Service Employee’s Emotional Intelligence and Customer’s Evaluations of Service Quality in Hospitality Industry Faruk Şahin and Derya Atlay Işık Fethiye Faculty of Business Administration, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Fethiye, Muğla, Turkey E-mail: faruksahin@mu.edu.tr, deryaatlay@mu.edu.tr Abstract—The present study examines the impact of the service employee’s emotional intelligence on customer’s evaluation of the service quality. The sample consisted of 63 service employees and 326 customers from hospitality firms in Turkey. Since the nested structure of the data, we conducted hierarchical linear modeling analyses. The results indicated that there exists significant variance in service quality perceptions among customers from different cultural backgrounds. Moreover, the results showed that service employee’s EQ positively influences customer’s assessment of the service quality. This study extends prior research relating to service employee’s EQ on service quality perceptions, and provides important insights for hospitality practitioners. I. INTRODUCTION The service industries are mostly customer driven and rely quite so much on customers’ evaluations of service quality [1]. Given the importance of service quality perceptions to the success of the company [2], there has long been great interest in the management of service quality, particularly service encounters during which a customer interact with the service providers [3]. The quality of service encounters is critical to the service experience of customers, because it is the costumer’s main source of information for judging the business [2]. Concerning this, the role of emotions in the service encounters has long been the focus of many studies in the literature [4, 5, 6]. According to the service-dominant paradigm [7], it is acknowledged that the characteristics of service provider’s play a critical role in the delivery of quality service and customer’s perceptions of service. The concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) epitomizes many of the essential capabilities that would contribute to the development of effective service encounters in the workplace [8, 9]. Following Mayer and Salovey [10], EQ can be defined as the ability to perceive and express emotions, to understand and use them, and to manage them to promote emotional and intellectual growth. Since Manuscript received November 11, 2019; revised May 20, 2020. the introduction of EQ into the literature, it has attracted considerable interest for the effectiveness in social interactions and across diverse disciplines ranging from psychology to management [11, 12, 13]. Previous research has indicated the positive associations between EQ and beneficial outcomes such as academic success [14] and performance in the workplace [15]. The present study addresses the questions of whether customers’ evaluations of service quality varies across individuals from different cultural backgrounds and examines the impact of the service employee’s EQ on customers’ evaluations of service qualit y in the hospitality services which generally involve very intense cross-cultural interactions between service providers and customers. II. A BRIEF REVIEW OF LITERATURE A. Culture and Service Quality Perceptions Service quality is best understood as customers’ comparison between their expectations and their perceptions of service. Accordingly, service quality refers to the degree of discrepancy between the expected and the perceived service by customers [16, 17, 18]. To increase profit and market share, firms are aware of the fact that understanding customers’ needs and requirements, and delivering service to meet their expectations have become crucial [18, 19]. Prior research clearly indicated that service quality has effects on firm performance, customer satisfaction and loyalty, lower costs, and profitability [20]. Thus, understanding of customers’ needs and wants is central issue for improving service quality. Service quality perception is at least partially dependent upon the customer's cultural background. Individuals from different cultures experience different way of life with distinct values. Hofstede [21] defined culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others” and also suggested that culture has influences on individual’s behaviors. Culture provides guidelines and rules to individuals on how to engage in social interactions within a society [22], therefore, culture may affect customers’ expectations and perceptions of service quality. This view suggests that a customer from 65 Journal of Advanced Management Science Vol. 8, No. 2, June 2020 ©2020 Journal of Advanced Management Science doi: 10.18178/joams.8.2.65-69 Index Terms—emotional intelligence, service quality, culture, hospitality services