The Service Industries Journal

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Organisational justice and customer citizenship

behaviour of retail industries

Eh Di , Chien-Jung Huang , I-Heng Chen & Te-Cheng Yu

To cite this article: Eh Di , Chien-Jung Huang , I-Heng Chen & Te-Cheng Yu (2010)
Organisational justice and customer citizenship behaviour of retail industries, The Service
Industries Journal, 30:11, 1919-1934, DOI: 10.1080/02642060802627533

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Published online: 28 Jul 2010.

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 The Service Industries Journal
Vol. 30, No. 11, September 2010, 1919 –1934

Organisational justice and customer citizenship behaviour of

retail industries
Eh Dia, Chien-Jung Huanga , I-Heng Chena and Te-Cheng Yub
a
Institute of Human Resource Management, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung 80424,
Taiwan, R.O.C; bDepartment of Logistics Management, National Kaohsiung Marine University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C
(Received 2 November 2007; final version received 11 October 2008)
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Previous research has concerned itself more with customers’ purchasing behaviours but
not non-purchasing behaviour. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the
organisational justice (OJ) and customer citizenship behaviour (CCB), including the
mediating role of organisational trust. A survey was conducted on a sample of 447
fast-food restaurant customers in Taiwan in order to test the proposed model. The
findings showed that the customers who have higher perceptions of justice have
higher levels of trust and CCB. Positive relationship was found between trust and
CCB. In addition, trust has a partially significant mediating effect between OJ and
CCB. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical
implications, and also provide some suggestions for managerial practice and further
research.

Keywords: organisational justice; trust; citizenship behaviour; restaurants

Introduction
Modern customers are better informed than their predecessors and desire to express their
opinions about decision making and the procedures of an enterprise’s services and man-
agement (Jayachandran, Sharma, Kaufman, & Raman, 2005; Verhoef, 2003). This
creates an interaction between companies and customers and also affects customer beha-
viours at the same time (Mithas, Krishnan, & Fornell, 2005). Therefore, organisations will
have to care about not only the points of view of employees but also those of customers.
Loyal employees are a company’s favourite, but now enterprises also need to pay more
attention to loyal customers (Kim & Mauborgne, 1997), which is like treating customers
as employees.
Interactions with the enterprises make customers decide their loyalty to, and relation-
ship with, the company (Rogers, 2005; Sheth & Parvatiyar, 1995; Sirdeshmukh, Singh, &
Sabol, 2002). If the corporation cannot raise the quality of total customer experiences, then
customers will not stay with it (Seybold, 2001). In order to provide a total customer experi-
ence, enterprises need to have a favourite and an identifiable brand name, develop a trust
system and build an interaction model of customer druthers (Payne & Frow, 2005; Uncles,
Dowling, & Hammond, 2002). Previous research has concerned itself more with custo-
mers’ purchasing behaviours (e.g. customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, etc.), but not
non-purchasing behaviour. If we can explore customer behaviour models from the
aspect of organisational behaviour, it should be more interesting and challenging.


Corresponding author. Email: dearjohn0213@gmail.com

ISSN 0264-2069 print/ISSN 1743-9507 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02642060802627533
http://www.informaworld.com
 1920 Eh Di et al.

Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) (Organ, 1988, 1990; Smith, Organ, &
Near, 1983) emphasises the members actively assisting each other without any direct
reward from the organisation. Previous research had discussed the effects of organisational
justice (OJ) and trust on OCB (Konovsky & Pugh, 1994; Motowidlo & Van Scotter, 1994;
Organ & Konovsky, 1989; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990). However,
almost all research is limited in the field of organisational inter-members (Orr, Sackett, &
Mercer, 1989; Podsakoff, Aheame, & MacKenzie, 1997) and ignores the value of custo-
mers. In terms of customer relationship management, customer value should be of concern
(Boulding, Staelin, Ehret, & Johnston 2005; Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Parasuraman, Berry,
& Zeithaml, 1988; Woodruff, 1997). Consequently, we integrate the concepts of customer
relationship management and OCB to develop customer citizenship behaviour (CCB). It
emphasises customers’ non-purchasing behaviour with retailers, and not being directly
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rewarded by the enterprise. It believes that the determinant factors exist widely in the
organisational management systems, especially in justice and trust systems. Therefore,
from the viewpoint of organisational trust (OT), this study would test the relationships
of OJ, trust and CCB. With that in mind, our objectives are four-fold:
1. To offer a conceptual model of OJ, OT and CCB of retail industries.
2. To develop scale items of all measures used for the constructs in the model, and
then to proceed the measurement model evaluation.
3. To test the effects and relationships of OJ, OT and CCB in our conceptual model.
4. To discuss in terms of theoretical and practical implications, and also provide some
suggestions for managerial practice and for further research.

