earticle

영어

This study sought to examine whether customer empathy for Vietnamese hotel services influences the formation of rapport between customers and employees and improves customer citizenship behavior. Accordingly, in this study, customer empathy includes sub-elements such as cognitive empathy and emotional empathy, and Rapport viewed enjoyable relationship and personal commitment as inherent. For verification, an empirical analysis was conducted on a total of 447 samples. As a result of the verification, among the sub-elements of customer empathy for Vietnamese hotel services, emotional empathy had a positive effect on both enjoyable relationship and personal commitment, which are sub-elements of Rapport. On the other hand, cognitive empathy was found to have a positive effect only on enjoyable relationship. Additionally, rapport between customers and Vietnamese hotel employees was found to have a significant impact on customer citizenship behavior. The results of this study point out the limitations of cognitive empathy in building rapport because rapport between employees and customers plays an important role in the Vietnamese hotel industry, and suggest strategic implications for improving emotional empathy.