판매원의 서비스는 꾸며진 것인가? 진정한 것인가?: 판매원의 감정노동에 관한 고객의 지각된 진정성(authenticity)이 서비스품질평가에 미치는 영향 (Is Salespersons' Service Faked or Authentic?: The Effects of Authenticity Perceived by Customers about Salespersons' Emotional Labor on Service Quality Evaluation)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국마케팅학회
· 수록지 정보 : 마케팅연구 / 24권 / 3호 / 1 ~ 33페이지
· 저자명 : 김상희

초록

본 연구는 감정노동의 적극적 수행과 더불어 이를 어떻게 수행하는 것이 긍정적 고객반응을 얻을 수 있는가에 관해 검토하고자 한다. 오늘날 많은 기업들은 감정노동의 중요성을 인식하고 있으며 이를 통해 수익을 창출하고자 한다. 따라서 많은 기업들은 종업원의 긍정적 감정표출에 관심을 가지고 있으며 고객과 만나는 접점에서 종업원들에게 긍정적 감정을 표현하도록 요구하고 있다. 그러나 감정노동 수행에서 무엇보다 중요한 것은 거짓된 감정노동이 아닌 진성성이 담긴 감정노동, 즉 표면행위가 아닌 내면행위를 통한 감정노동이다. 진정성이 중요한 이유는 서비스접점에서 고객이 이를 인식할 수 있다는 것과 이러한 인식이 고객의 지각된 서비스품질에 영향을 미칠 수 있다는데 있다. 이는 서비스접점에서 단순한 감정노동의 수행이 기업의 이익을 증대시키는 것이 아니라 진정성이 담긴 감정노동을 수행하는 것이 궁극적으로 기업의 이익을 높일 수 있는 방법임을 제시하고 있다. 따라서 본 연구는 감정노동을 내면행위와 표면행위로 구분하고 이러한 감정노동이 서비스접점에서 고객의 지각된 진정성에 어떠한 영향을 미치며 고객의 진정성에 대한 지각이 서비스품질에 어떠한 영향을 미치는가를 살펴보고자 한다. 또한 내면행위와 표면행위의 수행이 판매원의 개인적 특성에 따라 달라질 수 있는가를 살펴보고자 한다.
연구결과 판매원의 내면행위는 표면행위보다 고객의 지각된 진성성에 더 큰 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났고 고객의 진성성에 대한 지각은 고객의 지각된 서비스품질에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 또한 판매원의 공감력과 표현력의 조합인 판매원 특성에 따라 내면행위와 표면행위가 달라지는 것으로 나타났다. 즉 내면행위의 경우 공감력과 표현력이 모두 높은 카리스마집단이 가장 높고, 표면행위의 경우 공감력은 낮으나 표현력이 높은 표현집단이 가장 높은 것으로 나타났다.
이러한 연구결과는 단순히 꾸며진 표면적인 감정표현이 아닌 고객으로 하여금 긍정적 인식과 해석을 할 수 있도록 하는 진정한 내면적인 감정표현의 중요성을 제시하고 있으며 더불어 기업으로 하여금 단순한 외면적인 화려한 감정노동이 아닌 내면화된 진정한 감정표현의 중요성을 인식시키고 있다. 즉 내면화된 감정표현이 고객을 배려하고 이해하는 진정성이 더 많이 내포되어 있다는 것과 동시에 고객이 서비스를 제공받으면서 이를 인식할 수 있다는 매우 단순한 진리를 본 연구결과는 제시하고 있다.