Conceptual framework and research hypotheses

Customer citizenship behaviour
Gordon (1999) defines customer relationship management as a repeating and continuously
improving process. He believes that enterprises aggressively understand customers’
demands in order to provide the products and services they need. This is from a custo-
mer-oriented management aspect and its framework is based on developing loyal custo-
mers. These customers could get satisfactory products and services from the same
business and they do not need to compare this business with another to search for better
products because it is time-consuming and they may not find a better solution (Dwyer,
Schurr, & Sejo, 1987; Gummesson, 1987). Another reason is that they trust the
company and they are not just introducing other relatives and friends to join and
become loyal customers, but also try to protect the company’s reputation (Grönroos,
1990; Schoder & Madeja, 2004). In fact, this kind of behaviour is very close to the per-
formance of inside employees. Loyal customers know the company’s products, services,
procedures, system culture, strategies, goals and missions. Some of them know more than
employees and are willing to become spokespeople for the products of this company. The
enterprise should care about these customers’ ideas, attitudes and behaviours (Nelson,
2003; Zeithaml & Bitner, 2003).
As Organ (1988) says, no organisational system design can be perfect. If it relies only
on employees’ role behaviours, it is very difficult to attain valid organisational goals. It
must rely on employees’ active performance of some non-required behaviours to reach
organisation goals. He defines this behaviour as OCB. For a customer system, the
design of customer relationship management is not perfect either, and if it relies only
on customers’ purchasing behaviours, it may not attain organisational goals. It has to
 The Service Industries Journal 1921

depend on customers actively performing certain purchasing behaviours and others in

order to make up for the lack of customer relationship management systems and to
reach the organisational management goals. This study defines the behaviours of custo-
mers actively buying, or behaviours other than purchasing, as CCB in order to show a
difference with the intended behaviour of customer loyalty proposed by Zeithaml,
Berry and Parasuraman (1996).
Based on the reciprocating psyche of human beings (Gouldner, 1960), when someone
thinks an organisation or members of the organisation are helpful or honourable, that cus-
tomer will respond with positive behaviours such as actively assisting salespersons,
helping promotions or even explaining misunderstanding to the company. For customers,
CCB is a behaviour without preconditions, not a required behaviour by the enterprise; it
has no direct relationship with purchasing, but it is absolutely helpful in attaining the
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organisation goals.
According to the definition of Organ (1988) on OCB, we developed the concept of
CCB. In the early research of OCB measurement, scholars tried to use only one or few
dimensions to measure OCB (e.g. Bateman & Organ, 1983; Smith et al., 1983). In the
late 1980s, the research was more mature and the measurement of it more complete.
According to Organ (1988), there are five dimensions of OCB: (1) Altruism: employees
actively assist certain people in the related organisational tasks; (2) Conscientiousness:
employees do much more than their own basic task; (3) Sportsmanship: employees put
up with less than ideal working circumstances with no complaints; (4) Courtesy: employ-
ees actively share information to avoid problems in advance including related working
problems with others; (5) Civic virtue: employees responsibly attend and care about the
existence of the company. From these dimensions, sportsmanship describes employees
tolerating a non-ideal working condition without making any complaints, which cannot
be applied to the customers. Therefore, OCB has been revised as CCB and the sportsman-
ship should be revised or excluded.

