A mechanism of mutually beneficial relationships between employees and consumers: A dyadic analysis of employee–consumer interaction

•We test a conceptual model examining the extent to which employee behaviors influence consumer behaviors in high-contact sport service setting.•We advance sport service research by investigating both positive and negative employee behaviors and their influence on sport consumer behavior.•The current research makes a methodological contribution by utilizing a dyadic method to avoid the threat of systematic common method bias.Although sport management researchers concur with one another regarding the significance of interaction between employees and consumers in shaping the consumers’ attitudes and behaviors, the vast majority of previous studies are largely isolated such that they take assessment exclusively from one side of the dyad—either employees or consumers. The authors seek to advance the current body of knowledge by utilizing a dyadic method that includes judgments provided by employees as well as one of each employee’s consumers in a high-contact sport service context (i.e., multi-purpose fitness centers). As such, the authors investigate how employee citizenship behavior and deviance behavior influence consumer citizenship behavior and participative behavior through consumers’ perceived service quality and satisfaction with employees. The results indicated that employee citizenship behavior positively and deviance behavior negatively shaped consumers’ perceptions of service quality, whereas the negative moderating effect of employee deviance behavior between employee citizenship behavior and service quality was not supported. Satisfaction with employees significantly mediated the relationship between service quality and consumer citizenship behavior but not between service quality and consumer participative behavior. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications derived from this study are discussed.