RESEARCH ON CATERING SERVICE ENCOUNTER, RELATIONSHIP BENEFIT AND CUSTOMER VOLUNTARY PERFORMANCE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR CHANGE -- A CASE STUDY OF CATERING CONSUMERS IN TAIWAN AND MAINLAND CHINA
Authors: Chao Chia Wei , Hsu Mao Chou 
Published: July 2022

Background

The relationship marketing research has been carried out in the field of marketing research for 30 years. In the past, the research perspective has always been to explore the interest relationship between enterprises or service providers, but it is rarely studied from the perspective of consumers or customers. In addition, previous studies focused on the dimensions of service quality and customer loyalty, rather than the way and type of service contact, the content of customer relationship interest or the voluntary performance of customers. In the tourism industry, which mainly provides services through interpersonal communication, the development of intelligent technology reduces the cultivation of interpersonal emotion. Will it also reduce the perceived relationship benefits of consumers or customers, thereby reducing customer loyalty and voluntary performance? The main research problem of this study is to verify the relationship between service encounter, relationship benefit and customer voluntary performance from the perspective of labor emotion, and take Taiwan and Chinese restaurant consumers as the survey object to verify whether there is homogeneity and stability between multi group models.

Research Objects and Methods

Firstly, this study reviews the dimensions of service contact, relationship benefit and customer voluntary performance, and establishes a measurement scale. 100 questionnaires from Taiwan and Chinese Mainland were pre- tested and analyzed. After revising the questionnaire, 400 formal questionnaires were distributed in the two places, and 547 valid questionnaires were recovered. The effective questionnaire recovery rate was 68%. The follow-up study process used Spss20.0, Amos20.0 software for item analysis, relationship validation, multi-group modeling, and mediating effect validation.

Results

A two-tier structural equation model of service encounter, relationship benefit and customer voluntary performance was constructed; The service encounter dimension includes the ease of use of technical services, the economy of technical services, the economy of interpersonal services and the initiative of interpersonal services; The dimension of relationship benefit includes six sub dimensions: trust interests, social interests, special treatment interests, honor interests, knowledge interests and identity interests; Customer voluntary performance means loyalty, cooperation and participation. In the verification of the relationship part, the hypothesis is valid, the relationship interest plays an intermediary role in service encounter and customer voluntary performance, and the multi cluster model is also homogeneous and stable. The simple slope test of the posterior path showed that the expression inhibition in the high and low regulation difficulty groups could significantly and positively predict the explicit positive emotion. When the level of regulation difficulty is low, expression inhibition predicts the predictive coefficient of explicit positive emotion ( β = 0. 54, t = 10. 18, p ＜ 0. 001) ; When the adjustment difficulty level is high, the prediction coefficient ( β = 0. 90, t = 7. 11, p ＜ 0. 001). The analysis of direct effect and mediating effect shows that the mediating effect of expression inhibition in the relationship between interpersonal emotion regulation and explicit positive emotion also increases at the three levels of emotion regulation difficulty, that is, with the increase of the level of emotion regulation difficulty, Interpersonal emotion regulation is easier to increase explicit positive emotion by enhancing individual expression inhibition.

Conclusion

This study verifies the models of service encounter, relationship interest and customer spontaneous behavior from the perspective of Chinese society, and verifies the homogeneity and stability of the models between Taiwan and Chinese restaurant consumer groups. Relationship benefits play an intermediary role in the dimensions of service encounter and customer voluntary performance, and the verification results of multiple groups of models are also homogeneous and stable. From the above results, we can see that Chinese society is influenced by Confucianism and differential sequence model. The concept of relational interest pays more attention to emotional exchange and hierarchy than the western society with social exchange theory as the core, which leads to the differences between Chinese and Western societies. In addition, in the research of service encounter, the provision of technical services is gradually trusted and accepted by consumers, which improves consumers' voluntary performance, which indicates that technology is gradually developing in the direction of personification. In the people-oriented tourism industry, technological progress leads to the change of catering industry mode, the change of consumers' dining behavior, and how to effectively combine the interaction between people and technology to improve service and experience. Therefore, this study suggests establishing a catering process suitable for human-computer interaction and technological interaction based on the characteristics of the company's core products, such as using an artificially intelligent machine for service, which in turn improves consumer trust, a trust that is sufficient for the AI one-to-one system to function as a psychological intervention. We need to fully recognize the importance of AI robots in emotional factors and actively improve their role psychological capabilities, paying special attention to their impact on life attitudes and healthy behaviors, and being a healthy self-manager, coordinator and collaborator. According to the psychological characteristics of these groups, we should actively and flexibly organize colorful activities, strive to create a relaxed and harmonious living atmosphere, create friendly and mutually beneficial AI emotional relationships, encourage and guide these groups, adjust their psychology to the best state, and promote their good cognition and healthy development of life.