earticle

영어

Increasing customer loyalty and retention has long been regarded as an important goal for service providers. There is a consensus that attracting a new customer costs three to five times more than retaining an existing one. Thus, it is meaningful to identify the specific aspects of company which customers give value to and distinct types of emotional and behavioral responses customers suggest. Based on this, using the sample of bank employees, this study examines three folds; distinct relational benefits which bank customers particularly put emphasis on; the effects of those perceived relational benefits on customer-company identification, which result in enhancing customer co-production; and the role of role clarity as a moderator between customer-company identification and customer co-production link. Data were collected from 500 bank customers in Seoul, South Korea. Using convenience sampling, we interviewed the sample customer face-to-face to test the hypothesis. We chose bank customers as the data collection sources so that we can find customer-service provider interactions and, as a result, customers’ perceived relational benefits. We used SPSS 21.0, LISREL 8.53, and SPSS Macro to analyze the measurement model and theoretical structure model. We did first confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test constructs and measured variables. Then, we tested moderating relationship of the hypothesize link using SPSS Macro and bootstrapping method. We lastly tested the moderating effect of role clarity by mean-centering the data and goodness of fit. We tested the hypothesis by following Cohen (1992)’s guidelines. The present study is specifically designed to accomplish three objectives; to test empirically the sequential effects of various types of relational benefits, which consist of confidence, social, and special treatment benefit on customer-company identification; to explore the link between customer-company identification and customer co-production; and to examine empirically the moderating role of customer role clarity to explain when customer-company identification has more positive effects on customer co-production. The results showed that confidence and special treatment benefits have positive impact on customer-company identification; however, social benefit has no significant impact on customer-company identification. Research finding also showed that customer-company identification has positive effect on customer co-production. Finally, we also found the positive moderating effect of customer role clarity on the link between customer-company identification and customer co-production. This study extends current literature by empirically testing the existing relational benefits (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2002) in view of customers. This study offers significant implications for both managers and researchers in that this first finds special types of relational benefits-special treatment and confidence benefit- function as a tool of competitive advantage. There are few previous studies that identified the moderating role of customers’ role clarity between customer-company identification and co-production. This study extends service marketing literature by linking relational benefits, customer-company identification, and co-production.

한국어

관계마케팅이라는 개념이 등장한 이래 고객의 충성도와 재방문이 중요한 목표가 되고 있는 서비스 산업에서 관계 혜택은 매우 중요한 이슈로 대두되고 있다. 특히 고객들이 기업의 어떤 측면에 가치를 부여하는지 파악하는 것은 매우 의미가 있으며, 가치를 인식한 고객들이 어떤 인지적, 행동적 반응을 보이는 가는 기업의 입장에서도 매우 중요한 사실이다. 따라서 다음과 같은 연구를 진행했다. 첫째, 은행 거래 고객을 대상으로 다양한 관계 혜택의 요인들(사회적, 특별대우, 확신적 혜택)이 자신과 기업 간의 동일시에 대한 지각에 어떤 영향을 미치는지 살펴보았다. 둘째, 고객-기업동일시가 고객의 자발적인 행동인 고객 참여를 어떻게 변화시키는지 규명하였다. 셋째, 고객-기업동일시와 고객참여간의 관계에 미치는 고객 역할 명확성의 조절효과를 제시하였다. 이를 통해 다음과 같은 결과를 도출하였다. 첫째, 관계혜택(확신, 특별대우)은 고객-기업동일시에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으나, 사회적 혜택은 유의적인 관계가 없는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 고객-기업동일시가 고객참여(Co-production)에도 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 조절변수인 고객의 역할명확성은 고객-기업동일시가 고객참여(Co-production)에 미치는 효과를 강화시키는 것으로 나타났다. 마지막으로 고객-기업동일시가 관계혜택과 고객참여 간의 관계에 미치는 매개역할을 검증하였다.