OJ, OT and CCB

According to Blau’s (1964) viewpoint, there are two models of public interaction: social
exchange and economic exchange. The social exchange model shows that a giver is not
only thinking about the benefits he or she can gain but also expecting the receiver’s feed-
back (Gouldner, 1960). The difference between social exchange and economic exchange
is that economic exchange is based on a calculated basic transaction relationship but social
exchange is based on trust (Holmes, 1981). The interactions between a giver and receiver
are aimed at long-term return and trust. Similar to Blau’s (1964) opinion, Rousseau and
Parks (1993) are also using the contract viewpoint to divide the personal interaction
relationship between a transaction contract and a relationship contract. The transaction
contract is like the economic exchange and relationship contract tends to be based on
the trust factor in social exchange. Therefore, social exchange is based on the concept
of trust which means that, when two parties have mutual trust as a basis, then they are
more likely to have ‘prepaid and latter return’ behaviour and strategies (Blau, 1964; Rous-
seau & Parks, 1993).
When an enterprise and customers’ interaction is based on the trust factor as a social
exchange, then the design of customer management systems has to consider ‘prepaid and
latter return’ behaviours. Customers-to-organisation’s trust or organisation-to-customers’
trust are very important. In fact, there are many factors creating the trust of customers to
the organisation; however, there is very little empirical research (Konovsky & Pugh,
 1922 Eh Di et al.

1994). From the inferential procedure of researchers, we know most that scholars adopt the
social exchange theory. According to the theory, OJ solicits an employee’s trust, and we
find out that there is a significant relationship between OJ and OT. Hence, we deduce that
when retailers have more emphasis on justice to customers, the customers have more value
to retailers’ justice and will cause more trust. Therefore, we propose these hypotheses:
H1: Customers who have higher perceptions of justice would have higher levels of trust.
The research of the general OCB model is also based on the social exchange theory of
Blau (1964). It explores the relationship of OJ and OCB on the cognition of employees.
Socialists believe that justice logos can effectively organise functions and satisfy individ-
ual basic needs. However, in the early stage, the social justice theory has been tested on the
general social interaction justice principle but not on the organisational management
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(Greenberg, 1990). According to the past research on employee panels, we find that
there are significant effects between OJ and OCB (Cohen & Avrahami, 2006; Farh,
Earley, & Lin, 1997; Konovsky & Pugh, 1994; Moorman, Niehoff, & Organ, 1992;
Moorman, 1991; Organ & Konovsky, 1989; Puffer, 1987; Schnake, 1991; Scholl,
Cooper, & Mckenna, 1987). From the above, our study infers that if retailers are concerned
more with customers’ justice, the customers will have a higher value of retailer justice
leading to a higher probability of citizenship behaviour (for example, helping the
company). Thus, we propose
H2: Customers who have higher perceptions of justice would have higher levels of CCB.
Comparing with employees’ logical thinking, most customers are not only concerned
with the social exchange but also have strong needs of social identity. OT may be the main
effective variable for the public citizenship behaviour, and this is also proved by past
empirical research (Konovsky & Pugh, 1994; Podsakoff et al., 1990). Because CCB
does not basically focus on the immediate rewards or punishment but only on trust, cus-
tomers believe that organisations should have a comparative return in order to raise the
willingness of CCB after their payment (e.g. Deluga, 1994; Yukl, 1989). Therefore, we
propose the following hypothesis:
H3: When customers trust the retailer more, they are more likely to have CCB.

