Personal Customer Orientation Scale (PeKS)

Abstract

The Personal Customer Orientation Scale (known in German as the Skala zur personalen Kundenorientierung or PeKS) is an 8-item, self-administered psychometric instrument developed by Dr. Nikolai W. Egold (2000, 2007) to measure individual service employees’ disposition, attitude, and behavioral endeavor toward meeting, understanding, and satisfying the needs and expectations of clients, patients, or customers. Originating within the field of industrial and organizational psychology and service climate research, the scale specifically captures personal customer orientation at the frontline employee level, differentiating it from macro-level organizational service climate or firm-wide marketing orientations. Frontline employees operate as the boundary-spanning face of the service firm; their interpersonal attitudes and proactive service behaviors directly determine client perceptions of service quality and subsequent customer satisfaction.

Constructed through a rigorous item-reduction process from an initial 45-item pool inspired by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry’s (1988) SERVQUAL framework and qualitative interviews across diverse service industries, the unidimensional 8-item PeKS operates on a standard 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Stimme überhaupt nicht zu / Strongly disagree) to 5 (Stimme vollkommen zu / Strongly agree). Psychometric investigations across healthcare professionals (general practitioners and occupational therapists, N = 166), retail sales personnel (shoe retailers, N = 107), and multi-source dyadic samples linking employees to 681 end-users confirm solid structural and psychometric integrity. The measure demonstrates satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .73 in the definitive 8-item validation study; α = .76 in an expanded 10-item research variant). Principal component analyses corroborate its essential unidimensionality, accounting for 37.15% of the total variance with a dominant single eigenvalue exceeding unity (1.02). Discriminant validity is empirically evidenced by near-zero, non-significant correlations with the Big Five personality traits measured via the NEO-FFI (extraversion r = .19, agreeableness r = .06, conscientiousness r = .05, neuroticism r = .09, openness r = -.11), demonstrating that personal customer orientation represents an occupational, role-specific attitude rather than invariant personality traits. Criterion-related predictive validity is established via significant cross-level correlations with actual end-user customer satisfaction ratings (r = .25, p < .01). Designed primarily for organizational research, human resource diagnostics, and service quality interventions, the PeKS provides a parsimonious, rapid, and empirically validated assessment of frontline customer orientation.

Keywords

Personal Customer Orientation Scale, PeKS, customer orientation, frontline employees, service quality, customer satisfaction, service climate, industrial and organizational psychology, employee attitude, psychometrics

Authors

The Personal Customer Orientation Scale (PeKS) was conceptualized, developed, and validated by Dr. Nikolai W. Egold. Initial operationalizations were articulated in his diploma thesis at the Department of Psychology and Sports Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt (Egold, 2000), followed by comprehensive psychometric development, multi-sample structural validation, and dyadic criterion modeling in his doctoral dissertation (Egold, 2007) and subsequent peer-reviewed empirical investigations (Egold, van Dick, & Zapf, 2009; Schuh, Egold, & van Dick, 2012).

Primary Developer Details:

• Author: Dr. Nikolai W. Egold
• Academic Affiliation: Hochschule Fresenius (University of Applied Sciences), Department of Psychology, Frankfurt am Main / Idstein, Germany. Formerly affiliated with the Institute of Psychology, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
• Contact Email: [email protected]
• Collaborating Scholars: Professor Rolf van Dick (Goethe University Frankfurt) and Professor Dieter Zapf (Goethe University Frankfurt), whose collaborative projects applied multi-level structural equation models connecting organizational leadership, employee identification, and dyadic customer evaluations.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Personal Customer Orientation Scale (PeKS) is to provide an empirically grounded, psychometrically standardized, and highly efficient self-report metric for quantifying the degree to which frontline service personnel orient their discretionary cognitive attention, interpersonal conduct, and behavioral problem-solving toward the fulfillment of customer needs. In contemporary economies, service interactions represent the core touchpoint where organizational value is co-created and delivered. Frontline professionals—ranging from medical practitioners, occupational therapists, and clinical care workers to hospitality staff, banking advisors, and retail sales representatives—serve as the boundary-spanning link between the organization and its clientele. For most clients, the frontline worker is the service organization.

