Does customer delight matter in the customer satisfaction-loyalty linkage?

Mi-Jeong KIM,Chul-Ju PARK 한국유통과학회 2018 KODISA ICBE (International Conference on Business Vol.2018 No.-

This research focuses on the relationships among customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty. Although customer delight is one facet of an affective evaluation that can be predicted from customer satisfaction as cognitive component of the evaluation, there is no empirical examination on the casual relationship among customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty. This study aims at addressing this gap in the service literature. The research questions are (1) How is customer satisfaction related to customer delight? and (2) Does customer delight matter in the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty? Data from a survey of consumers across upscale restaurant and retail bank in Korea were obtained. Our results show that customer satisfaction contributes positively to customer delight, and that customer delight plays a significant role in the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. This chained relationship from customer satisfaction to customer delight to customer loyalty suggests that achieving customer delight represents one of the underlying pathways through which basic or core requirements expected by customers are satisfied. Our finding suggests that service firms need to monitor and manage their levels of customer delight as a performance metric, and delighting customers may be an important strategy to build competitive advantage through customer loyalty.

Does Customer Delight Matter in the Customer Satisfaction-Loyalty Linkage?

Mi Jeong KIM,Chul Ju PARK 한국유통과학회 2019 The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Busine Vol.6 No.3

This research focuses on the relationships among customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty. Although customer delight is one facet of an affective evaluation that can be predicted from customer satisfaction as cognitive component of the evaluation, there is no empirical examination on the casual relationship among customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty. This study aims at addressing this gap in the service literature. The research questions are (1) How is customer satisfaction related to customer delight? and (2) Does customer delight matter in the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty? Data from a survey of consumers across upscale restaurant and retail bank in Korea were obtained. Our results show that customer satisfaction contributes positively to customer delight, and that customer delight plays a significant role in the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. This chained relationship from customer satisfaction to customer delight to customer loyalty suggests that achieving customer delight represents one of the underlying pathways through which basic or core requirements expected by customers are satisfied. Our finding suggests that service firms need to monitor and manage their levels of customer delight as a performance metric, and delighting customers may be an important strategy to build competitive advantage through customer loyalty.

고객감동과 구매의도, 고객생애가치와의 관계

이은영 한국마케팅관리학회 2016 마케팅관리연구 Vol.21 No.3

It has been more than 40 years since research on customer satisfaction has come into the spotlight in academia and in fields. But this spotlight has started to diminish since researches began to explore that ‘mere satisfaction’ is not enough and customer satisfaction does not always lead to positive consumer behavior and firm performance. Therefore, customer delight started to receive focus from practitioners and scholars. Despite this interest, little work on customer delight has been made and even the concept of customer delight was in confusion. This research draws two main research questions according to customer delight. First, this research is the first to quantify the incremental amount of customer lifetime value of delighted customers. Second, I categorized customer delight into customer delight with high surprise and customer delight with low surprise and quantified the incremental amount of customer lifetime value of surprisingly delighted customers. This research demonstrated the hypotheses with real coffee shop users and the results were that customer lifetime value was higher when there existed customer delight than when there was not customer delight (approximately 92,000 won). Also, customer delight with high surprise and low surprise was compared, resulting in higher customer lifetime value in delight with high surprise (approximately 113,000 won). In order to convince that customer delight is practically a different concept from customer satisfaction, I ran a polynomial regression analysis and revealed that customer satisfaction and customer delight were both in increasing nonlinear relationship with purchase intentions, while only customer delight revealed an increasing nonlinear relationship with customer lifetime value. This research draws several academic and practical implications for being the first to quantify the economic value of customer delight. 고객만족에 대한 관심과 연구가 40여 년 이상 학계 및 실무에서 이루어져온 가운데 ‘단순만족(mere satisfaction)’으로는 부족하다는 인식과 함께 고객만족이 반드시 긍정적인 소비자 행동결과와 기업의 성과로 연결되지는 않는다는 연구들이 등장하기 시작하였다. 대표적인 연구 주제가 고객감동(customer delight)인데, 학계 및 실무의 관심에도 불구하고 고객감동에 관한 연구들은 현재까지 많이 이루어지지 않았고 고객감동에 대한 개념부터 혼재되어 있는 상황이다. 본 연구에서는 고객감동연구와 관련하여 두 가지 연구 문제를 도출하였는데, 첫 번째는 고객감동이 구매의도에 미치는 긍정적인 영향과 경제적 성과(고객생애가치)의 증가분이다. 두 번째는 고객감동을 놀라움이 높은 고객감동과 놀라움이 낮은 고객감동으로 분류하여 구매의도에 미치는 긍정적인 영향과 경제적 성과(고객생애가치)의 증가분이다. 본 연구는 실제 커피전문점 이용자를 대상으로 응답자의 개인적인 소비경험을 바탕으로 조사한 결과, 고객감동이 있을 때에 없을 때 보다 구매의도가 높게 나타났다. 경제적 가치의 대리지표인 고객생애가치는 Rust et al.(2004)의 측정방법을 바탕으로 측정하였다. 그 결과 고객감동이 있을 때에 없을 때 보다 고객생애가치 또한 높게 나타났다(약 92,000원). 그리고 놀라움이 높은 고객감동의 경우에 놀라움이 낮을 때 보다 구매의도와 고객생애가치가 높게 나타났다(약 113,000원). 고객만족과 고객감동이 구매의도와 고객생애가치에 미치는 영향이 다르다는 것을 보이기 위해 다차항 회귀분석을 실시한 결과, 고객만족과 구매의도는 체증하는 비선형관계를 보인 반면, 고객생애가치와의 관계에서 고객감동만 체증하는 비선형 관계를 보였다. 본 연구는 고객감동의 경제적 가치를 처음으로 밝혔다는 점에서 의의가 있고 고객만족과 비교하여 고객생애가치와의 관계를 밝혔다는 점에서 학문적·실무적 의의가 있다.