Mediation effect of OT
Because of the competitive service environment, the services that the retailer offer are of
concern to the customers. They devote time to have a benignancy interaction relationship
with the customers. Many enterprises figure out that the key to continuous consuming be-
haviour of customers is the interaction experience and feelings between the organisation
and the customers. Therefore, if the company can earn the friendship and trust of the con-
sumers, then they will be one step further to creating and maintaining a good relationship
with the customers and forming a customer trust atmosphere and premise (Anderson &
Narus, 1990; Madhok, 1994). At the same time, based on the social exchange relationship,
customers will return to the organisation. Besides, Morgan and Hunt (1994) use the trans-
action cost viewpoint to stand for trust and promise as the core successful promotion. The
proposed trust and promise is the key mediation variable in exploring the effects of
cooperation, quitting and conflict. Trust can predict more customer behaviour and lower
customer desire to leave by creating higher customer values (Reinartz & Kumar, 2000)
to boost satisfaction (Anderson & Narus, 1990) and to build a long-term relationship
 The Service Industries Journal 1923

with the customers (Doney & Cannon, 1997). Therefore, we predict that the higher the
justice value of customers-to-organisation, the more likely it is to create CCB because
of the trust of customers towards the organisation. We then have the following hypothesis:
H4: Trust has a significant mediating effect between OJ and CCB.

Methodology
Sample
The sample of this study focuses on the general retail stores or those that accept service
consumers. Questionnaires were used to collect the data for this study. A questionnaire
was submitted as a pre-test to determine possible shortcomings in comprehension and
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to confirm its suitability. A pilot test of the survey was conducted with 40 customers
within one of the largest fast-food chain restaurants in the Kaohsiung area, and they
were asked to evaluate their perceptions. Based on the results of the pre-test, some revi-
sions of items on the questionnaire were made. Questionnaires were administered
between 1 October and 1 December 2006, with the sample being randomly selected
from a certain college in Kaohsiung. Students from all areas of Taiwan responded to
the questionnaire by their own actual consuming experience within the largest fast-food
chain restaurants. We also selected commercial workers in order to include two kinds
of consumers’ representative samples (Petrick, 2002). The questionnaire was a self-admi-
nistered survey and respondents filled it by themselves. Totally, 447 valid surveys were
obtained. What follows are variable measurements and operational definitions. All
measures used for the constructs in the model are shown in Table 1 and Appendix. Partici-
pants were asked to respond on a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from ‘strongly dis-
agree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (5). In addition, one item in conscientiousness and one item
in courtesy were reverse scored. After reversing such scale responses, high scores indi-
cated higher conscientiousness and courtesy. Higher scores also indicated higher distribu-
tive justice, procedural justice, interactive justice, OT, altruism and civic virtue.

Operational definition and variable measurement

Organisational justice
The traditional OJ measurement model (e.g. Konovsky & Pugh, 1994) discriminates
between OJ as allocation justice and procedural justice; however, its construct validity
is usually challenged by scholars (Niehoff & Moorman, 1993). The definition given in
this study is as follows: (1) Distributive justice: customers consider the justice degree
of retailer’s source allocation; (2) Procedural justice: customers expect retailer’s set-up
policies or any moves that fit with justice; (3) Interactive justice: customers believe retai-
lers’ concern about them and their opinions before making any decisions or policies.
Because no reliable measure is found in the literature, the authors use and adjust the OJ
measuring scales developed by Moorman (1991). The scale consists of three, four and
five items, respectively, and Cronbach’s a is 0.91, 0.93 and 0.89.

Organisational trust
From the experience of other scholars, we know that there are many ways to measure the
scale of trust; however, they do not fit appropriately in the measurement of our goal of OT.
 1924 Eh Di et al.

Table 1. Measurement model and CFA.

Constructs Standardised loadings Cronbach’s a AVE
Distributive justice 0.91 0.75
DJ1 0.85
DJ2 0.82
DJ3 0.87
Procedural justice 0.93 0.71
PJ1 0.81
PJ2 0.82
PJ3 0.77
PJ4 0.83
Interactive justice 0.89 0.66
IJ1 0.80
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IJ2 0.87
IJ3 0.78
IJ4 0.85
IJ5 0.76
Organisational trust 0.88 0.72
OT1 0.83
OT2 0.85
OT3 0.80
OT4 0.87
Altruism 0.85 0.64
AL1 0.75
AL2 0.72
AL3 0.77
AL4 0.73
AL5 0.75
Conscientiousness 0.83 0.62
CS1 0.78
CS2 0.80
CS3 0.74
CS4 0.72
CS5 0.71
Courtesy 0.87 0.65
CT1 0.73
CT2 0.76
CT3 0.72
CT4 0.81
CT5 0.70
Civic virtue 0.81 0.63
CV1 0.83
CV2 0.75
CV3 0.82
CV4 0.77
CV5 0.78
AVE: average variance extracted.

p , 0.01, all t-values . 2.

