• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.68-79
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• 2009

The interplay between hedonic and utilitarian attributes has assumed special significance in recent years; it has been proposed that consumption offerings should be viewed as experiences that stimulate both cognitions and feelings rather than as mere products or services. This research builds on previous work on hedonic versus utilitarian benefits, regulatory focus theory, customer satisfaction to address two question: (1) Is the shopping goal at the point of purchase different from the shopping value? and (2) Is the customer loyalty after the use different from the shopping value and shopping goal? We surveyed 345 peoples those who have bought the electronic-goods within 6 months. This research dealt with the shopping value which is consisted of 2 types, hedonic and utilitarian. Those who pursue the hedonic shopping value may prefer the pleasure of purchasing experience to the product itself. They tend to prefer atmosphere, arousal of the shopping experience. Consistent with previous research, we use the term "hedonic" to refer to their aesthetic, experiential and enjoyment-related value. On the contrary, Those who pursue the utilitarian shopping value may prefer the reasonable buying. It may be more functional. Consistent with previous research, we use the term "utilitarian" to refer to the functional, instrumental, and practical value of consumption offerings. Holbrook(1999) notes that consumer value is an experience that results from the consumption of such benefits. In the context of cell phones for example, the phone's battery life and sound volume are utilitarian benefits, whereas aesthetic appeal from its shape and color are hedonic benefits. Likewise, in the case of a car, fuel economics and safety are utilitarian benefits whereas the sunroof and the luxurious interior are hedonic benefits. The shopping goals are consisted of the promotion focus goal and the prevention focus goal, based on the self-regulatory focus theory. The promotion focus is characterized into focusing ideal self because they are oriented to wishes and vision. The promotion focused individuals are tend to be more risk taking. They are more sensitive to hope and achievement. On the contrary, the prevention focused individuals are characterized into focusing the responsibilities because they are oriented to safety. The prevention focused individuals are tend to be more risk avoiding. We wanted to test the relation among the shopping value, shopping goal and customer loyalty. Customers show the positive or negative feelings comparing with the expectation level which customers have at the point of the purchase. If the result were bigger than the expectation, customers may feel positive feeling such as delight or satisfaction and they would want to share their feelings with other people. And they want to buy those products again in the future time. There is converging evidence that the types of goals consumers expect to be fulfilled by the utilitarian dimension of a product are different from those they seek from the hedonic dimension (Chernev 2004). Specifically, whereas consumers expect the fulfillment of product prevention goals on the utilitarian dimension, they expect the fulfillment of promotion goals on the hedonic dimension (Chernev 2004; Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Majahan 2007; Higgins 1997, 2001) According to the regulatory focus theory, prevention goals are those that ought to be met. Fulfillment of prevention goals in the context of product consumption eliminates or significantly reduces the probability of a painful experience, thus making consumers experience emotions that result from fulfillment of prevention goals such as confidence and securities. On the contrary, fulfillment of promotion goals are those that a person aspires to meet, such as "looking cool" or "being sophisticated." Fulfillment of promotion goals in the context of product consumption significantly increases the probability of a pleasurable experience, thus enabling consumers to experience emotions that result from the fulfillment of promotion goals. The proposed conceptual framework captures that the relationships among hedonic versus utilitarian shopping values and promotion versus prevention shopping goals respectively. An analysis of the consequence of the fulfillment and frustration of utilitarian and hedonic value is theoretically worthwhile. It is also substantively relevant because it helps predict post-consumption behavior such as the promotion versus prevention shopping goals orientation. Because our primary goal is to understand how the post consumption feelings influence the variable customer loyalty: word of mouth (Jacoby and Chestnut 1978). This research result is that the utilitarian shopping value gives the positive influence to both of the promotion and prevention goal. However the influence to the prevention goal is stronger. On the contrary, hedonic shopping value gives influence to the promotion focus goal only. Additionally, both of the promotion and prevention goal show the positive relation with customer loyalty. However, the positive relation with promotion goal and customer loyalty is much stronger. The promotion focus goal gives the influence to the customer loyalty. On the contrary, the prevention focus goal relates at the low level of relation with customer loyalty than that of the promotion goal. It could be explained that it is apt to get framed the compliment of people into 'gain-non gain' situation. As the result, for those who have the promotion focus are motivated to deliver their own feeling to other people eagerly. Conversely the prevention focused individual are more sensitive to the 'loss-non loss' situation. The research result is consistent with pre-existent researches. There is a conceptual parallel between necessities-needs-utilitarian benefits and luxuries-wants-hedonic benefits (Chernev 2004; Chitturi, Raghunathan and Majaha 2007; Higginns 1997; Kivetz and Simonson 2002b). In addition, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the precedence principle contends luxuries-wants-hedonic benefits higher than necessities-needs-utilitarian benefits. Chitturi, Raghunathan and Majaha (2007) show that consumers are focused more on the utilitarian benefits than on the hedonic benefits of a product until their minimum expectation of fulfilling prevention goals are met. Furthermore, a utilitarian benefit is a promise of a certain level of functionality by the manufacturer or the retailer. When the promise is not fulfilled, customers blame the retailer and/or the manufacturer. When negative feelings are attributable to an entity, customers feel angry. However in the case of hedonic benefit, the customer, not the manufacturer, determines at the time of purchase whether the product is stylish and attractive. Under such circumstances, customers are more likely to blame themselves than the manufacturer if their friends do not find the product stylish and attractive. Therefore, not meeting minimum utilitarian expectations of functionality generates a much more intense negative feelings, such as anger than a less intense feeling such as disappointment or dissatisfactions. The additional multi group analysis of this research shows the same result. Those who are unsatisfactory customers who have the prevention focused goal shows higher relation with WOM, comparing with satisfactory customers. The research findings in this article could have significant implication for the personal selling fields to increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of the sales such that they can develop the sales presentation strategy for the customers. For those who are the hedonic customers may be apt to show more interest to the promotion goal. Therefore it may work to strengthen the design, style or new technology of the products to the hedonic customers. On the contrary for the utilitarian customers, it may work to strengthen the price competitiveness. On the basis of the result from our studies, we demonstrated a correspondence among hedonic versus utilitarian and promotion versus prevention goal, WOM. Similarly, we also found evidence of the moderator effects of satisfaction after use, between the prevention goal and WOM. Even though the prevention goal has the low level of relation to WOM, those who are not satisfied show higher relation to WOM. The relation between the prevention goal and WOM is significantly different according to the satisfaction versus unsatisfaction. In addition, improving the promotion emotions of cheerfulness and excitement and the prevention emotion of confidence and security will further improve customer loyalty. A related potential further research could be to examine whether hedonic versus utilitarian, promotion versus prevention goals improve customer loyalty for services as well. Under the budget and time constraints, designers and managers are often compelling to choose among various attributes. If there is no budget or time constraints, perhaps the best solution is to maximize both hedonic and utilitarian dimension of benefits. However, they have to make trad-off process between various attributes. For the designers and managers have to keep in mind that without hedonic benefit satisfaction of the product it may hard to lead the customers to the customer loyalty.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.53-64
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• 2017

