Song Hyunseok, Byon Kevin K
Department of Kinesiology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Mar 3;18(5):2488. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18052488.
This study was designed to examine the moderating effects of the power-distance belief (PDB) on the relationship between employees' service failures and customers' transactional and non-transactional outcomes in a fitness center context. To test the relationships among these variables, we employed two pretests and a main experiment. In Pretest 1, a critical incident technique (CIT) was used to identify the employees' service failure situations in fitness centers. Then, in Pretest 2, we developed two written scenarios that described employees' service failures according to low and high severity and confirmed the differences between these two scenarios with a manipulation check. In the main experiment, we employed scenarios to examine the relationships among service failures' severity, PDB, and customers' non-transactional and transactional outcomes. We used Hayes' PROCESS macro to test the PDB's single moderating effect on the relationship between the service failures' severity and the customers' responses. According to the results, the moderating effect on the relationship between the service failures' severity and fitness center customers' non-transactional and transactional behaviors was confirmed. We extended the understanding of fitness center customers' reactions, depending upon individual PDB to service failures, by comparing low- and high-service failure situations. Our findings also suggest that segmenting fitness center customers may help managers recognize that their customers' varying responses depend on PDB.
本研究旨在考察权力距离信念（PDB）在健身中心情境下对员工服务失误与顾客交易和非交易结果之间关系的调节作用。为了检验这些变量之间的关系，我们进行了两项预测试和一项主实验。在预测试1中，采用关键事件技术（CIT）来识别健身中心员工的服务失误情况。然后，在预测试2中，我们编写了两个书面场景，分别描述了低严重程度和高严重程度的员工服务失误情况，并通过操纵检验确认了这两个场景之间的差异。在主实验中，我们采用场景来考察服务失误的严重程度、PDB与顾客非交易和交易结果之间的关系。我们使用海耶斯的PROCESS宏来检验PDB对服务失误严重程度与顾客反应之间关系的单一调节作用。根据结果，证实了PDB对服务失误严重程度与健身中心顾客非交易和交易行为之间关系的调节作用。通过比较低服务失误情况和高服务失误情况，我们拓展了对健身中心顾客根据个人PDB对服务失误的反应的理解。我们的研究结果还表明，对健身中心顾客进行细分可能有助于管理者认识到顾客的不同反应取决于PDB。
