Balancing acts: the role of employee emotional and professional competencies in personal fashion advice services

Purpose In personal advice services (PAS), consumers rely heavily on employee competencies when making purchase decisions. Drawing on job characteristics theory, the role-behavior framework, and affect-as-information theory, this study examines how employees' emotional and professional competencies shape the effectiveness of PAS in fashion retail across offline and online service contexts. Design/methodology/approach Two qualitative studies explored changes in consumers' fashion shopping behavior and evolving expectations regarding employee competencies in digitally transformed retail environments. Three experimental studies were conducted to test the effects of employee emotional and professional competencies on customer responses across PAS settings. Findings The findings demonstrate that emotional competence represents a key driver of favorable customer responses in both offline and online service encounters. Moreover, when employee emotional competence is high, the influence of professional competence on customer responses is reduced in online PAS settings. Originality/value Whereas previous studies have predominantly investigated emotional and professional competence in isolation and primarily within offline settings, the present research extends prior literature by examining the interplay between these competencies across offline and online PAS. The findings suggest that emotional competence represents a critical capability in digital mediated service interactions, where it can partially compensate for lower professional competence. Further, the results demonstrate that retailers should invest not only in employees' task-related experience, but also in the development of emotional competencies to enhance customer experience across channels.