감동한 고객은 정말로 더 충성적인가? 고객충성도에 대한 고객만족과 고객감동의 선형 및 비선형적 효과

김미정(Mi Jeong Kim),박상일(Sang Il Park) 한국마케팅학회 2014 마케팅연구 Vol.29 No.3

고객만족의 개념은 마케팅 문헌에서 가장 중요한 주제 중 하나이다. 그러나 최근에 들어 여러 연구자들과 실무자들은 충성도 창출을 위하여 만족이 필수적이지만 충분하지는 않다고 주장한다. 고객감동의 개념은 왜 비슷한 수준의 만족도를 보이는 고객들이 다른 행동을 하는지에 대한 보다 나은 이해를 가능하게 한다. 따라서 고객감동의 개념에 대한 이해를 높일 수 있는 다수의 연구들이 이루어졌지만, 여전히 만족에 관한 연구에 비해 현저히 부족한 수준이다. 고객감동에 관한 기존 연구들의 가장 큰 한계점 중 하나는 감동과 고객행동간의 관계에 대한 실증적 근거를 제시하는 연구가 부족하다는 점이다. 특히 고객감동과 충성도의 관련성은 주요 선행연구들에서 지지되고 있지만, 두 개념간 선형적인 관계에 대해서는 상충되는 연구결과 역시 제시되고 있다. 따라서 본 연구는 고객만족의 효과가 고려된 상황에서 고객감동과 충성도간의 비선형적 관계를 제시함으로써 기존의 선형관계로 규명되지 않았던 둘간의 관계를 설명하고자 하였다. 분석결과 고객만족은 재구매의도에 체감하는 비선형적 효과를 갖지만, 추천의도에는 긍정적인 선형효과를 갖는 것으로 나타났다. 그리고 고객만족이 통제된 상황에서 고객감동과 고객충성도(재구매의도와 추천의도 모두)는 체증하는 비선형 관계를 갖는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 고객만족이 일정수준 이상이 되면 고객감동은 고객만족 보다 고객충성도에 더 큰 영향을 미친다는 것을 의미한다. 따라서 서비스기업은 고객감동이 고객만족만큼이나 전략적으로 관리되어야 하는 서비스성과 척도이라는 점을 인식하여야 하며, 고객만족의 수준이 기준치 이상일 때 기업의 자원은 고객만족을 증대시키는 것보다 고객감동을 증대시키는데 이용되어야 한다. The concept of customer satisfaction is one of the most important topics in the marketing literature. However, some researchers and practitioners note that satisfaction is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for loyalty. The notion of customer delight may lead to a better understanding why customers reporting the same levels of satisfaction behave differently. Although customer delight has triggered the interest of the academia and industry in recent years, there are relatively a limited number of studies compared with those on customer satisfaction. Previous studies on customer delight are not without limitations, most importantly, very few empirical studies on the consequences of customer delight. Despite the support for the association between customer delight and loyalty in seminal articles, several studies reveal contradictory findings concerning the linearity of the relationship. Therefore, the present study investigates the links among customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty and the nonlinear linkage between customer delight and loyalty in considering the effect of customer satisfaction. The statistical results reveal that customer satisfaction has a decreasing nonlinear effect on repurchase intention but a positive linear effect on referral intention. This study also demonstrates that customer delight has an increasing nonlinear effect on customer loyalty (both repurchase intention and referral intention) when controlling for the effect of customer satisfaction. The results suggest that an increase in customer delight has a greater impact on customer loyalty than satisfaction when customer satisfaction remains at higher levels. Therefore, service providers should be strategically oriented toward creating customer delight as well as customer satisfaction since customer delight is also associated with service performance metric. Furthermore, companies should also devote their resources to creating customer delight rather than customer satisfaction when customer satisfaction has reached a certain level.