영어초록

This study intends to suggest positive performance of emotional labor and how to perform it. Today many companies recognize importance of emotional labor and attempt to make profits through it. For this reason, many companies are interested in employees' expression of positive emotions and ask employees to express positive emotions at the point of contact with customers. However, what is most of all important in performing emotional labor is emotional labor containing authenticity, not faked one, that is, emotional labor through deep acting rather than through surface acting. Authenticity is important because it can be perceived by customers at service encounter and this perception affects customers' perceived service quality. This emphasizes that performance of simple emotional labor cannot make profits for a company but performance of service containing authenticity at service encounter can ultimately increase profits for a company. Therefore, this study intends to categorize emotional labor into deep and surface acting and see how this emotional labor affects customers' perceived authenticity at service encounter and how customers' perception of authenticity affects service quality. An attempt is made to see if performance of deep and surface acting can vary according to salespersons' personal characteristics.
The purpose of this study is as follows: First, I attempt to divide emotional labor types into deep and surface acting to see which type of acting is recognized as more authentic by customers. I attempt to suggest that all types of emotional labor cannot get positive customer responses in the same degree to present strategic implications for positive types of emotional labor of companies. Second, I attempt to suggest how customers' recognition of authenticity affects customer evaluation of service. This aims to see if customers' perceived authenticity of salesperson service significantly affects service quality evaluation, in order to make recognized importance of providing authentic service. Third, an attempt is made to see if emotional labor types can vary by salespersons' personal characteristics. This study tries to suggest empathy and expressiveness necessary to perform emotional labor as personal characteristics and examine effects of the combination of these two characteristics on emotional labor types. In selecting employees to perform emotional labor, I attempt to suggest importance of selecting employees with characteristics to perform them well.
It was found that salespersons' deep acting had greater effects on customers' perceived authenticity than surface acting and customers' perception of authenticity affected their perceived service quality. Deep and surface acting varied according to salespersons' characteristics as a combination of their empathy and expressiveness. That is, deep acting was highest in the charismatics group with high empathy and high expressiveness, while surface acting was highest in the expansives group with low empathy and high expressiveness.
From the results of this study, the following theoretical and practical implications can be drawn. As for theoretical implications, first, this study suggested that emotional labor could be performed in sales situations in two types: deep and surface acting. There are few prior researches dividing emotional labor types into deep and surface acting to present the results clearly. In particular, there are very few approaches based on marketing. So this study is significant by dividing emotional labor types to present different customer responses. Second, this study introduced the concept of authenticity to present importance of recognition of service authenticity from customers' point of view. The existing service marketing lacked consideration of authenticity in service provision, and there have been few in-depth researches in this issue. Many service companies insist on customer delight beyond customer satisfaction but overlook authenticity, which can be the key to customer delight. The results of this study suggest that how authentic service is provided to customers is more important than how diverse types of service will be provided to them. Third, this study suggests that salespersons can be divided into diverse dispositions on the basis of individual differences by expressiveness and empathy. In particular, it categorizes dispositions of service-contact employees who need to perform emotional labor to suggest that their behavior can vary by the dispositions. So it suggests importance of this individual difference variable in researches on salespersons requiring close interaction with customers in the future and the need of researches on differences in customers' different psychological and behavioral responses.
In addition to the theoretical implications, this study suggests the following practical implications. First, many companies today use emotion as a tool to achieve an organizational goal and increasingly have more demand for emotional labor from salespersons. However, they fail to have a good understanding of emotional labor to meet the demand. Organizational control and demand may allow emotional laborers to perform emotional labor, types of which may differ. That is, they can perform it through deep acting or through surface acting. While companies believe that emotional expression can all make the same positive effects, the results of this study suggest that actually it may not so. In particular, emotional labor through deep acting is important in service requiring a very high level of interaction with salespersons. This is because close interaction enables customers to become aware of emotion in detail and understand authenticity. To achieve a company goal through emotional labor, companies need to get a better understanding of emotional labor, especially an understanding of types of emotional labor by employees. In this respect, this study presents empirical data about types of emotional labor to provide various kinds of information about emotional labor to companies. Second, the fact that customers can recognize authenticity of a service provider in the process of providing service induces companies to recognize importance of authentic service provision. Today service differentiation is emphasized as a factor of competitive advantage; to do this, companies attempt to provide distinguished and differentiated various types of service. However, companies overlook the fact that customers provided with service want authentic service as well as diverse types of service. So this study offers implications not simply for types of service but for how to provide the service. Fourth, this study provides implications for employee training. It suggests the need of employee education or training to provide authentic service, not that simply emphasizing behavioral aspects, such as smile, gestures, and greetings. To do this, education or training programs will be necessary to change experienced emotion properly through customer understanding and empathy. Employees performing emotional labor are forced to express emotion not identical with their experienced emotion, which can ultimately deteriorate the quality of service to customers. So by thinking of and considering customers through customer understanding in an emotional aspect, it will be possible not only to naturally express emotion demanded by an organization but also to get higher recognition of emotion expression from customers' point of view. Fifth, this study provides implications about employee selection for service companies. To induce positive customer responses at service contact, it is necessary to select salespersons with personal characteristics to perform emotional labor through deep acting. This is because salespersons' attitude or behavior can be affected by their personal characteristics. This study presents requirements for emotional laborers with empathy and expressiveness as such characteristics to suggest the need of selection in consideration of these requirements.
These results imply that what is important is authentic deep emotion expression which enables customers to do positive recognition and interpretation, not simply faked surface emotion expression, and suggest that companies make internalized authentic emotion expression, not simple external empty emotional labor. In other words, they demonstrate that internalized emotion expression contains more authenticity to consider and understand customers and very simple truth that customers can perceive it while receiving service.

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