The air transportation industry is continuously growing and becoming more intense due to global deregulation and aviation liberalization. The airline industry is making efforts to improve in-flight service of the competitive routes among airlines to enhance customer satisfaction. The fact that the passengers' perception of the image and service quality of the airline is formed or increased in interaction with the flight attendant.
Unlike other services, air services are complex services that harmonized with spaces, human services, and physical services. So there are many factors determine the customer's choice of airline or quality of air service. Especially, in the air service, cabin service has the longest contact time with the passenger and continuous interaction is performed in the limited time and spaces. The interactions between cabin attendants and passengers play an important role in changing the perception of passengers about the image and service quality of the airline and forming relationship with flight attendance and customers. Therefore, in this study, it is inferred that relational embeddedness will be formed in the customer network built by customers.
The relational embeddedness between emotional, social cohesion and intimacy with other members formed in the background of social networks (Kim and Cho 2011) or emotional social relationship (Shin, You, Hong and Lee, 2015).
Relational embeddedness can be understood based on mutual influences and factors such as dependency, connectedness and mutual adaptation. The previous literature on involved relational embeddedness emphasized the economic benefits of a strong bond formed in the network, focusing mainly on the relationship benefits gained by customers (Granovetter, 1992; Gwinner, Gremler, and Bitner, 1998; Uzzi, 1999; Yoon, 2014). The benefits obtained through the formation of a positive role play a crucial role in establishing customer loyalty.
However, in this study, we tried to except the relationship benefit factors, which are one of the main factors related to relational embedded. Therefore, the relational embeddedness between the airline cabin crew and passengers in the aspect of the cabin service and the effect of loyalty through the trust of the airline service was examined empirically.
This is because, unlike other services, it is assumed that the relationship benefits in the cabin service are not large compared with the general service as the service is repeatedly provided in the limited time and the closed space. In addition, it is inferred that the relational embeddedness between passengers and cabin crew can be shaped by continuous interaction.
In addition, it is inferred that the relational embeddedness between passengers and cabin crew can be shaped by continuous interaction. For this study, we used related major factors (pro-social behavior of employees and customer orientation, trust, and loyalty of perceived employees), which are mainly dealt with in the existing service literature. In particular, other variables (pro-social behavior, customer orientation, and loyalty) and the relative influence of relational embedded involvement. In order to analyze the mediating role of relational embeddeness involvement itself in addition to the trust, the research model was derived and hypotheses were set as shown in <Figure 1> H1: The degree of consumer's perception of pro-social behavior of an employee will affect the relational embeddedness with employees.
H2: The perceived level of customer's perception of customer orientation will affect the relational embeddedness with employees.
H3: The relational embeddedness between employees and customers will affect customer's trust in airlines.
H4: The trust in airlines will affect customer loyalty.
H5: The relational embeddedness will play a mediating role between the pro-social behavior of employees and the trust of airlines H6: The relational embeddedness will play a mediating role in the effect of employee's customer orientation on airline trust.
H7: The trust will play a mediating role in affecting between the relational embeddedness and airline loyalty.
For the empirical analysis of this study, we surveyed the consumers who have experienced using airline. A total of 202 questionnaires were collected from a total of 210 distributions. A total of 192 samples were used for the final analysis, except 10 samples with missing responses or missing responses from some of the collected samples In order to verify the hypotheses and research models of this study, SPSS 18.0 was used to identify the demographic and airline experience characteristics and then the primary items were refined. AMOS 22.0 was used for statistical testing , Structural equation modeling, causality relational embeddedness between validity, reliability, and construction concept.
The results of this study confirmed that the behavior and attitude of the service employees rather than the relational benefits, which are one of the major factors related to the relational embeddedness of involvement, influence the formation of relational embeddedness formation through interaction between passengers. On the other hand, the causal relationship between the relational embeddedness, trust and loyalty factors proven in the previous study was also proved through the aspect of the cabin service.
In addition, we performed a parametric analysis to verify the causal relational embeddedness between the major variables of this study, particularly the intermediary role of relativity and trust, and confirmed the results as shown in <Table 2> This enabled us to identify the impact of relaational embeddedness between employee pro-social behavior and customer orientation and trust, as well as the impact of reliability between relational embeddedness and loyalty.
Hypothesis test results showed that relational embeddedness did not play a mediating role between the pro-social behavior and trust of perceived employees Hypothesis 5 was rejected. However, Hypothesis 6 was adopted because it appears to play a mediating role between customer orientation and trust of perceived employees. In addition, the trust also plays a mediating role between relational embeddedness and loyalty, which can be seen as a causal relationship between relational embeddedness, trust and loyalty.
Hypothesis 7 was also adopted. This suggests that unilateral behavior and attitudes of employees to customers do not significantly affect trust. The results of this study are as follows. First, the relational embeddedness between trust of customer and loyalty is negatively correlated with customer loyalty. Therefore, rather than asking employees for unilateral dedication to customers, companies should demand the formation of relational embeddedness with customer, improve service contact point and operation process to gain customer's credibility. This will ultimately have a positive impact on the trust and loyalty of airline services. Finally, relational embeddedness, or strong bond, reaffirmed the relational embeddedness between service employees and customers, not only in general services but also in airline cabin service area. This implies that this study can be applied to various service areas.
기타파일
22P 미리보기
이 자료를 선택해야 하는 이유
