and client orientation. Employees of retail establishments in Kochi and Trivandrum participated in the survey. A standardised questionnaire was used to gather the information from 72 employees. The study found that abusive leadership had a negative impact on customer orientation. Also, client orientation had a positive effect on work output. Furthermore, contingent punishment mitigated the relationship between oppressive leadership style and customer service orientation.