고객 지향적인 보상 프로그램의 설계에 관한 연구

Although reward programs have become a key marketing-mix tool for promoting customer relationship and loyalty, little research has examined the factors that determine how reward programs are evaluated by customers. Thus, the aim of this research is three-fold: (1) to examine how customer choice between hedonic and utilitarian rewards is influenced by the nature of evaluation mode which can be classified into separate evaluation mode (SE), in which options are presented in isolation and evaluated separately, and joint evaluation mode (JE), in which multiple options are presented simultaneously and evaluated comparatively, (2) to study the effect of temporal distance between choice and consumption on the types of rewards customers prefer, and (3) to investigate whether the inclusion of the no-choice option weakens the evaluation mode effect and the temporal distance effect which occur in the forced choice situation. Specifically, this article proposes that (1) customers have a relative preference for a hedonic reward over a comparable utilitarian reward when each is presented singly (i.e., SE) as opposed to when the two are presented jointly (i.e., JE); (2) customers have a relative preference for a hedonic reward over a comparable utilitarian reward when the chosen reward can be consumed in the distant future as opposed to the near future; (3) not only the evaluation mode effect but also the temporal distance effect is attenuated when customers have the no-choice option in a reward choice decision making. Thus, two experiments are conducted to test the propositions of this research: Experiment 1 is conducted to test how the nature of evaluation mode (SE vs. JE) and the temporal distance between consumption and choice (near future vs. distant future) affect the types of rewards customers prefer in the forced choice situation (i.e., no-choice option is not available). In experiment 2, it is tested how the nature of evaluation mode and the temporal distance between consumption and choice affect the types of rewards customers prefer in the free choice situation (i.e., no-choice option is available) and whether there are any differences between the results with (experiment 2) and without a no-choice option (experiment 1). In a series of two experiments, the results demonstrate that (1) the evaluation mode effect occurs for the types of rewards which require lower points (hypothesis 1) when the no-choice option is unavailable, whereas the temporal distance effect occurs for the types of rewards which require higher points in such a forced choice situation (hypothesis 2); (2) the free choice situation attenuates the evaluation mode effect as well as the temporal distance effect which occurs in the forced choice situation (hypotheses 3 and 4). On the basis of the results, theoretical and managerial implications, limitations, and directions for further research are discussed.