Grey incidence analysis of correlations between leadership-member exchange and automobile after-sales service quality

The Chinese automotive industry is the largest in the world. Although after-sales services are known to be associated with profitability, it has not obtained its rightful prominence in the Chinese industry. To investigate how the quality of leader-member exchange can influence after-sales services in the Chinese automobile industry, we collected data from individual employees and customers and analyzed it using grey theory model. Based on the results, we proposed the industry to pay more attentions to tangible after-sales service. While previous studies tended to adopt an either customer or employee perspective, our research contributes to the literature by offering a more comprehensive perspective from both the standpoints of the organization and consumers, and our grey theory analytic approach offers a viable option for researchers who are interested in reducing biases in data due to the data aggregation process. © 2015 SERSC.