제품 속성이 고객만족과 고객감동에 미치는 영향

박상준 ( Sang June Park ),이영란 ( Yeong Ran Lee ) 한국고객만족경영학회 2015 고객만족경영연구 Vol.17 No.4

경쟁의 심화로 고객만족은 더 이상 시장성과를 담보하지 못하는 상황에 처하게 되면서, 고객만족을 넘어서 고객을 감성적으로 자극할 수 있는 고객감동이라고 부르는 마케팅 수단에 대한 관심이 증대되고 있다. 그러나 고객감동에 대한 증대되는 관심에 비해 관련 연구의 축척은 더디게 진행되고 있다. 더욱이 “고객만족을 넘어서 고객감동으로”의 슬로건대로 고객만족을 넘어서 고객감동으로 이어질 수 있는지에 관한 명쾌한 답을 도출해 내지 못하고 있는 것이 현실이다. 선행연구에서는 고객만족을 도출할 수 있는 제품 속성차원과 고객감동을 도출해 낼 수 있는 제품 속성차원이 다르다는 연구결과를 제시한 바 있는데 이는 고객만족을 넘어 고객감동 전략을 수립해야 하는 실무자들을 더욱 혼돈스럽게 하고 있다. 왜냐하면 제품 속성차원에 관계없이 마케팅 노력을 통해 만족을 넘어 감동에 이르게 할 수 있다는 상식적인 믿음과 배치기 때문이다. 본 연구는 이러한 고객만족과 고객감동에 대한 상식적인 믿음이 틀린 것인지 아니면 고객만족과 고객감동을 분리하여 설명하고 있는 선행연구를 좀더 체계적으로 재검토해야 하는지 알아보는데 연구의 목적을 두고 있다. 이를 위해 고객만족과 고객감동의 관계에 대한 다른 관점을 갖고 있는 문헌들에 대한 종합적인 검토를 바탕으로, 제품 속성차원(실용적 속성차원과 쾌락적 속성차원)과 고객만족과 고객감동의 관계에 대한 통합적인 이론적 프레임웍을 제시하고, 이를 실증분석을 통해 검증하였다. 분석결과는 제품유형에 따라서는 실용적 속성과 고객감동이 직접적으로 영향을 미칠 수 있을 뿐아니라 실용적 속성차원이 고객만족을 매개로 고객감동에 영향을 미칠 수 있다는 간접효과가 있음을 시사하고 있다. 본 연구의 기여는 크게 3가지로 정리될 수 있다. 첫째, 제품 속성차원, 고객만족, 그리고 고객감동간의 관계 재정립을 위한 선행연구들의 통합적인 프레임웍을 제시하였다. 둘째, 고객만족과 고객감동에 관한 상식적인 믿음과 선행연구와의 괴리를 해소하였다. 셋째, 고객만족을 넘어서 고객감동 실현을 위한 실무적 시사점을 제시하였다. Customer satisfaction should be the goal of all profitable business today, to survive in a competitive market. Furthermore, it is necessary to take customers from satisfied to delighted. However, it is not easy to find the marketing strategies for customer delight in a literature. Chitturi et al. (2008) present the empirical findings implying that hedonic attributes influence both customer satisfaction and customer delight, while utilitarian attributes influence customer satisfaction but do not significantly influence customer delight. The results are contradictory to the common belief that quality improvement of a product attribute derives customer delight as well as customer satisfaction. To reconcile the contradictory findings to the common belief, in this paper, we propose a unified framework for the relationship between the two different types of product attributes (hedonic attributes vs. utilitarian attributes) and the two post-consumption feelings (customer satisfaction & customer delight) based on the previous empirical findings. Then we empirically investigate the influence of the two types of attributes (the utilitarian attributes and hedonic attributes) on satisfaction and delight. The results can be summarized as follows. First, the hedonic attributes positively affect customer satisfaction and customer delight. Second, the utilitarian attributes positively affect customer satisfaction but customer delight. Third, the utilitarian attributes affect customer delight indirectly through customer satisfaction. The framework for the relationship between the two types of product attributes and the two post-consumption feelings, which presented in this paper, implies that it is possible to take customers from satisfied to delighted through quality improvement of any attribute regardless of types of product attributes. The proposed theoretical framework and presented empirical results offer guidance on how to manage and control the two types of product attributes (hedonic and utilitarian attributes) to deliver the desirable consumption experiences that make customers feel delight as well as satisfaction.