Prior to the establishment of the PeKS, organizational practitioners and researchers in German-speaking contexts frequently relied on simplistic, single-item heuristic evaluation questions embedded within post-hoc consumer surveys (such as “Did the service clerk answer your inquiry satisfactorily?”). Such ad-hoc measures suffer from severe psychometric limitations: they lack standardized test-theoretical validation, exhibit unknown measurement error, confound employee behavioral disposition with situational customer moods, and conflate the personal mindset of the worker with firm-level physical service attributes. Alternatively, marketing scholars frequently employed organizational-level market orientation instruments (e.g., the MARKOR or MKTOR scales) or broad consumer-reported service quality scales (e.g., SERVQUAL), which evaluate macro-level company policies or aggregate functional service dimensions rather than the subjective professional attitudes and motivational readiness of the individual worker.

The PeKS bridges this critical methodological and conceptual gap by serving several key research and organizational purposes:

• Academic Field Research in Organizational Behavior: Enabling researchers to model the psychological antecedents (e.g., leadership styles, psychological empowerment, organizational identification, job autonomy) and outcomes (e.g., emotional exhaustion, client satisfaction, organizational citizenship behaviors) of frontline employee customer orientation within sophisticated multilevel and dyadic structural equation modeling frameworks.
• Human Resource and Service Climate Evaluation: Providing organizational psychologists and human resource analysts with a standardized benchmarking tool to assess baseline service orientation across operating units, departments, or clinic branches without imposing significant cognitive or temporal burden on employees.
• Training Needs Assessment and Program Evaluation: Assisting in the identification of training requirements in interactive service occupations, as well as serving as a pre-and-post evaluation metric to determine whether interpersonal customer-care interventions or service leadership seminars generate measurable shifts in employees’ self-reported customer orientation.
• Multisource Triangulation: Functioning as the focal employee-level predictor variable in dyadic research designs that match individual service providers directly with their corresponding customer satisfaction scores, thereby overcoming common method variance (CMV) and providing rigorous tests of organizational behavioral theories.

It is important to emphasize that the PeKS was designed strictly as an aggregate research, evaluation, and organizational diagnostics instrument. As explicitly noted by Egold (2007), the scale is not intended for high-stakes individual diagnostics (such as singular pre-employment screening or high-stakes personnel selection without comprehensive assessment centers), nor does it establish rigid clinical or diagnostic cut-off thresholds.

Psychological Construct

The construct assessed by the PeKS is Personal Customer Orientation (Personale Kundenorientierung). Rooted in organizational psychology and interactive service theory (Dormann et al., 2003; Dormann & Zapf, 2007; Nerdinger, 2003; Stock, 2002), personal customer orientation is formally defined as an enduring occupational disposition, cognitive attitude, and motivational endeavor on the part of an individual frontline employee to actively perceive, comprehend, and fulfill the expectations, explicit requests, and latent needs of customers, clients, or patients.

To fully grasp the psychological architecture of the construct, several theoretical distinctions must be articulated:

1. Attitude vs. Personality Trait

Personal customer orientation is conceptualized not as a fixed, immutable biological personality trait, but as an occupational attitude and behavioral tendency that operates within a specific vocational role. While personality traits (such as the Five-Factor Model traits of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) reflect broad, cross-situational patterns of cognition and affect, personal customer orientation specifically directs attention toward the client within the service encounter. Empirical investigations by Egold (2000) confirmed this conceptual independence: personal customer orientation scores demonstrated negligible and non-significant correlations with all five NEO-FFI traits. This confirms that high customer orientation is not merely a byproduct of general extraversion or agreeableness, but an acquired, role-specific professional orientation susceptible to organizational socialization, training, and climate.

2. Personal vs. Organizational Customer Orientation

Psychological theory draws a sharp boundary between personal customer orientation and organizational customer orientation. Organizational customer orientation (Schneider, White, & Paul, 1998; Schneider et al., 2000) denotes the overarching, collective service climate of a firm—the shared employee perceptions of organizational policies, practices, reward systems, and executive leadership that signal that service quality is a primary strategic imperative. In contrast, personal customer orientation resides entirely at the level of the individual employee. It encompasses the internal psychological commitment of the worker to translate that organizational climate into personalized, micro-level interactive behaviors during dyadic customer encounters (Egold, van Dick, & Zapf, 2009). While organizational service climate provides the structural context, personal customer orientation represents the proximal psychological driver that directly touches the consumer.

