Relationship conflict in stores: a longitudinal study of intra-store conflict on salespeople’s helping, customer-oriented behavior, and customer purchase behavior

Abstract Although the service-profit chain model has been studied widely, little is known about the processes and conditions of store-level relationship conflict to an increase or decrease in customer purchase behavior. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the cumulative effects of relationship conflict on changes in unit-level helping, the effect of salespeople’s helping behavior on customer-oriented behavior (COB), and the subsequent impact on changes in customer purchase. To test these relationships, data points were collected from 1,523 salespeople observations and 13,005 customers across 116 pooled stores assessed in six waves over more than 6 years. The findings revealed that stores with a long history of low relationship conflict consistently displayed high helping behavior. Results show that helping growth depends on the degree of conflict intensity and asymmetry; the intensity of relationship conflict led to an increase in helping behavior when conflict asymmetry is high and to a decrease of such behaviors when conflict asymmetry is low. Results also showed that store-level helping behavior had a positive effect on COB, which in turn had a cumulative positive effect on changes in customer purchase behavior.