Customer Orientation

To assess the level of customer orientation of casino key account representatives, a modified selling orientation – customer orientation (SOCO) scale was used in this study. The original SOCO scale was designed by Saxe and Weitz (1982). The scale consists of 24 items, 12 of which assess salespeople’s degree of selling orientation and 12 of which assess salespeople’s degree of customer orientation. It was developed to assess the customer orientation of sales personnel, and was originally administered to two samples of salespeople that included both industrial and consumer salespeople. Extensive testing showed the measure to be a reliable and valid instrument. Cronbach’s alpha level for the first sample was 0.86, and the second was 0.83. Saxe and Weitz conducted a test–retest measurement and found that after a 6-week interval the correlation was 0.67, which indicates that the scale had a satisfactory level of stability. The scale was further scrutinized by a panel of expert judges for content validity. When each item was examined for whether it was representative of

“customer orientation” or “selling orientation” the overall average of agreement was 79 percent, and therefore determined to have acceptable content validity (Saxe & Weitz, 1982).

Michaels and Day (1985) also examined the SOCO scale in their replication. The results of this replication showed an internal consistency reliability measurement of 0.91, which is higher than the Saxe and Weitz results of 0.86 and 0.83. Further, the factor structure in the replication study was similar to that of the original study. According to Dunlap et al. (1988), “The SOCO scale does appear to be a robust and useful measure of the customer orientation of salespeople.” (p. 186). In another study, Brown et al. (1991) used 348 consumers to test a modified version of the SOCO scale. These authors report the internal consistency, using the coefficient alpha technique, of the modified SOCO scale to be 0.81. Although the reported level of internal consistency was slightly lower than those found in the two previously studies, it is still high enough to indicate that the overall properties of the scale were unchanged by the modification, thereby allowing researchers to modify the SOCO scale to fit a variety of situations.

Hoffman and Kelly (1994) revised the 24-item SOCO to measure service providers’ customer-orientated behaviours in a hospital setting by dropping the 12 items representing selling behaviours. The resulting 12-item scale tested on customer contact personnel has Cronbach alpha of 0.90. Daniel and Darby’s (1996) also modified the original SOCO scale and developed a 13-item measure called customer orientation scale (COS) to assess the customer orientation level of service providers. The authors adopted Hoffman and Kelly’s (1994) 12 items of the modified SOCO

scale, plus one more item from the original SOCO scale, which relates to customer rather than to sales orientation. Their study showed a standardized Cronbach alpha 0.86 for COS. The authors suggest the modified COS can be used to measure customer orientation among service providers. As casino key account representatives are the service providers for casino high-end markets, the scale used in the current study was based on Daniel and Darby’s 13-item COS. The 13 items were altered to suit the casino context. One member of the casino management provided expert input to this adaptation. The participants were required to indicate their agreement with each item, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Higher scores reflect a higher degree of employee customer orientation. The factor analysis and Cronbach alpha coefficient for this scale will be reported in the next section.

4.4.4 Adaptability

To assess the adaptability of casino key account representatives, a service-context version of ADAPTS developed by Hartline and Ferrell (1996) was used. The original ADAPTS scale was designed by Spiro and Weitz (1990) for measuring adaptive selling consisting 16 items. These 16 items were developed from surveys of salespeople in 10 divisions of a major national manufacturer of diagnostic equipment and supplies. Spiro and Weitz investigated the nomological validity of this adaptive selling scale by examining the correlations between the ADAPTS scale and antecedent measures of personality, intrinsic motivation, experience, management style, and sales performance as an outcome measure. Significant correlations were

found between ADAPTS and personality measures, as well as self-assessed performance.

Hartline and Ferrell operationalised adaptability as the ability of service employees to adjust his or her behaviour to the interpersonal demands of the service encounter; the authors modified the original adaptive selling scale by dropping 6 redundant items and changing the wording of the remaining items to eliminate the personal selling aspects within each statement. The final 10-item scale assesses customer-contact employees’ ability to adapt to changing service encounters by altering their approach towards customers. The current project used this modified scale to suit the study context. The participants were required to indicate their agreement with each item, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Higher scores reflect a higher degree of employee adaptability. The factor analysis and Cronbach alpha coefficient for this scale are presented in the next section.

4.4.5 Performance

The performance measure used in this study was based on the staff performance appraisal (hereafter, the appraisal) that the casino uses to assess the relevant employees’ performance. The employees of the casino are rated on performance and contributions to the company operations. This is measured against the total requirements and standards of the job and against other employees performing similar work. The appraisal comprises 14 factors, as follows:

2) Job Knowledge, 3) Quantity of work, 4) Quality of work,

5) Attitude towards supervision,

6) Human Relations and Customer Relations, 7) Work Cooperation, 8) Adaptability, 9) Dependability, 10) Interest, 11) Initiative, 12) Diligence, 13) Discipline, 14) Appearance.

Because the interest of the current study is performance that contains social components in terms of employee-customer relationship, and service related behaviours, 8 items out of the listed factors were selected for performance analysis of this study, namely, item 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14. This study used self-report method. Self-report measures have been frequently used in previous research (e.g., Brown et al. 2002; Busch & Bush, 1978; Sujan et al., 1994). Churchill et al. (1985) indicated self-report performance measures did not appear to produce any inflated assessment bias. Each item was assessed on five-point scales, 1 refers to the lowest, 5 the highest. The Cronbach alpha coefficient for this scale is reported in the next chapter.

4.5 Procedure