Recently meet the growing needs of customers and has increased, the need for training of customer contact staff in order to improve and increase customer satisfaction. These service training is because it improves the service capabilities of contact for customer-facing employees to respond to customers as well as to improve customer satisfaction. This study is placed in the field after the service training aimed at Customer contact staff joined in 2013~2016 in the first half of these new recruits training education working in the Seoul Metro customers respond to customers in customer contact and practical services it will proceed to the empirical study of how this affects the satisfaction and loyalty to the organization for the job than to find a better improvement in the educational program.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.12
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• pp.245-252
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• 2009

The electrical power industry has been recognized as a natural monopoly industry for its technological and industrial characteristics. However, a competitive market system has been introduced to that industry in Europe, North America and Australia to overcome the inefficiencies originated from the monopolistic system for decades. In Korea, the power industry is expected to be placed in a competitive market system within several years after separation and privatization of vertically integrated industry in progress. Hence, there is a need for a research on the increase of customer value in that industry, however, existing studies have little dealt with that problem and there is no research on the price policy to consider churn and retention of customers. Therefore, this study provides a methodology for increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value by presenting the lowest pricing plan which leads to diminishing customers' cost. It is verified through an empirical examination that firms can enhance customer loyalty using a price element in that industry and maximize their profit by finding out customers whose lifetime values would increase.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.73-79
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• 2016

