Few studies have examined how customer behaviour shapes the outcomes of employees’ emotion regulation. Drawing on existing literature, this article tests two alternative models of customer affiliative behaviour (e.g. smiling, engaging in short conversation), employee emotion regulation (surface acting, deep acting) and employee outcomes (emotional exhaustion, objective task performance). In one model, customer affiliative behaviour is a mechanism that mediates the relationship between employee emotion regulation and outcomes, and in the other model customer affiliative behaviour moderates this relationship. The models were tested on data drawn from a daily diary study of 49 supermarket checkout operators and store performance records. The findings from multilevel analyses make a significant contribution to understanding how a key part of the social context during service interactions (i.e. customer affiliative behaviour) is a mechanism and moderator of employee emotion regulation. Results show that the effects of deep and surface acting on employee well-being are mediated by customer affiliative behaviour, and that relationship between surface acting and task performance is mediated by customer affiliative behaviour and emotional exhaustion. In addition, customer affiliative behaviour moderated the relationship between deep acting and emotional exhaustion, and the indirect effect of deep acting on task performance through emotional exhaustion.
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