3. Behavioral and Cognitive Facets Embedded in the PeKS

Although mathematically unidimensional, the 8 manifest items of the PeKS reflect four coherent facets of customer-directed behavior and cognition:

• Cognitive Attentiveness and Presence: The allocation of undivided cognitive resources and focused mindfulness to the client during the interaction, ensuring that the employee is mentally available and empathetic (e.g., Item 1: “Während des Kundenkontaktes ist meine ganze Aufmerksamkeit beim Kunden”).
• Interpersonal Consideration, Respect, and Courtesy: The behavioral display of polite, respectful, and accommodating interpersonal manners across all phases of the interaction, including greeting, counseling, and farewell (e.g., Item 2: “Ich handle meinen Kunden gegenüber rücksichtsvoll und aufmerksam”; Item 6: “Ich begrüße und verabschiede meine Kunden freundlich und zuvorkommend”).
• Active Problem Solving and Dedication: The motivational commitment to invest maximum effort into resolving customer difficulties, including a willingness to dedicate time and energy to complex or ambiguous client problems (e.g., Item 3: “Wenn ein Kunde Probleme hat, so setze ich alles daran, sie zu lösen”; Item 5: “Es ist mir wichtig, mir für jeden Kunden Zeit zu nehmen”).
• Emotional Regulation and Professional Display Rules: The capacity to maintain friendly, courteous behavior regardless of personal affective states or momentary negative moods, reflecting emotional labor competence and customer-centric professional values (e.g., Item 4: “Unabhängig von meiner Stimmung behandle ich jeden Kunden höflich und freundlich”; Item 7: “Für mich ist der Kunde König”; Item 8: “Ich freue mich sehr, wenn der Kunde zufrieden ist”).

Theoretical Framework

The Personal Customer Orientation Scale is theoretically underpinned by convergence across three foundational bodies of literature: the Service Quality Framework (Parasuraman et al., 1988), Interactive Service Work and Service Psychology (Nerdinger, 2003; Dormann & Zapf, 2004, 2007), and Service Climate Theory (Schneider et al., 1998, 2000).

1. The SERVQUAL Paradigm and Service Quality Dynamics

In their seminal conceptualization of service quality, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988) demonstrated that consumer evaluations of services do not depend merely on the technical outcome of the transaction, but heavily on the functional process of delivery. Their 22-item SERVQUAL scale identified five critical service dimensions: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles. Parasuraman et al. emphasized that intangible elements—specifically responsiveness (willingness to help clients and provide prompt service) and empathy (caring, individualized attention provided to customers)—depend almost entirely on the personal attitudes of frontline staff. Egold (2000, 2007) utilized this SERVQUAL foundation during initial item construction, designing candidate statements that operationalized the internal psychological readiness of employees to enact responsiveness and empathy.

2. The Psychology of the Service Encounter (The “Frontline Employee” Concept)

Unlike manufacturing, where production and consumption are physically and temporally decoupled, service provision is characterized by inseparability (Nerdinger, 2003). The frontline employee (“frontline-employee” or Grenzstellenmitarbeiter) sits directly at the permeable boundary of the organization. During the “moment of truth” (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990; Dormann & Zapf, 2004), the customer evaluates the entire firm based on the nonverbal signals, verbal attentiveness, and problem-solving tenacity of that individual worker. Nerdinger (2003) and Dormann et al. (2003) posited that customer satisfaction is mediated by the interpersonal experience of the interaction. If the employee views the customer not as an interruption or administrative burden, but as the central purpose of their occupational activity, their behavior naturally manifests high attentiveness, active listening, and mood-independent politeness, which directly triggers positive customer affective appraisals.