최고경영자의 장기지향성 및 판매종업원의 동기요인과 고객감동 지향성

최낙환(Nak Hwan Choi),박정웅(Jeong Woong Park) 한국산업경영학회 2014 경영연구 Vol.29 No.4

본 연구는 최고경영자의 장기지향성과 판매종업원의 내재적 외재적 모티베이션 요소가 판매종업원의 고객감동 지향성에 영향을 미치는 과정에 초점을 두고 있다. 최고경영자의 장기지향성은 판매종업원에게 최고경영자가 고객감동활동을 강조함을 지각하게 하여 고객감동 역할명료성수준을 높이고, 판매종업원이 고객에게서 느끼는 내재적 보상은 고객감동 역할명료성을 매개로 고객감동 활동경험에 정의 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 기업의 외재적 보상이 종업원의 고객감동활동경험에 직접적으로 긍정적인 영향을 줄 것이라는 가설은 기각되었지만, 고객감동 역할명료성 지각을 통하여 고객감동활동경험에 간접적인 영향을 주는 것으로 분석되었다. 그리고 고객감동활동경험, 고객감동 역할명료성, 최고경영자가 고객감동활동을 강조한다는 지각은 판매종업원의 고객감동 지향성에 정의 영향을 주는 것으로 분석되었다. 종합적으로 판매종업원은 최고경영자의 장기지향성에 의해 고객감동활동이 강조됨을 지각하고, 내재적 외재적 모티베이션요소가 판매종업원의 고객감동 역할명료성수준을 높이고 고객감동활동경험을 촉진하여 판매종업원의 고객감동지향성에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 분석되었다. The present study focuses on the mediators that influence the effects of top management's long-term orientation, sales people's intrinsic motivation affected by customers as well as corporations' extrinsic reward system on sales people's customer delight-oriented behaviors. An empirical analysis was conducted with experimental objects of field sales force, tele-marketing sales force, couriers, and order takers in the office working at the Korea branch of 'F' express corporation. The empirical study led to following results: First, the hypothesis that top management's accentuation of customer delight would exercise positive impact on employees' customer delight-orientation was supported positively. Sales people's awareness of top management's accentuation of customer orientation turned out to have direct influence upon sales people's customer delightorientation. Second, the hypothesis that employees' experience of customer delight would exert positive influence on their customer delight-orientation was also supported positively. Third, the analysis supported the hypothesis that employees' perception of role clarity to delight customers would have positive influence on customer delight-orientation. Fourth, the hypothesis that top management's emphasis of customer delight would have positive impact upon their clear awareness of the role to delight customers was also backed up by the analysis. Fifth, it was supported that employees' perception of role clarity to delight customers would affect their experience of activities to delight customers. Sixth, while the hypothesis that corporations' extrinsic reward system would positively affect employees' experience of customer-delight activities was rejected, the hypothesis that it would positively affect employees' perception of role clarity to move customers was upheld. The finding like this might signify that corporations' reward system including financial benefit, promotion, etc. would have nothing to do with activities to delight customers but would exert positive influence on employees' clear awareness of the role to please customers to a certain extent. Seventh, the study backed up the hypothesis that employees' intrinsic sense of reward from customers would positively affect their experience of customer-delight activities, signifying that customers' expression of thanks including recommendation of new customers in reward for sales people's customer delight-oriented activities would promote them to be more active in their role to move customers. Eighth, the hypothesis that employees' intrinsic sense of reward motivated by customers would exercise positive influence upon their role clarity to move customers was supported, an outcome certifying that it would be more intensively needed for customers to express and convey their heart-evoking thanks and sense of delight to sales people for their service delivered, by thus making them feel forced to keep doing their best to move customers. Ninth, it was supported that top management's long-term orientation would mean their accentuation of customer delight-oriented activities on the part of sales people. This might contribute to the conclusion that top management's long-term orientation could make sales people become well aware of top management's accentuation to moves customers.

