Using two waves of store financial data and survey data collected from 34,8
66 and 34,365 employees and 30,239 and 33,299 customers who shopped at 594
stores of a large U.S. retail company we tested path models relating import
ance of service to management, service climate variables, sales personnel s
ervice performance, and store financial performance. At the store-level of
analysis, the results indicated that (a) importance of service to managemen
t does relate positively to service climate variables (b) service climate v
ariables are predictive of sales personnel service performance, and (c) sal
es personnel service performance in turn is predictive of store financial p
erformance. Issues concerning the generalizability of the present findings
as well as the implications of these results for effectively managing the i
nternal and external task environments of retail service organizations are
discussed. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.