3. Emotional Labor and Emotional Contagion

Theoretical formulations by Hochschild (1983) and subsequent organizational emotion theorists (e.g., Grandey, 2000; Zapf, 2002) emphasize that service work inherently involves emotional labor—the regulation of feelings and emotional displays to conform to organizational display rules. Customer orientation represents a protective, intrinsically motivated orientation in this context: employees with genuine personal customer orientation internalize service display rules, rendering their emotional displays authentic (deep acting) rather than forced or superficial (surface acting). Under Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson’s (1994) theory of emotional contagion, the genuine warmth, attentiveness, and pleasure derived from customer satisfaction (as captured by PeKS Item 8) are subconsciously mirrored by the customer, producing higher perceived service value and customer loyalty.

4. Multilevel Service Climate Cascades

Schneider and colleagues (1998, 2000) conceptualized organizational service climate as a top-down contextual influence. Egold, van Dick, and Zapf (2009) integrated this with personal customer orientation into an overarching multilevel model. In this framework, branch-level or supervisory service leadership and service climate create an environment where high-quality service is expected, recognized, and rewarded. This climate nurtures and reinforces employees’ individual personal customer orientation, which in turn drives concrete service actions, directly influencing cross-level dyadic customer satisfaction. Thus, the PeKS functions as the critical micro-foundation through which macro-level organizational policies translate into concrete economic outcomes.

Validity

The validity of the Personal Customer Orientation Scale has been established through a series of empirical investigations evaluating its construct, discriminant, and criterion-related predictive validity across distinct service environments.

1. Discriminant Validity: Independence from Personality Traits

To demonstrate that personal customer orientation constitutes a distinctive, role-specific occupational attitude rather than an artifact of general personality traits, Egold (2000) administered the PeKS alongside the standardized German version of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) to a sample of N = 107 retail shoe sales professionals across retail chains in the Frankfurt am Main and Hanau metropolitan regions. Zero-order bivariate correlations between the PeKS total score and the Big Five personality domains confirmed complete empirical distinctiveness:

• Extraversion: r = .19 (p = n.s.)
• Agreeableness: r = .06 (p = n.s.)
• Conscientiousness: r = .05 (p = n.s.)
• Neuroticism: r = .09 (p = n.s.)
• Openness to Experience: r = -.11 (p = n.s.)

None of the correlations reached statistical significance, providing robust proof of discriminant validity. Personal customer orientation cannot be subsumed under general agreeableness or extraversion; an employee may possess an introverted disposition yet maintain an impeccably high standard of personal customer orientation in their structured occupational role.

2. Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity: The Dyadic Healthcare Study

The definitive test of criterion validity for any customer orientation scale requires evaluating whether employee self-reports predict external, objective client evaluations, thereby ruling out common method bias. Egold, van Dick, and Zapf (2009; see also Egold, 2007) conducted an extensive dyadic, multi-source field investigation across general medical practices and occupational therapy clinics in Germany. The sample included n = 30 clinic leaders/supervisors, n = 166 frontline service staff, and n = 681 active patients/clients. Researchers matched 116 individual employees directly to 591 independently surveyed clients who had received direct healthcare services from them.

Using linear correlation and multilevel regression analyses, the frontline employee customer orientation score exhibited a statistically significant positive correlation with independent customer satisfaction ratings:

• Bivariate Dyadic Correlation: r = .25, p < .01

Given the notoriously complex, multifaceted nature of patient satisfaction in healthcare—which is heavily influenced by underlying medical pathology, treatment outcomes, clinic wait times, and facility accessibility—a cross-source, dyad-level effect size of r = .25 represents a remarkably robust and practically meaningful criterion validity coefficient. Employees who endorsed higher personal customer orientation consistently delivered care perceived by their patients as superior, more attentive, and substantially more satisfying.

3. Construct and Incremental Validity

In subsequent multilevel modeling across leaders, employees, and customers, Schuh, Egold, and van Dick (2012) further demonstrated construct validity by confirming that employee customer orientation operates as a critical mediating variable linking organizational identification and leadership behavior to customer evaluations, corroborating the central theoretical role attributed to frontline attitudes in modern organizational psychology.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Personal Customer Orientation Scale has been evaluated across multiple independent samples using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, demonstrating solid reliability for an 8-item parsimonious measure.