Therefore, we refer to the definition of Morgan and Hunt (1994) and believe that the trust
of customers to retailers means that customers still have confidence, rely on and trust retai-
lers after their consuming behaviours. The present study uses and adjusts the measuring
scale developed by Morgan and Hunt (1994), which consists of four items, and Cronbach’s
a is 0.88.
 The Service Industries Journal 1925

Customer citizenship behaviour

According to Organ’s (1988) definition of OCB, we define CCB in this study as follows:
(1) Altruism: customers actively assist certain companies or customers in the organis-
ational-related tasks or questions and it is an unconditional customer behaviour. (2) Con-
scientiousness: customers overtake the basic purchasing requirement of transaction
procedures in certain roles. (3) Courtesy: customers will actively give advance notice to
avoid mistakes happening in transaction or affecting other customers with the same pro-
blems. (4) Civic virtue: customers participate in and concern themselves with the existing
questions of the organisation; for example, they freely promote the shop for the company.
Because no reliable measure is found in the literature, the present authors use and adjust
the measuring scales developed by Organ (1988). Each scale consists of five items, and
Cronbach’s a is 0.85, 0.83, 0.87 and 0.81.
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Measurement model evaluation

We assess the quality and adequacy of our measurement models by investigating
reliability, and performing a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to evaluate construct val-
idity regarding convergent and discriminate validity. First, reliability is supported by the
fact that all Cronbach’s a values exceed 0.70, indicating acceptable reliability levels
(Nunnally, 1978). Moreover, as can be derived from Table 1, all of the composite
reliability measures are above 0.60, corresponding to Bagozzi and Yi’s (1988)
minimum values of 0.60. As a result, we can conclude that all constructs yield satisfactory
reliabilities. Second, convergent validity is supported by the fact that the overall fit of the
models is good and that all loadings are highly statistically significant (p , 0.01, all
t-values . 2) (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988; Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham,
2006). Third, from Table 2, discriminant validity is supported by the fact that the
square roots of average variance extracted (AVE) are higher than the correlation coeffi-
cients of constructs (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).

Common method variance control

When the perceptual measurement of dependent and independent variables come from the
same source, it is very easy to have common method variance (CMV). The research result
is going to cause additive bias because the linear confounding creates a spurious main
effect (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Lee, 2003; Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). In
empirical research, CMV has been found to cause inflation (Williams, Cote, &
Buckley, 1989) or deflation (Ganster, Hennessey, & Luthans, 1983) in the intensity of vari-
ables’ correlation (Peng, Kao, & Lin, 2006). As a result of our survey, data are from con-
sumers’ self-report of retailers so there is a doubt of CMV in the research design. It
includes advance protection and post hoc testing to control CMV. There are two ways
to handle advance protection, insulation data collection and questionnaire design. We
used severity procedure to construct measurement tools of variables in questionnaire con-
tents and considered carefully the wording in order to lower CMV to avoid interrupting
respondents. Otherwise, we adopted the suggestion of Anderson and Bateman’s (1997)
in using Harman’s single-factor post hoc analysis (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986) to test the
CMV problem. After the exploratory factor analysis, we found a single factor explained
only a limited variance from non-rotation factor loading, and the explanation percentage
of a factor does not show a gathering appearance. It determines the result was not distorted
 1926
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Table 2. Correlation matrix and discriminant validity analysis.

Constructs M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
DJ 3.32 0.55 0.87
PJ 3.42 0.40 0.60 0.84

Eh Di et al.
IJ 3.43 0.42 0.45 0.56 0.81
OT 3.43 0.48 0.57 0.59 0.60 0.85
AL 3.41 0.48 0.47 0.36 0.29 0.39 0.80
CS 3.83 0.51 0.44 0.41 0.36 0.45 0.32 0.79
CT 3.78 0.45 0.38 0.37 0.34 0.40 0.46 0.58 0.81
CV 3.76 0.53 0.43 0.40 0.38 0.45 0.40 0.41 0.43 0.79
Note: n ¼ 447; M, Mean; SD, Standard deviation. The square roots of AVE are given on the diagonal. The correlation coefficients of constructs are given under the diagonal.

p , 0.01.

p , 0.001.
 The Service Industries Journal 1927

from the same data sources. According to this logic and result, a single factor has only
9.77% of varimax, showing that CMV is not significant in this study.

Results
Sample characteristics
Four hundred and forty-seven valid questionnaires have been returned: females (57.9%)
and males (42.1%). The age distribution focuses on four stages: 22.4% under 19, 40.1%
between 20 and 29, 18.7% from 30 to 39 and 13.6% between 40– 49 years old. The edu-
cation distribution is mainly in the categories of ‘Institute College’, which is 43.3%, and
‘University’, which is 32.1%. Occupation distribution: most are students (47.9%), others
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are government employees and teachers (18.1%), private enterprise staff (21.4%) and self-
employed persons (12.6%). Average monthly household income is mainly distributed as
follows: 24.5% from NTD20,001 to 40,000 and 26.2% from NTD40,001 to 60,000. Con-
suming areas mostly are the North area of Taiwan (59.3%), South area (17.5%) and
Midland (16.3%). The average consuming frequency of the respondents are concentrated
on random contingencies (40.2%), once in four weeks (20.1%), once in two weeks (12.1%)
and once a week (10.3%).

OJ and OT
Each variable’s result of mean, standard deviation and correlation is shown in Table 2.
From Table 2, we know the positive significant correlation between each dimension of
OJ and OT. Moreover, from Model 1 of Table 3, we find the following regression coeffi-
cients: distributive justice (0.32, p , 0.01), procedural justice (0.15, p , 0.01) and inter-
active justice (0.35, p , 0.01). It shows that the customers who have higher perceptions of
justice would have higher levels of trust with retailers and that proves H1.

OJ and CCB
From Table 2, we know the positive significant correlation between each dimension of OJ
and CCB. Also, from Model 1 of Table 4, we find the following regression coefficients:
distributive justice (0.28, p , 0.01), procedural justice (0.17, p , 0.01) and interactive
justice (0.13, p , 0.01). It shows that the customers who have higher perceptions of
justice have higher levels of CCB and that proves H2.

Table 3. OT as a function of OJ.

Variables Model 1 Model 2

Distributive justice 0.32
Procedural justice 0.15
Interactive justice 0.35
OJ 0.23
R2 0.45 0.48
Adjusted R2 0.39 0.41
F value 15.36 20.83

p , 0.01.

p , 0.001.
 1928 Eh Di et al.

Table 4. CCB as a function of OJ and OT.

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Distributive justice 0.28
Procedural justice 0.17
Interactive justice 0.13
OJ 0.21 0.12
OT 0.17 0.11
R2 0.23 0.20 0.25 0.29
Adjusted R2 0.19 0.16 0.20 0.13
F value 16.16 13.15 18.38 20.99

p , 0.05.

p , 0.01.
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p , 0.001.

OT and CCB
From Table 2, we know the positive significant correlation between each dimension of OT
and CCB. Also, from Model 3 of Table 4 we know that the regression coefficient is 0.17,
p , 0.01, which is when customers feel the retailers are worthy to be trusted. This makes it
easier for customers to have CCB and that also proves H3.

Test of mediation
This study uses the step-wise regression of Baron and Kenny (1986) to verify the
mediation effect of OT. From Model 4 of Table 4 we find that the regression coefficient
b of OJ is from 0.21 down to 0.12, but it is significant, showing a partially significant
effect. Therefore, the verified result of H4 is that the trust of customers to retailers is
going to have a partial mediation effect between OJ and CCB.

