Sequential Causal Analyses of Exchange Party's Characteristic, Exchange Relation Perception, Relationship Quality and Behavioral Intention : Customer's Perspective
The research for exchange relationship in customer's perspective is meaningful especially in service, considering distinctive characteristics of service operations such as customer participation in the process whereas most of the recent related researches have been focused on employee's interaction with organization, leader, team and customer. In this study for beauty art service, the exchange party's characteristic is defined with beauty salon's reputation, staff's professionalism and customer's self-esteem. Also the exchange relation perception is classified into symbolism and interaction, Then the directional relations on customer's perspective are empirically investigated in the sequential order of the exchange party's characteristics, the exchange relation perception, the relationship quality and behavioral intention. In addition, the study examined the meditation effect via relationship quality between the exchange relation perception and the behavioral intention. Followings are confirmed from the statistical test with structural equation modelling：Symbolism is significantly caused by all of professionalism, reputation and self-esteem in the descending order of effect size whereas interaction is significantly influenced by only professionalism. The exchange relation perception has significant effect on the relationship quality, in turn which significantly affects behavioral intention. The exchange relation perception shows the significant indirect effect meditated by relationship quality and the insignificant direct effect on behavioral intention. This paper concludes with contribution of this study, managerial implication of the research findings and further research issues.