The basic study of Customer satisfaction, Customer delight and Customer Impression

Yang, Ya-Yun(양아운),Lee, Sung-Pil(이성필),Hong, Jung-Pyo(홍정표) 한국디자인학회 2015 한국디자인학회 학술발표대회 논문집 Vol.2015 No.10

The ultimate standard that measures acceptability extent of customer and society refers to high quality service; customers may not know about our established service rules and they usually evaluate the service quality based on their own subjective feelings. The research objective of the thesis lies in that it tries to find the inner relation and difference among customer satisfaction, customer delight and customer impression, and submits suggestions for the modification of customer satisfaction, customer delight and customer impression model in future. Through the precious research, it makes analysis on customer behavior, evaluation and expected value of customer satisfaction, customer delight and customer impression. Besides, it makes analysis on customer delight and customer impression in three aspects of awakening level, self-involvement and emotion. Last but not the least, it makes analysis on customer impression and customer satisfaction in five aspects of use environment, expected value, evaluation theme, evaluation program and function. Through the analysis, it can be seen that there are different connotation and inner relation among customer satisfaction, customer impression and customer delight. Customer satisfaction is caused by customer expectation, when customer expectation is met, then customer satisfaction will appear. It makes analysis on customer satisfaction, customer delight and customer impression in theoretical aspect, compares and explains the similarities and differences; in this way, it is able to provide guiding suggestion for the three perceived states of service in future. Besides, it provides reference for the establishment or modification of customer satisfaction, customer delight and customer impression model. It is necessary to clearly define the factor of customer satisfaction, customer delight and customer impression, establish or modify the current model.

The Case Study of Customer Delight Index Contents Model through Catering Service Industry

Yang, Ya-Yun,Lee, Sung-Pil 한국멀티미디어학회 2016 멀티미디어학회논문지 Vol.19 No.8

The aims of this research is to build Customer Delight index contents model for measuring the influential factors - Customer Delight and identify the relationship among Customer Delight, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. Customer Delight hypothesis model was proposed by Catering Service Industry of Starbucks and validate the final questionnaire; 7 point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) are used to analyze the reliability. And path analysis was used to evaluating the final hypothesis model. The results of this research was that the customer Self-involvement can lead to high awakening level and it also bring positive emotion to the customer. Awakening Level and positive emotion were the key factors for the Customer Delight. Instead of customer expectation, Customer Delight is based on customer awakening level and positive emotion which is different from Customer Satisfaction model. It is clearly to see the discrepancies between Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction.

The Case Study of Customer Delight Index Contents Model through Cater ing Service Industry

Yang, Ya-Yun,Lee, Sung-Pil Korea Multimedia Society 2016 멀티미디어학회논문지 Vol.19 No.8

The aims of this research is to build Customer Delight index contents model for measuring the influential factors - Customer Delight and identify the relationship among Customer Delight, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. Customer Delight hypothesis model was proposed by Catering Service Industry of Starbucks and validate the final questionnaire; 7 point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) are used to analyze the reliability. And path analysis was used to evaluating the final hypothesis model. The results of this research was that the customer Self-involvement can lead to high awakening level and it also bring positive emotion to the customer. Awakening Level and positive emotion were the key factors for the Customer Delight. Instead of customer expectation, Customer Delight is based on customer awakening level and positive emotion which is different from Customer Satisfaction model. It is clearly to see the discrepancies between Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction.

The Case Study of Customer Delight Index Contents Model through Catering Service Industry

양아윤,이성필 한국멀티미디어학회 2016 멀티미디어학회논문지 Vol.19 No.8

The aims of this research is to build Customer Delight index contents model for measuring the influential factors - Customer Delight and identify the relationship among Customer Delight, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. Customer Delight hypothesis model was proposed by Catering Service Industry of Starbucks and validate the final questionnaire; 7 point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) are used to analyze the reliability. And path analysis was used to evaluating the final hypothesis model. The results of this research was that the customer Self-involvement can lead to high awakening level and it also bring positive emotion to the customer. Awakening Level and positive emotion were the key factors for the Customer Delight. Instead of customer expectation, Customer Delight is based on customer awakening level and positive emotion which is different from Customer Satisfaction model. It is clearly to see the discrepancies between Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction.