서비스의 비분리적인 특성은 고객이 부분적 종업원으로서 서비스의 전달 및 생산과정에 필수적으로 참여하게 만든다. 이에 서비스 산업과 관련한 많은 연구들은 고객참여라는 변수에 관심을 가지고 있으며, 이러한 고객의 참여행동이 실질적으로 서비스 품질 및 만족 등과 어떠한 관계에 있는지 주목하고 있다. 그러나, 기존의 연구들에서 명확하게 고객참여에 의한 상 호작용과 그 결과로서 발생하는 고객의 감정적인 요소에 대해 설명하지 않음으로써 고객참여가 어떤 과정을 통해 긍정적인 고객결과와 관련을 맺고 있는지 알기 힘들다. 본 연구는, 고객참여에 따른 서비스 접점에서의 상호작용과 고객의 감정적 요소에 대해 살펴보기 위해, 서비스 접점이 대인 간의 접촉이 이루어지는 사회교환이라고 보고 Lawler(2001)의 사회교환 의 감정이론을 바탕으로 서비스제공자와의 관계에서 고객참여가 어떠한 감정적 요소를 만들어내는지 살펴보고자 한다. 연구의 결과, 고객참여는 서비스접점에서의 상호작용을 통해 전체적인 긍정적인 감정이라 할 수 있는(서비스제공자를 이 해하려는) 정서적 공감을 형성하고 접점만족에 유의한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며, 이어 접점만족은 궁극적으로 서 비스제공자와의 관계의 질에 유의한 영향을 미치는 것으로 확인되었다. 결론적으로, 서비스 접점에서 고객참여는 긍정적 인 감정을 형성하는 원인이 되고, 서비스 기업이 원하는 고객과의 관계형성에도 중요한 역할을 하는 것으로 나타났다. 그 러므로, 서비스 기업은 서비스 프로세스상에서 고객의 적극적인 참여를 유도하고 유발할 수 있는 시스템의 구축이 필요하 며 나아가 서비스 전달과정에서 그러한 고객참여가 긍정적인 감정과 연결될 수 있도록 종업원에 대한 철저한 관리가 필요 하다고 할 수 있다.
This paper considers the role of customer participation in the service settings. The inseparability, one of service characteristics, makes a customer participates necessarily in service delivery and production process as a partial employee. Many researchers have paid much attention to the variable of customer participation because of the characteristics of service which customers should participate in the service delivery and production process, and have examined what the relationship between the customer participation and service quality or customer satisfaction was. However, it would be difficult to know why and how the customer participation could influence positive customer outcomes if it were not examined about what the customer’s interactive and emotional factors which would be triggered by customer participation in the service encounter are. To look through the customer-employee interaction and customer’s emotional factors in the service encounter, this paper regards the service encounter as a social exchange context, that is, we consider customer-provider’s exchange relationship as a certain social exchange mentioned in ‘the affect theory of social exchange’ suggested by Lawler(2001). The above theory views social units as a source of emotions in an exchange task. In a service setting, the social units can be relationships between service providers and customers. In other words, there are also exchanges between an encounter employee and a customer in the service setting. Thus, it is more proper to check first the relationship between customer participation behavior and employee-customer interaction and customer’s emotional factors raised through the exchange than to check directly the relationship between customer participation behavior and customer positive outcomes. The important meaning of customer participation in service setting is that customer participation behavior can elevate the service quality through the interaction with an encounter employee. With the consideration of the functional/technical factors of service quality, it is suggested that customer participation could play a crucial role in functional service quality resulting in the elevation of the technical service quality. Therefore, understanding the effects of customer participation on the service encounter and customer’s different emotions in the service process becomes a good way of addressing the service customer functional participation. Just as numerous researches focused on the importance of functional quality, so identifying how customer participation affects the emotional factors is valuable in the same way to understand the role of the customer on increasing service quality. This research defines customer participation as the start of social exchange by applying the service exchange process based on the affect theory of social exchange mentioned the above. And then, we demonstrate the effects of “customer participation” on “communication quality” and “emotional empathy” as a global positive emotion to an encounter employee. And we check whether this global positive emotion can influence “service encounter satisfaction” or not. Additionally, we confirm that these customer’s efforts in the service encounter can have an effect on the service outcome, “relationship quality”. After all, we use LISREL program to solve our structured equation model. As results, customer participation was closely related to the variable of communication quality significantly which means the interaction between customer and encounter employee. It influenced also significantly the variable of emotional empathy which is manipulated as a global positive emotion in the relationship with a service provider. Sequently, the customer’s positive evaluation of emotional empathy triggered by customer participation influenced on the customer’s encounter satisfaction which accounts for the positive evaluation of the service encounter as well as communication quality. Also, communication quality had a positive effect on encounter satisfaction as we expected. Finally, this encounter satisfaction was confirmed as a critical antecedent accounting for relationship quality which represents customer’s trust and satisfaction to the service provider. Consequently, customer participation in service industry helps to form the emotional empathy to a service provider and it becomes an important determinant for the customer to form the positive emotion in service encounter. In other words, customer participation can be regarded as an important variable for customers to have the emotional empathy, encounter satisfaction, and relationship quality. The results of these relationships are in <Figure 1>. These results suggest some implications. Considering the influence of customer participation on the interaction in service encounter and the emotional elements, service organizations should inform their customers what service they provide and how customers can use their service “properly” through, for example, their online sites before the customers use the service. Service organizations should also prepare an education and training program for their encounter-employees because the encounter-employee’s role can be the most important thing for the customer participation. As a final implication, service organizations need to make a use relationship marketing approach. Service organizations can increase customer’s perception of relational benefits they provide with their customers, which lead customers to participate in service encounter more. Customer participation gives service organizations a chance to understand the customer’s needs. Thus, relational approach makes a customer participates in service encounter, and then this situation results in customer satisfaction and service quality.