The Relationship of Service Providers’ Perceptions of Service Climate to Guest Satisfaction, Return Intentions, and Firm Performance

In this article, we replicate and extend the guest–server exchange (GSX) model to include guest return intentions as a mediator between guest satisfaction and unit-level sales. With the extended model, we establish that guest return intentions are strongly connected to financial performance and are a better indicator of unit-level sales when compared with guest satisfaction as previously modeled. Furthermore, our model confirms that guest satisfaction is a statistically significant consequent of service orientation, but is best treated as an antecedent to guest return intentions, rather than unit-level sales as previously modeled. Other results consistent with existing research on the GSX showed that line-level employees’ recognition of service delivery standards being in place is strongly connected to line-level employees’ perceptions of coworker and supervisor support. The former was significantly related to line-level employee guest orientation, which was related to guest orientation. Supervisor support was not found to affect guest orientation in the model, consistent with previous tests of the GSX