지각된 품질이 서비스의 개인가치에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구 - 인지욕구 및 접촉욕구의 조정효과를 중심으로 -

Abstract

본 연구는 서비스 시장에서의 개인가치와 지각된 품질간의 인과적 관계 및 고객의 인지욕구와 접촉욕구에 따른 조정효과에 대해 실증 분석하였으며 이를 통해 개인차원의 서비스 전략과 마케팅 관리의 중요성을 제시하고 있다. 서비스 시장에서 공급자와 구매자간의 장기적 거래관계의 중요성이 크게 부각됨에 따라 관계구축 및 강화에 매우 중요한 역할을 하는 지각된 품질 및 개인가치에 관한 연구는 학계뿐만 아니라 실무적으로도 고객관계관리 관점에서 시사하는 바가 크다고 할 수 있다. 실증 분석을 위해 교육 서비스를 이용하는 고객(대학생 및 대학원생)을 대상으로 설문을 통해 데이터를 수집하였으며 인과적 구성모델에 대해 구조방정식 모델분석을 통해 가설 검증하였다. 구성모델에 대한 분석결과 물리적 환경, 상호작용 품질, 그리고 결과품질로 구성된 지각된 품질은 안정적 삶, 사회적 인식, 사회적 통합으로 구성된 서비스 개인가치에 통계적으로 매우 유의한 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며 집단 간 차이효과분석을 통해서도 인지욕구 및 접촉욕구의 조정효과는 낮을 때 보다는 높을 때 더 유의한 것으로 나타났다. 그리고 본 연구의 구성모델에 대한 적합도 역시 수용할만한 수준인 것으로 나타났다. 실증분석을 통해 알 수 있듯이 교육기관이 제공하는 서비스를 구매하는 고객을 확보하기 위해서는 보다 높은 품질의 향상과 인식의 강화를 위한 가치제공이 무엇보다도 고객과의 장기적인 관계구축을 향상시킬 수 있다는 것을 의미한다. 본 연구는 서비스 품질 요인과 고객의 개인가치간의 인과적 관계를 통해 그 중요성을 확인하고 고객가치를 높이기 위한 실무차원의 관리적 시사점을 발견했다는 데 그 의의가 있다고 볼 수 있으며 이를 통해 비추어 볼 때 유용하게 이용될 수 있는 교육 서비스 시장의 고객관리의 틀을 제공할 수 있으며 특히 고객과의 관계를 보다 더 효과적이고 성공적인 관계로 발전시킬 수 있는 평가기준으로 활용할 수 있을 것으로 보인다.

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and Service Personal Value(SERPVAL) affecting the result of long-term relationship between buyers and sellers in the service market. This research presents a constructive model(perceived quality affecting on the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC-Need for Cognition and NFTNeed for Touch) and then propose the research model based on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer’s overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual’s values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers’personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts’ interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers’ and practitioners’ perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people’s lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use ① service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use ② service value to social recognition (SVSR), and ③ service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user’s pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual’'s social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents’ evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents’ overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms’ marketing strategies are consistent with consumers’ expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services’ usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers’ personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 243 respondents who visit the Korean education market. The validity of the measurement scales was also confirmed by evaluations provided by the participating company respondents and an independent advisory panel; samples provided recommendations throughout the primary, exploratory phases of the study. The resulting goodness-of-fit statistics were; RMR of 0.05, GFI and AGFI greater than 0.90, and a chi-square with a more than 40.00. Because RMR and RMSEA is lower than 0.05, it is within an cceptable range. The indicators of the each constructs were very good measures of variables and had high convergent validity as evidenced by the reliability with a more than 0.90. The resulting statistics were a RMR less than 0.05, GFI and AGFI greater than 0.90. Some items were deleted leaving those that reflected the cognitive dimension of importance rather than the dimension. The indicators were very good measures and had convergent validity as evidenced by the reliability of 0.90. These results for all constructs indicate the measurement fits the sample data well and is adequate for use. The scale for each factor was set by fixing the factor loading to one of its indicator variables and then applying the maximum likelihood estimation method. The results of the analysis showed that directions of the effects in the model are ultimately supported by the theory underpinning the causal linkages of the model. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model and the result was successful. Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC and NFT is higher than when no NFC and NFT is low. The results of the study indicate that perceived service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.