Purpose

This study explores the influence of employee empathy on brand love, which subsequently affects customer advocacy, willingness to pay more (WTPM) and tolerance of failure. Additionally, it investigates the mediating role of customer delight and gratitude in connecting employee empathy with brand love and the moderating effect of power distance belief (PDB) between employee empathy and customer delight and gratitude.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 751 usable data were gathered through scenario-based online surveys within a hotel context. The proposed conceptual model used Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) for testing.

Findings

The results affirm the impact of employee empathy on brand love through the pathways of customer delight and gratitude, ultimately influencing positive customer behaviors, such as advocacy, WTPM and tolerance of failure. Moreover, the findings suggest that PDB diminishes the effect of employee empathy on customer gratitude, although it does not affect customer delight.

Originality/value

The study introduces novel insights into the significance of employee empathy as an antecedent of brand love. It contributes to the literature by concurrently conceptualizing customer delight and gratitude as mediators between employee empathy and brand love, consequently leading to favorable consumer behaviors. Furthermore, it advances our theoretical comprehension of an individual customer’s PDB and its psychological impact.

中文翻译：

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员工同理心在形成品牌热爱中的作用：顾客愉悦和感恩作为中介，权力距离信念作为调节

目的

本研究探讨了员工同理心对品牌热爱的影响，进而影响客户拥护度、支付更多费用的意愿 (WTPM) 和对失败的容忍度。此外，它还研究了客户愉悦和感激在员工同理心与品牌热爱之间的中介作用，以及权力距离信念（PDB）在员工同理心与客户愉悦和感激之间的调节作用。

设计/方法论/途径

通过在酒店环境中基于场景的在线调查，总共收集了 751 个可用数据。所提出的概念模型使用偏最小二乘-结构方程模型（PLS-SEM）进行测试。

发现

结果证实了员工同理心通过客户愉悦和感激的途径对品牌热爱产生影响，最终影响积极的客户行为，例如倡导、WTPM 和容忍失败。此外，研究结果表明，PDB 削弱了员工同理心对客户感激之情的影响，尽管它不会影响客户满意度。

原创性/价值

该研究对员工同理心作为品牌热爱的前提的重要性提出了新颖的见解。它通过同时将客户愉悦和感激概念化为员工同理心和品牌热爱之间的中介，从而对文献作出贡献，从而导致有利的消费者行为。此外，它还提高了我们对单个客户的 PDB 及其心理影响的理论理解。