보상물 선호에 있어서 매개물효과와 합의정보효과 (The medium Effect and the Consensus Information Effect on Customer Reward Preference)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국경영학회
· 수록지 정보 : 경영학연구 / 37권 / 3호 / 585 ~ 604페이지
· 저자명 : 박상준, 박소진, 변지연

초록

본 연구는 보상물 선호에 영향을 미치는 매개물효과와 합의정보효과를 비교하고 있다. 마일리지 또는 포인트와 같은 매개물(medium: 소비자의 노력과 최종 보상물을 연결하여 주는 수단)은 그 자체로서는 아무런 의미가 없지만, 소비자들은동일한 보상물이 제공되었음에도 불구하고 매개물이 제시되지 않은 대안보다 매개물이 제시된 대안을 선호한다. 또한 다른 사람들이 어떤 제품을 선택하였는가하는 합의정보도 소비자들의 대안 선택에 영향을 미친다. 본 연구는 이 두 가지 효과를 보상프로그램에 적용하여 소비자의 선택에 어떤 효과가 더 큰 영향을 미치는지를 분석하였다. 11개의 다양한 제품을 대상으로 매개물효과와 합의정보효과의 크기를 측정하여 분석한 결과, 매개물효과와 비교하여 합의정보효과의 크기가유의하게 큰 것으로 나타났고, 매개물효과의 크기와 합의정보효과의 크기 간에는 통계적으로 유의한 상관관계가 존재하는것으로 나타났다.

영어초록

A loyalty program offers a reward to bond customers to a company or its products or services. This study compared the medium effect with the consensus information effect in a loyalty program. In a typical loyalty program, consumers earn a number of points for every purchase they make and then they can exchange a specified number of points for a desired reward they want to choose. In other words, consumers usually have to exert effort in order to achieve a desired reward, however, the immediate payoff of their effort is not the reward they actually care about. Instead it is merely an instrument, a token, which has no value in itself but can be traded for the reward they care about. The instrument is merely a ‘medium’ between their effort and the desired reward as in the following: effort →medium→reward.
Because the medium is inherently worthless consumers should skip it and base their decision solely on the effort→reward relationship. However, the effort→reward relationship typically not direct given, and consumers have to infer it from the relationship between effort→medium and medium→reward. In order to make a reasonable choice, consumers should pay equal attention to these two types of relationship. However they often fail to pay equal attention to these two types of relationship and maximize the not just the effort→ reward but also the effort→reward. When consumers are faced with options entailing different outcomes, the presence of a medium can alter what option they choose. That is, consumers choose the option with a bigger medium even though the economic value of the option is not changed by the medium. Hsee et al. (2003) called this phenomenon “medium maximization (or medium effect)”.
Meanwhile, people are influenced by the consensus information. Consensus information is defined as information involving others’ opinions about or evaluations of an attitude object, for example, “80 percent of 300 customers in Korea have selected the ○○○”.
This study applied these two effects to customer loyalty program and investigated which one has more powerful influence to customers’ choices. Our hypotheses are followed; H1. A medium would affect on consumers’ choices of the reward option, H2, An consensus information would influence consumers’ choices of the reward option, H3. The consensus information effect would be more powerful than the medium effect. To test all the hypotheses, 149 respondents were assigned to one of three groups (control group vs. the medium presented group vs. the consensus information presented group). All the respondents were asked to make choices between the two different rewards (e.g. white wine vs. red wine). For the diverse 11 products including hedonic and utilitarian goods, we measured and compared the medium effect with the consensus information effect. The comparisons showed that the consensus information effect is more influential than the medium effect on consumers' choices. In the comparisons, additionally, we observed the positive correlation between the two effects. In sum, this research implies that the medium and the consensus information can be used to maintain customers although the economic value of the options (rewards) are the same.

참고자료

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