서비스브랜드 애착의 형성 경로 연구: 기업 및 종업원 고객관계향상활동을 중심으로

Although various research on brand attachment have been conducted, existing studies onlyfocus on identifying independent and dependent variables of product brand attachment(Belk,1985; Richins, 1994). This research investigates service brand attachment due to the rise inimportance of emotional aspects within service brand attachment, compared to product brandattachment. Furthermore this study focuses on the process of how the Customer RelationshipEnhancing Activities affects the brand attachment. Two explanatory variables are posed becauseCustomer Relationship Enhancing Activities are conducted by corporations and employees. Specifically, this study anticipates that two subjects such as corporations and employees caninfluence each self connection. The positive effects of corporation-self connection and employeeselfconnection transfer to brand-self connection which leads to brand attachment. By employing the empirical analysis, this study found that the higher the corporation ledCustomer Relationship Enhancing Activities, the higher the corporation-self connection was. Also, the higher the employee led Customer Relationship Enhancing Activities, the higher theemployee-self connection was. The higher corporation-self connection and employee-self connectionwere, the higher brand-self connection was. The higher the brand-self connection was, thehigher brand attachment became. These results show that Customer Relationship EnhancingActivities conducted by corporations and employees influence brand attachment. Theoretically, this study contributes to the literature on brand attachment by providing theCustomer Relationship Enhancing Activities based explanation as a process in service brand attachment. This study also offers managerial implications for marketers that the awareness ofsubject of Customer Relationship Enhancing Activities is key to successful marketing. To put additional discussion, ‘good consumption’ is recently giving a significant impact onconsumers' purchasing decisions. Now, consumers are interested in which enterprises are morefaithful to the welfare of society and committed to social responsibility. In addition to this, wenow know that the sincere consciousness for the environment enterprises has become theparadigm of consumption. Through the results of this study, we can see that social activitiesand the ethics of corporations can definitely influence consumer behavior. Another implicationis suggested is that each corporation’s fulfillment of their social responsibility could be essentialto corporate sustainability and their survival itself, as opposed to those that society restorationcorporations perform. GE has shown that for a long time, a commitment to environmental campaigns has a positiveimpact in corporate profits. In favor of customers, they feel that they participate and contributeto the social welfare and public consumption just by purchasing the corporate's products. In fact, service needs specific action strategies such as Customer Relationship EnhancingActivities, because it is a kind of an experiential trait and process quality which are much morecritical. In order to enhance their brand value and ensure that the companies have formed abrand attachment, corporations have made efforts to put a lot emphasis on communicationsstrategies to strengthen brand associations and brand awareness. Through this, service company should try to make a customer-brand relationship and improvethe customer relationship activities simultaneously both by corporate policies and by employees'responses to customers at the consumer contact point. In future research, a wider variety of services will have to be studied, each service categoryhaving its own characteristics. So we should consider the appropriate influence factors whenapplying particular service categories into research. In addition to this, it is desirable that weshould perform research while limiting more definite research scope. Customer related activitiesmay vary depending on service business type, time, or place in which services are delivered. Therefore, if we could consider the aforementioned factors, we could identify more practical andexact influence factors.