Understanding frontline employee phygital experiences through service-dominant logic and job demands-resources model

Purpose This paper aims to introduce the concept of frontline employees’ phygital experience (FEPE) as a human-centered and integrative framework for understanding frontline work in phygital service ecosystems. Addressing the fragmentation of research across service marketing, organizational behavior and occupational psychology, the authors develop a multi-domain conceptualization that captures how frontline employees experience digital connectors across self-oriented, other-oriented, organizational and brand domains. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a theory synthesis approach, this conceptual study integrates service-dominant logic and the job demands–resources model to construct a synoptic framework that explains how digital connectors operate as ambivalent operand resources shaping frontline employees’ experiences. Findings The FEPE framework positions frontline employees as actors within service phygital ecosystems. Digital connectors activate or deplete employees’ operant resources across cognitive, affective and conative dimensions. By distinguishing job resources from job demands configurations across four experiential perspectives, the framework links digital connectors to employee well-being or ill-being and value co-creation or co-destruction. Research limitations/implications This paper advances the phygital service research literature by integrating service-dominant logic and the job demands–resources model to conceptualize the FEPE as a dynamic resource integration process. Future research is invited to examine these trade-offs, exploring how digital connectors may benefit certain role dimensions while simultaneously hindering others. Originality/value This paper introduces the FEPE framework, offering a novel, multilevel perspective on how digital connectors enable and constrain frontline employees’ operant resources. Unlike prior models that focus on customer experience or digital efficiency, the FEPE framework conceptualizes employees as co-creators of value whose experiences span individual, interactional and organizational domains. It advances service-dominant logic and job demands–resources theory by linking resource mobilization to well-being and value co-creation in a phygital service ecosystem.