Purpose - Customer satisfaction has been considered important as a way to retain current customers. Specifically, the retention of current customers through customer satisfaction has been considered important in an industry where competition between companies is fierce. Major Korean airlines have confronted fierce competition with the growth of low cost carriers (LCCs). In order to survive, these airlines need to retain their customers. This research aims to investigate the relationships between customer satisfaction and the customer intention to remain loyal. Moreover, this study examines how the influence of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty is moderated by gender. Research design, data, and methodology - A regression model is developed in which customer satisfaction, gender, and an interaction of satisfaction and gender are predictors and the customer's intention to remain loyal is a dependent variable. To analyze this research model, data were collected from 402 university students taking a marketing class in universities in Seoul, Chung-Cheong province, and Kangwon province. After eliminating data from students who had never flown and data with missing values, a final sample of 201 was analyzed. The hypotheses were tested using SPSS 21.0. Internal reliability was supported by the results of Cronbach's α. Multiple regression was performed. Results - Empirical results showed that customer satisfaction toward the airline's service had a positive influence on the customer intention to remain loyal to the airlines. Moreover, this influence was moderated by gender. More specifically, a male customer's intention to remain loyal was more determined by his satisfaction toward airline service than a female customer's. Conclusions - This research contributes to the aviation service marketing literature by showing how customer satisfaction influences customer intention to remain loyal and how this influence is moderated by gender. More specifically, male customer loyalty is more determined by airline service satisfaction than female customers. These results have manager implications for major Korean airlines in terms of customer satisfaction and gender as ways to enhance customer retention.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.202-216
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• 2020

In this study, we studied the utility and value of the mileage program as a strategy to strengthen the relationship with customers in the surrogate operation industry. To this end, we conducted a survey of 1,000 customers who used the service more than once, mainly from D company, which has operated the agency operation business for more than 20 years, and analyzed 309 sincerely respondents. Five characteristics of mileage use (emotional benefits, ease of use, economic usefulness, effort to acquire, variety of benefits). Two parameters (brand attitude, brand loyalty) were set, and the dependent variable was set for reuse. As a result of hypothesis test, emotional benefit, convenience of use, and economic usefulness were significant in terms of brand attitude and brand loyalty, and acquisition effort and benefit diversity did not show significant results. The results of this study showed that the surrogate operation industry should strive to strengthen the emotional benefits, convenience of use, and economic usefulness to customers in order to strengthen the relationship with the customers.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2010

Customers often experience waiting for buying service. Managing customers' waiting time is important for service providers since customers who are dissatisfied with waiting, secede from a service place at last. Not a few studies have been done to solve waiting time problem and improve customers' waiting experience. Hui & Tse(1996) identify evaluation factors in customers' behavioral mechanism as customers wait. That is, customers experience perceived waiting time, waiting acceptability and emotional response to the wait when they wait. Since customers evaluate the wait using these factors, service provider should manage these factors in order to minimize customers' dissatisfaction. Therefore, this study explores that evaluation factors of waiting are influenced by customers' situational and experiential characteristics, which include customer loyalty, transaction importance for customer and waiting expectation level. Those situational and experiential characteristics are usually given to service providers so they can't control these at waiting point. The major findings derived from two exploratory studies can be summarized as follows. First, according to the result from the study 1 (restaurant setting), customers' transaction importance has the greatest positive influence on waiting experience. The results show restaurant service provider could prevent customers' separation effectively through strategies which raise customers' transaction importance, like giving special coupons for important events. Second, in study 2 (amusement part setting) customer loyalty has large positive impact on waiting experience as well as transaction importance. This results show that service provider could minimize customers' dissatisfaction using strategies which raise customer loyalty continuously. This results show customer perceives waiting experience differently according to characteristics of service place and service itself. Therefore, service provider should grasp the unique customers' situational and experiential characters for each service and service place. It could provide an effective strategy for waiting time management. Third, the study finds transaction importance and waiting expectation level have direct influence customers' waiting experience as independent variables, while existing studies treated them as moderators. Customer loyalty which has not been incorporated in previous waiting time research is known to affect waiting experience. It suggests that marketing strategy which builds up customer loyalty for long period of time is also quite effective, compared to short term tactics to help customers endure waiting time. Fourth, this study reveals the importance of actual waiting time along with perceived waiting time. So far most studies only focus on customers' perceived waiting time. Especially, this study incorporates the concept of patient limit on waiting time to investigate effect of actual waiting time. The results show that there were various responses to the wait depending on how actual waiting time exceeds individual's patent limit on waiting time or not, even though customers wait about the same period of time. Finally, using structural equation model, conceptual path between behavioral responses is verified. As customer perceives waiting time, then she decides whether she can endure it or not, and then her emotional response occurs. This result are somewhat different from Hui & Tse(1996)'s study. The study also includes theoretical contributions as well as practical implications.

• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.609-624
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to examine the physical environmental factors in coffee shops which determine customer brand loyalty, and to investigate the mediated effects of customer satisfaction and emotional responses on the causal relationship between the physical environmental factors and brand loyalty. A sample of 400 coffee shop customers was collected from Seoul and Gyeonggi in March, 2011 through a self-administered questionnaire. 351 of 400 subjects were used for validity and reliability analysis. 12 outliers were removed from the analysis, and 339 subjects were used to derive the results. Multiple linear regression and stepwise regression were conducted after the construct validity and reliability. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) Physical environmental factors in coffee shops consists of 5 dimensions such as facility aesthetics, cleanliness, ambiance, layout, and internet environment. (2) Facility aesthetics, ambiance, and internet environment had an influence on brand loyalty. (3) The effects of cleanliness and layout on brand loyalty, were not significant on multivariate analysis. However, the relationship between cleanliness and brand loyalty was mediated by emotional responses and also the relationship between layout and brand loyalty was mediated by customer satisfaction. (4) The mediating effects of customer satisfaction were higher than those of emotional responses.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.48-57
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• 2017

This study aims to analyze the relationships among brand value, brand trust, and brand loyalty of dessert cafes and to verify the mediating effect of brand trust in the relationship between brand value and loyalty. This study targeted eight dessert cafes located in Seoul, and a survey with customers aged 20 or over was conducted over 11 days from April 10th to 21th, 2017. A total of 230 self-administered questionnaires were distributed, and 205 questionnaires (89.13%) were included for the data analysis after the exclusion of 25 incomplete and unreliable responses. Every data used for analysis went through frequency analysis, reliability test, exploratory factor analysis, simple regression analysis, multiple regression analysis, mediator effect analysis, and Sobel test using the SPSS 18.0 analysis program. The study results revealed that brand value had a significant positive relationship to brand trust, and brand trust had a significant positive relationship to brand loyalty. Also, brand value had a significant positive relationship to brand loyalty, and brand trust mediated the relationship between brand value and loyalty. Based on these findings, the discussion to enhance brand loyalty of dessert cafes were suggested.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.80-91
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• 2007

The purpose of the study is to investigate how customer reward programs that are provided strategically to develop customer favors are assessed by customers, if they affect customer loyalty and what effect using membership card(how many possess and use it) takes. The findings from the study can be summarized as follows. Firstly, customer loyalty showed high when shared value and convenient value are felt for preference and referring effect and when shared value and allied value were felt for revisit. Secondly, when the number of cards in possession was a lot, high customer loyalty existed. Thirdly, when the number of cards in use was a lot, the customer loyalty was high. The customer's awareness of values, e.g. economic, shared, use, convenience and allied values, put a very meaningful positive effect on loyalty, i.e. preference, referring effect and revisit. The more the number of food service provider's' membership cards in use and in possession was, the higher customer loyalty was. This implies that continued development of business partners and quality control are critical for various benefits and shared value of the customer reward pro-grams and service upgrade.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.93-104
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• 2024

Purpose: This study used the SORmodel (or cue utilization theory) to examine the impact of expanded quality factorsincluding product quality on customer satisfaction, attitude, and behavioral loyalty. This study examined the moderating effect of gender on the customer satisfaction-attitudinal and behavioral loyalty relationship. Research design, data, and methodology: 364 respondents were collected through an online survey and analyzed using the SmartPLS 4.0 program. Results: The findings show that product quality, along with system quality and service quality, are key determinants of customer satisfaction. In addition, this study shows that the relationship between customer satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty (repurchase and word-of-mouth intention) does not differ depending on gender, but the relationship between customer satisfaction and behavioral loyalty (share-of-visit and share-of-wallet) is stronger for women than for men. Conclusions: This research integrates concepts from environmental psychology and marketing focusing on website quality (information, system, service, and product), as well as satisfaction, attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. Online shopping mall practitioners must systematically analyze and assess the quality of online shopping, a pivotal factor driving customer satisfaction, attitude, and behavioral loyalty. Acknowledging the influence of gender on consumers' online purchasing behavior can aid online retailers in devising tailored e-commerce marketing strategies aimed at attracting and retaining customers.