Abstract

Customer’s altruistic behaviors toward service providers often lead to negative impacts in services marketing studies. Prior researches did not show what determines a customer's unwelcome altruistic behavior. The Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA) by depth interviews for both employees and customers in restaurant, retail, and hotel industry revealed six categories and twelve concepts that can influence a customer's unwelcome altruistic behavior. The results show three major findings; first, customer’s unwelcome altruistic behaviors toward service employees can derive from customer’s self-interest. Second, customer’s unwelcome altruistic behaviors toward service employees were influenced by various factors such as the customers themselves, the employees, the system, or from the servicescape. Third, the significant concepts such as customer routines and limited resources that have not been much discussed in prior services marketing studies were exploited.