Does frontline employee friendliness during service delivery still matter in the current era? Revisiting its dimensionality effects on brand outcome

Recently, digitalization has caused service providers to focus on service delivery excellence to build robust brands. Hence, the purpose of this study is to revisit the effects of four dimensions of frontline employee friendliness on brand identification and repurchase intent. This study utilized a structured online questionnaire from a sample of full-service restaurant customers in Malaysia. The results indicate that the behaviours of approachable, humorous, conversational and informal influence repeat purchase intention. However, only dimensions of conversational and humorous behaviours influence brand identification. Further findings also demonstrate that brand identification plays several important mediating roles in predicting repurchase intent. This study advances brand management literature by being the pioneer among scholars in separately examining the impacts of a four-factor model of frontline employee friendliness on brand outcome. This study provides novel insights into the mediating roles of brand identification on the link between each behaviour of frontline employee friendliness and repat purchase intention. This research is one of the few studies that enriches stimulus–organism–response (SOR) theory to explain consecutive relationships and underlying mechanisms among factors investigated. This study also provides additional insights in guiding service providers to leverage effective practices and management of frontline employee friendliness to achieve impactful performance on branding and business profitability.