Bridging Mentoring, Marketing, and Consumer Satisfaction: The INFUSE Concept and Research Agenda
Keywords:
Mentoring, Mentee, Protégé, Employee satisfaction, Consumer Satisfaction, Service Quality, Brand advocacy, Consumer engagement, Network, Consumer decision-making, Organizational behaviorAbstract
Mentoring relationships play a crucial role in organizational commitment and employee satisfaction, which in turn significantly impact consumer satisfaction and engagement. This research explores the relationships among mentoring, employee satisfaction, and consumer satisfaction through two distinct lenses. First, it frames the relationship between mentoring and consumer satisfaction as a marketing-related phenomenon driven by enhanced employee satisfaction. Second, it introduces the INFUSE Framework, a marketing-based approach to mentoring that reframes mentorship as a consumer decision-making process. The INFUSE Framework presents six mentoring roles (Industry, Nearby, Firm, Underrepresented, Similar, and Empathetic), offering a structured yet flexible model for cultivating a robust mentoring network. Through the lens of consumer satisfaction, this research proposes a pathway for organizations to leverage mentoring relationships as a competitive differentiator in service quality, brand advocacy, and customer engagement and satisfaction.
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