Towards a new age of management in retail – Customer deviance, interpersonal emotion management and frontline employees’ wellbeing.

Employees in the retail industry are increasingly challenged by badly behaving customers. As a consequence, retailers face difficulties to retain employees. Academic research displays limited insights on the impact of negative customer deviance (NCD) in retail and leaves its impact on employees' intention to remain in the job including the moderating role of support structures unexplored. Using the job demands resources model, this paper investigates NCD in retail stores, identifies employees' reactions to such behaviours and reveals different support factors to moderate NCD's impacts on employees. Structural equation modelling of data from surveying 108 frontline employees in retail stores confirms the mediating roles of emotional exhaustion, the affective ill-being and job satisfaction concerning employees facing NCD and their intention to remain in the job. The research draws attention to emotional care in form of interpersonal emotion management strategies, supervisor along with trust enhancing mechanisms in retail management in order to mitigate NCD's negative effects on retail workers. Keywords: Retail employee job demands, Customer deviance, Interpersonal Emotion, Management, Employee Wellbeing