1. Internal Consistency of the Definitive 8-Item Scale

In the foundational validation study by Egold (2007), conducted among general medical practitioners and occupational therapists (N = 166, comprising 116 employees, 30 supervisors, and 20 unassigned healthcare personnel), the 8-item PeKS achieved an overall internal consistency of:

• Cronbach’s Alpha: α = .73

In classical psychometric testing standards (e.g., Bortz, 1993; Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994), an alpha value exceeding .70 for a brief, single-factor scale of 8 items is considered satisfactory to good, indicating an optimal balance between homogeneous construct coverage and low item redundancy.

2. Reliability in Related Scale Formats and Length Comparisons

Psychometric research on the scale also underscores the necessity of retaining all 8 manifest items:

• Expanded 10-Item Research Version: In the dyadic investigation published by Egold, van Dick, and Zapf (2009), an expanded 10-item variant was examined, yielding an internal consistency of α = .76.
• Attenuated 3-Item Ultra-Short Version: In a multilevel organizational study by Schuh, Egold, and van Dick (2012), the scale was abbreviated to 3 items for extreme survey brevity. This shortened variant experienced substantial psychometric attenuation, dropping to α = .58. Consequently, psychometricians and the original scale developer strongly recommend utilizing the full 8-item validated PeKS to ensure adequate measurement precision.

3. Item Discrimination (Corrected Item-Total Correlations)

Analysis of corrected item-total correlations (Trennschärfen) across the sample of n = 114 to 116 frontline staff revealed that every item comfortably exceeded the accepted psychometric benchmark of r_it > .30. Discrimination coefficients ranged from .321 to .552, demonstrating that each individual item contributes meaningfully and reliably to the underlying customer orientation continuum without introducing extraneous variance:

• Item 1: r_it = .337
• Item 2: r_it = .552
• Item 3: r_it = .480
• Item 4: r_it = .335
• Item 5: r_it = .405
• Item 6: r_it = .321
• Item 7: r_it = .540
• Item 8: r_it = .355

Factor Analysis

The factorial validity and structural dimensionality of the PeKS were established through a multistage analytical process involving initial exploratory item reduction from an extensive item pool, followed by principal component analysis on the finalized 8 items.

1. Initial 45-Item Pool Reduction and Exploratory Factor Extraction

The genesis of the scale began with an unstandardized, exploratory pool of over 45 items constructed by Egold (2000, 2007) based on the SERVQUAL framework (Parasuraman et al., 1988) and qualitative interviews with practicing service providers. An exploratory factor analysis (Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization) across all 45 items extracted five distinct structural components representing diverse facets of frontline customer interactions:

• Component 1: Core Customer Orientation (Kundenorientierung)
• Component 2: Handling Difficult/Problematic Customers (Umgang mit problematischen Kunden)
• Component 3: Handling Customer Aggression (Umgang mit Kundenaggressionen)
• Component 4: Regulation of Customer-Related Emotions (Regulation kundenbezogener Emotionen)
• Component 5: Attitude Toward Technical/Professional Competence (Einstellung zur Fachkompetenz)

The first extracted component captured personal customer orientation, comprising nine high-loading candidate items. One item (SO14: “Auch kurz vor Feierabend bin ich bereit zur ausführlichen Kundenberatung” / Even shortly before closing time, I am ready to provide comprehensive customer advice) was intentionally deleted due to contextual invalidity in shift-work, clinical, and emergency settings where closing times do not apply. A second item (SO9 / Item 4: “Unabhängig von meiner Stimmung behandle ich jeden Kunden höflich und freundlich”) displayed a modest statistical loading, but was deliberately retained by the developer due to exceptional face validity and universal endorsement by service professionals as the quintessential manifestation of frontline customer orientation. This resulted in the finalized 8-item scale.

2. Dimensionality of the Finalized 8-Item Scale

The psychometric structure of the definitive 8-item instrument was subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Kaiser normalization in SPSS 11.5 across the healthcare validation sample (Egold, 2007). The analysis unequivocally demonstrated that the scale is unidimensional. As summarized in Table 2 of the original psychometric report, only the first extracted component possessed an initial eigenvalue exceeding the Kaiser-Guttman criterion threshold of 1.00:

3. Factor Loadings of Manifest Items

Component 1 accounted for 37.15% of the total scale variance. The component matrix loadings for each individual item on this single customer orientation factor are presented below (ordered by loading magnitude as reported in Egold, 2007, Table 3):