Conclusions
According to the purpose of our research, research hypotheses and empirical analysis
results, the conclusions are as follows. First, H1 shows the higher the justice evaluation
of customers to retailers, the easier it is for customers to have trust in retailers. Therefore,
before making decisions on any policy, retailers should consider the standpoint of custo-
mers and be concerned with their thoughts and ideas. When setting up any measures it
needs to fit justice principles. Also, if retailers effectively perform systems with justice,
the centripetal force of customers-to-retail will be strengthened and customers will natu-
rally increase the degree of trust to retailers.
Next, H2 shows that the higher the justice evaluation of customers to retailers, the easier
it is for customers to have CCB. Therefore, if retailers keep a fair interpersonal interaction
with customers and fit the justice principles in setting up the policies and their processes,
then customers will develop positive attitudes to retailers and thus add CCB.
Thirdly, H3 shows when customers feel retailers are worth trusting, it is easier to
develop CCB with retailers. Therefore, with a higher trust level of customers to retailers,
customers are relatively more likely to show free-will assistance behaviours to certain
organisations or other tasks and problems that are related to the retailers. Next, when cus-
tomers trust retailers, they will strengthen their centripetal force to retailers. They become
more likely to have behaviours that are over and beyond the basic purchasing requirement
 The Service Industries Journal 1929

behaviour to avoid problems happening in the transaction process. Finally, when custo-
mers trust retailers more and more, they will care more about the existing problems, for
example, doing promotions for dealers, understanding the difficulties of dealer’s oper-
ations and actively assisting retailers.
Finally, by mediation effect analysis, this study finds that OT has a partial mediation
effect on the relations between OJ and CCB. From the social exchange theory, we know
that trust is the foundation of the interpersonal interaction relationship. Only with the exist-
ence of trust will customers have free-will performing behaviours. The theory finds a
partial support in our study.

Implications and contributions

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Our research has a number of important theoretical implications. First, many articles are
related to customer-relation issues and most of them depend on practical but not on theor-
etical research. Although, customer relations management is a familiar concept and is
developed as a practical management system, it still needs further observation on
whether it can be a management paradigm or not. This study highlights the behaviour
angle in order to develop related theories and also to provide an example for customer
relations management. Next, from relevant references, the theories and research of scho-
lars, our empirical results were highly supported in statistical analysis and can be referred
to in a later continuous related study. Finally, from the correlation of OJ, OT and CCB, this
study proposes the mediation variable (OT) of OJ and CCB; it has a reference value for
future-related research.
In addition, our research has thus highlighted a number of important lessons for man-
agers to operate within the retail industry. First, modern customers have higher communi-
cation abilities. Dealers have to accept that customers have become their partners for
creating enterprise values. The purpose of this study is to verify the effects of OJ on
CCB. According to empirical results, we find OJ brings CCB forth. How to design a
company system to raise trust and CCB of customers to retailers is going to be a key
task in customer relation management. Next, based on the results of empirical research,
we can effectively increase the trust of customers by modifying the design of company
systems and operation in order to improve CCB. It also has an essential meaning in the
management. Thirdly, dealers need to care about customers’ trust factors; after all, they
have to take an extreme risk in trusting every potential customer. Building a trustworthy
system and helping every customer to trust the organisation is a better policy. Finally, in
order to build loyal customers, enterprises should not only focus on purchasing behaviours
but also simulate other positive customer behaviours. It is also a very important task for
present-day enterprises. Using the research design of Organ’s CCB and attributing custo-
mers’ non-buying behaviours can be the basic references for retailers.

