The missing link: Fairness as the ultimate determinant of service profitability?!

Fairness is widely considered a key driver of human behavior. Organizational behavior (OB) research focuses on fairness as an employee attitude driver. Marketing research highlights fairness perceptions as a key determinant of both purchase intentions and purchase behavior. Yet, to our best knowledge, no explicit attempt has been made to bridge the two phenomena. Using deductive reasoning and delineation methods, we posit that, through the diffusion of customer experience, value perception, attitudes, and behaviors, a symbiosis of OB and marketing research ultimately influences organizational performance. Our corresponding conceptual framework determines fairness perceptions’ influence on employee attitudes and service productivity by means of proposition development. In turn, this leads to an increase in customer satisfaction, consumer purchasing, and re-purchasing behavior, and – ultimately – profitability.