• Item 7 (“Für mich ist der Kunde König”): Loading = .56
• Item 2 (“Ich handle gegenüber meinen Kunden rücksichtsvoll und aufmerksam”): Loading = .49
• Item 6 (“Ich begrüße u. verabschiede jeden Kunden freundl. u. zuvorkommend”): Loading = .37
• Item 5 (“Es ist mir wichtig für jeden Kunden Zeit zu nehmen”): Loading = .32
• Item 3 (“Wenn Kunde Probleme mit Produkt hat so setze ich alles an Lösung”): Loading = .29
• Item 8 (“Ich freue mich sehr, wenn der Kunde zufrieden ist”): Loading = .25
• Item 1 (“Während Kundenberatung ganze Aufmerksamkeit beim Kunden”): Loading = .23
• Item 4 (“Unabhängig von Stimmung behandle ich Kunden höflich u. freundlich”): Loading = .18

4. Distributional Characteristics and Ceiling Effects

The manifest item metrics revealed significant negative skewness (linksschief / rechtssteil), with skewness values ranging from -4.71 to -0.36, and diverse kurtosis values (from platykurtic -1.90 to highly leptokurtic 23.79). This reflects a pronounced ceiling effect typical in professional service settings where baseline courtesy and helpfulness are strongly endorsed by occupational incumbents (overall scale mean M = 4.64, SD = 0.018). Consequently, analysts are advised to inspect distributional assumptions and consider robust estimation methods when applying linear models.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Psychometric Self-Report Questionnaire / Attitudinal Rating Scale.
• Language: Original documentation and standardized items in German (applicable in healthcare, retail, therapy, and diverse service contexts by replacing the term Kunde with Klient or Patient).
• Number of Items: 8 items.
• Subscales: None. The instrument is strictly unidimensional.
• Target Population: Frontline service personnel, client-facing professionals, healthcare providers (physicians, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, nurses), retail sales associates, hospitality workers, and frontline service managers.
• Administration Modes: Paper-and-Pencil Self-Administered Interviewing (PASI; standard validated delivery mode, distributed via postal or internal survey distribution) or Computer-Assisted Self-Administered Interviewing (CASI / Web-based online surveys). No special test administrator credentials required.
• Completion Time: Approximately 1 minute (ca. 60 seconds).
• Response Scale (Mandatory Exact Format):
  
  Die Fragen werden auf einer fünf-stufigen Likert-Skala beantwortet. Hier gilt: 1 = Stimme überhaupt nicht zu, 2 = Stimme eher nicht zu, 3 = Teils, teils, 4 = Stimme eher zu, 5 = Stimme vollkommen zu. Nur eine Antwort darf angekreuzt werden.
• Scoring and Aggregation Rules:
  • All 8 items are positively keyed (+). No reverse coding (Rekodierung) is required.
  • An overall Personal Customer Orientation index is calculated by computing the unweighted arithmetic mean across all 8 answered items: Mean Score = (∑ Items 1 to 8) / 8.
  • Missing data handling: Consistent with the validation methodology of Egold (2007), pairwise deletion (paarweiser Fallausschluss) is recommended rather than imputation.
  • Higher mean scores indicate greater personal customer orientation, attentiveness, and service-directed motivation.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Personal Customer Orientation Scale was first conceptualized and documented in 2000 (Egold, 2000), systematically validated in 2007 (Egold, 2007), and disseminated via peer-reviewed literature in 2009 (Egold, van Dick, & Zapf, 2009). The German open-access psychometric repository documentation was curated with the assistance of Jonas Milis and made publicly available through GESIS (Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences).

Licensing and Research Availability:

• Fee: Free of charge for academic, non-commercial scientific research, university teaching, and non-profit educational purposes.
• Permission: The scale developer grants permission for researchers and organizational practitioners to use the PeKS in scholarly studies, provided that appropriate bibliographic attribution and citation of the foundational validation studies (Egold, 2007; Egold et al., 2009) are maintained.
• Commercial Inquiries: Organizations seeking to embed the scale within commercial assessment platforms, proprietary consulting diagnostics, or fee-generating evaluation software should contact Dr. Nikolai W. Egold directly ([email protected]) at Hochschule Fresenius.

