The key role of psychological empowerment in boundary employee units based on gray preference

This study investigates the role of psychological empowerment in the customer evaluation. To test effect, employees and customers were surveyed in 4S stores. We aggregated the employee-individual and customer-individual level data to a higher unit level, and a gray preference model was proposed to explain the role of empowerment in customer evaluation. This study demonstrates that customer loyalty is more favorable than customer satisfaction as for system characteristic behavior, and managers need to focus on employee competence to improve customer evaluation.