Shopco employees’ reactions to the Service Excellence initiative were examined by
combining their scores on two variables designed to tap their degree of internalization
of SE and the extent to which they engaged in customer-oriented behaviour.
Internalization of SE was measured by three items tapping the extent to which
respondents felt they had a good understanding of SE, thought it was important for the
future of their store and felt personally committed to it (mean 5 4.24; s.d. 5 .64;
coef cient alpha 5 .80) Customer-oriented behaviour was measured using the six-item
COBEH scale developed by Peccei and Rosenthal (1997) designed to tap respondents’
(self-reported) propensity to engage in continuous improvement and exert effort on
behalf of customers (mean 5 3.90; s.d. 5 .54; coef cient alpha 5 .79).