References

• Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Tetreault, M. S. (1990). The service encounter: Diagnosing favorable and unfavorable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54(1), 71–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299005400105
• Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Mohr, L. A. (1994). Critical service encounters: The employee’s viewpoint. Journal of Marketing, 58(4), 95–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299405800408
• Bortz, J. (1993). Lehrbuch der empirischen Forschung für Sozialwissenschaftler (3. Aufl.). Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-08341-3
• Büsing, F. J., & Glaser, J. (2003). Dienstleistungsqualität im Krankenhaus: Patientenzufriedenheit als Kriterium. In K. Büssing & J. Glaser (Hrsg.), Dienstleistungsqualität und Kundenzufriedenheit im Krankenhaus (S. 35–56). Hogrefe.
• Dormann, C., Fay, D., Zapf, D., & Frese, M. (2003). A social information processing approach to personal customer orientation. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 12(3), 285–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/13594320344000147
• Dormann, C., & Zapf, D. (2004). Customer-related social stressors and burnout. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 9(1), 61–82. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.9.1.61
• Dormann, C., & Zapf, D. (2007). Kundenorientierung und Kundenzufriedenheit. In D. Frey & L. von Rosenstiel (Hrsg.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie, Themenbereich D, Serie III, Band 6: Wirtschaftspsychologie (S. 273–301). Hogrefe.
• Egold, N. W. (2000). Zusammenhänge zwischen Persönlichkeit und personaler Kundenorientierung im Einzelhandel [Unveröffentlichte Diplomarbeit]. Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften.
• Egold, N. W. (2007). Kundenorientierung und Kundenzufriedenheit: Korrelate der personalen und organisationalen Kundenorientierung [Unveröffentlichte Dissertation]. Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften.
• Egold, N. W., van Dick, R., & Zapf, D. (2009). Personale und organisationale Prädiktoren von Kundenorientierung und Kundenzufriedenheit: Eine Untersuchung im therapeutischen Dienstleistungsbereich. Zeitschrift für Personalpsychologie, 8(4), 180–190. https://doi.org/10.1026/1617-6391.8.4.180
• Ford, R. C., & Snyder, B. W. (2000). Customer satisfaction in healthcare: Measuring what matters. Journal of Healthcare Management, 45(4), 220–232. https://doi.org/10.1097/00115514-200007000-00006
• Grandey, A. A. (2000). Emotion regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(1), 95–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.5.1.95
• Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139174138
• Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
• Homburg, C., & Bucerius, M. (2003). Kundenorientierung in der Praxis: Konzeptualisierung, Messung und Implikationen. Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft, 73(3), 253–277.
• Homburg, C., & Stock, R. M. (2005). Exploring the employee–customer interface: A service practitioner’s guide to customer satisfaction. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 33(3), 393–404. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070305276368
• Nerdinger, F. W. (2003). Dienstleistungsqualität und Kundenzufriedenheit. In F. W. Nerdinger (Hrsg.), Dienstleistungstätigkeiten: Psychologische Aspekte von Service und Interaktion (S. 11–32). Hogrefe.
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
• Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1), 12–40.
• Schneider, B., White, S. S., & Paul, M. C. (1998). Linking service climate and customer perceptions of service quality: Tests of a causal model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(2), 150–163. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.83.2.150
• Schneider, B., Bowen, D. E., Ehrhart, M. G., & Holcombe, K. M. (2000). The climate for service: Evolution of a construct. In N. M. Ashkanasy, C. P. M. Wilderom, & M. F. Peterson (Eds.), Handbook of organizational culture and climate (pp. 21–36). SAGE Publications.
• Schuh, S. C., Egold, N. W., & van Dick, R. (2012). Towards understanding the role of organizational identification in service settings: A multilevel study spanning leaders, service employees, and customers. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 21(4), 547–574. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2011.578391
• Stock, R. M. (2002). Kundenorientierung von Mitarbeitern: Theoretische Fundierung, empirische Analyse und Gestaltungsempfehlungen. Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-90343-3
• Zapf, D. (2002). Emotion work and psychological well-being: A review of the literature and some conceptual considerations. Human Resource Management Review, 12(2), 237–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-4822(02)00048-7

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)