Limitation and suggestions for further research

The study has tried to eliminate as much as possible the limitations in data collection,
literature coordination, framework formation and data analysis. However, there are still
some research limitations on manpower, finance and time factors. Research framework:
it assumes that the dimensions of independent variables are mutually independent.
Within distributive justice, procedural justice and interactive justice suppose an indepen-
dent relationship to one another. However, these variables probably have mutual effects in
common and the complicated correlation is not included in this research. Moreover, the
 1930 Eh Di et al.

mediation variable is thought to be the basis of OT in this study and we do not have job
satisfaction, organisational commitment and job value factors in our study framework to
compare the correlation effect. Research design: because of time concerns, this study
adopts cross-section research methods and cannot use a time sequence to measure the
effects of OJ, trust and CCB. We can only analyse the feeling of present customers. Con-
venience sampling: bound with the difficulty of getting samples, we adopt convenience
sampling to choose our respondents. So, the research results cannot be inferred as to differ-
ent industrial traits or job characteristics.
Our study also proposes the following suggestions for continuous future research and
for practical reference.
Research target: the study focuses on customers of service retailers in Taiwan and the
conclusion is suitable for other industrial customers. Therefore, we suggest that follow-up
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research extend research targets to other industrial customers in order to stretch research-
deductive boundaries.
Leading into other variables: In addition to OJ and trust, there are some other related
factors such as organisational commitments and psychology contracts that are waiting to
be associated with CCB. Due to the limitations on data collection, this study cannot
analyse all variables. Therefore, we suggest future researchers bring in other related vari-
ables in order to strengthen the deductive foundation.
Data collection: we used a questionnaire to collect data; however, it may not be the
most appropriate way for customer behaviour research. But by considering many man-
power and environment limitations, we take the compromised position. Therefore, we
suggest future researchers use the matching method to get the necessary data if there is
an allowance of surrounding factors. For our study, by adopting the method of self-report-
ing, our data are collected from only one source and the bias from the inflation effect prob-
ably cannot be prevented. For this reason, we suggest continuous research to collect data
from multi-resources, for example, the evaluation of service retailers, in order to collect
more factual and clinical data.

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Appendix. Scale items

Organisational justice
Distributive justice

1. I think the merchant in regard to the various requests of customers is very fair.
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2. Relative to my spending, the merchant’s price to that of the commodity is fair.

3. Overall, I think I received fair compensation.

Procedural justice

1. Merchants will have a fair and just decision making attitude.

2. Merchants will listen to customer voices before making decisions.
3. Merchants will first collect accurate and complete information before making decisions.
4. Customers can question or express views different from merchants’ decisions.

Interactive justice

1. Merchants will kindly consider the customer’s situation.

2. Merchants will treat customers with respect.
3. Merchants will be concerned with individual customer needs.
4. Merchants will care about the rights of customers.
5. Merchants will give detailed explanations to all customer-related decisions.

Organisational trust

1. I believe the merchant will practically implement management idea.

2. Most customers believe the merchant is worthy of trust.
3. I believe that the merchandise is guaranteed.
4. I believe when customers encounter difficulties the merchant will lend them a helping hand.

Customer citizenship behaviour

Altruism

1. I will take the initiative to help people out.

2. I can actively assist the merchant in solving the problem.
3. I am willing to help store employees to solve the work issues.
4. I will take the initiative to help other customers to find the needed merchandise.
5. I will actively inform salesclerks about customers’ strange behaviour.

Conscientiousness

1. I think I am the most honest customer.

2. I will not greedily take the ill-gotten gains. (R)
3. I can observe the merchant’s requests of the customer.
4. Even if no one supervises me, I can comply with the norms of store.
5. I can listen to the explanation of the salesclerk.
 1934 Eh Di et al.

Courtesy

1. I can abuse the right of customers. (R)

2. I can consider whether my actions will have an impact on other customers.
3. I will try not to cause problems for the merchant.
4. I can consider whether my behaviour affects the salesclerk’s work.
5. If the goods have defects, I will return them disregarding any suffering.

Civic virtue

1. When I appreciate a business practice, I can voluntarily advertise for the merchant.
2. I will read notices and collect businesses posters, leaflets and other documents.
3. I will try to maintain a clean store environment.
4. I can coordinate the government’s environmental protection measures, such as the implemen-
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tation of trash classification.

5. I will try to find solutions to getting merchandise returned to its original place.