서비스 종업원의 전문성과 관계적 행위가 관계성과에 미치는 영향

1. Introduction Existing relationship marketing researches treat satisfaction and trust to be included in the same dimension of the relationship quality. Contrary to the previous approaches we discriminate between trust and satisfaction and propose that trust affects satisfaction. In service contexts, we also decompose the relationship quality into relationship quality with the service employee and one with the store and posit that trust in the service employee (satisfaction with the service employee) influences trust in the store (satisfaction with the store). In all, we tested how trust and satisfaction mediate the effects of service employees’ expertise and their relational behaviors on the relationship consequences (i.e., purchase intention). 2. Model First, we propose that service employee expertise and relational behavior positively affect customer’s trust in the service employee. Because expertise reflects the mastery of relevant competencies in service delivery, customers are more likely to trust a partner who is perceived as possessing greater expertise (Bendapudi and Berry 1997). Relational behavior includes contact intensity, cooperative intentions, and mutual disclosure. High contact intensity creates trust because parties in a relational context cannot be expected to trust each other in critical moments if these constitute their only opportunities to interact. (Crosby et al. 1990). Employee’s cooperative intention and mutual disclosure can be considered as a relationship-specific investments. Specific investments made by one parter result in increased trust. Because the investing party is exposed to potential exploitation and opportunistic behavior by noninvesting party, the act of investing communicates a strong message of commitment to the relationship. Consequently, such investments should increase the customer’s trust in the partner (Ganesan 1994). Second, we hypothesized that customer’s trust in (satisfaction with) the service employee positively affects customer’s trust in (satisfaction with) the store. Customer has different expectations in interacting with the different objects, therefore the service employee and the store will be evaluated separately (Reynolds and Beatty 1999). These differences may occur because the inferential basis of evaluations is different. That is, service employee is evaluated based on observed behaviors that are demonstrated during the service encounter, whereas the store is judged based on the policies and practices governing the exchange. (Sirdeshmukh et al. 2002). Customer assumes that the employee’s behavior reflects the store’s hiring, training, service culture, and other practices (Heskett et al. 1997). According to agency theory, service employees interact with a customer as agents of the service firm. Therefore, greater customer trust in (satisfaction with) service employee is likely to generate a higher level of customer trust in (satisfaction with) the store-the principal that apparently controls and determines the behaviors of the agent (Sirdeshmukh et al. 2002). Third, we suggest that trust precedes satisfaction. Greater levels of trust in the interaction will result in lower anxiety concerning the transaction and thus greater satisfaction (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2002). If a customer does not trust the service provider based on past experience, he or she will almost certainly be dissatisfied with that service provider (Chiou et al. 2002). Also, trust and expectation share common characteristics. Expectations are thought to have a direct influence on satisfaction because consumers tend to assimilate satisfaction levels to match expectations levels to reduce dissonance (Szymanski and Henard 2001). 3. Results The structural model described in Figure 1 was estimated using AMOS Version 4.0. The global goodness-of-fit statistics indicate the structural model represents the data structure well and All of our hypothesized relationships were supported. We found that when customer perceives service employee’s expertise and relational behavior 강명수․송창석․신종칠984 경영학연구 제35권 제3호 2006년 6월to be higher, there will be more trust in the service employee. Further, trust in the service employee significantly influences trust in the store and satisfaction with the service employee, and satisfaction with the store is determined both by satisfaction with the service employee and by trust in the store. These are significant findings in that they illustrate the importance of service employee expertise and relational behavior in determining employee trust and clarify the subsequent effects of employee trust on other variables. Another valuable finding is that trust and satisfaction are judged around the service employee and the store separately. We also demonstrated that positive feelings about the employee do translate into positive feelings about the store. Finally the analysis shows that trust on the store and satisfaction with the store both have significant effects on the purchase intention. Therefore the tests show good support for the hypotheses. Based on these empirical results, we discuss the implications of the findings for marketing theory and practice.