Title: Employee performance and customer loyalty: mediation effect of customer satisfaction

Authors: Taylan Budur; Mersid Poturak

Addresses: Tishk International University, Sulaimani, Kurdistan Region, Iraq ' Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, International Burch University, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract: Customer preferences and behaviours are constantly changing, thus employee adaptation to customer demands in service providing is essential in today's modern business. This study will discuss customer perception of employee performance as well as overall employee performance on customer satisfaction and loyalty. In order to collect data for this study, two different surveys were conducted; delivered to employees of small and medium enterprises and its relevant customers in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The results of the study showed that customer perception of employee performance had a positive and significant impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, while overall employee performance did not show any impact. Additionally, customer satisfaction showed positive mediation between customer perception of employee performance and customer loyalty. Having these findings of the paper we can conclude that customer perception of performance is a crucial factor in the long-term effectiveness of the organisations.

Keywords: customer perception of employee performance; customer-perceived performance; Kurdistan; Iraq; employee performance; customer satisfaction and loyalty.

DOI: 10.1504/MEJM.2021.117510

Middle East Journal of Management, 2021 Vol.8 No.5, pp.453 - 474

Received: 29 Jun 2020
Accepted: 05 Jul 2020
Published online: 10 Sep 2021 *

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