Customers Involved In The Measurement Of Dimensions, The Drivers Of Research And Its Impact On Customer Satisfaction Mechanism

In the key period of transformation of Chinese economic structure,the development of service industry is becoming an effective way for solving social contradiction.The data show that,the proportion of service industry in GDP is becoming larger,and related complaints are becoming more and more popular.So,the problems of managing service industry and increasing customer satisfaction degree demand prompt solution.Because of the characteristics of intangibility,inseparability, variability,perishability,the services present the characteristic of the customers' participation.And this kind of characteristics increases non-determinability of service contiguous.We also can hardly think that standardizing operation and management service as tangible products.So,we must find an effective method for managing service.In theoretical study,customer satisfaction is the key point of Customer Relation Management(CRM),the studies about the conception,influencing factors and action mechanism are familiar.But,the influencing factors and action mechanism depended on the conditions of different people.Because the characteristics of service make customer play special roles in service,some scholars expanded the border of enterprise and regarded customers as 'part-time employee'of the enterprises. Consideration of the high level of customer participation,the methods of increasing customer satisfaction are different between service and tangible products.The theories about the formation and the influencing factors of satisfaction in tangible products must be verified renewedly when they're used in service.To solve this problem, customer participation theory is introduced in service marketing.Based on customer participation theory,encircled the relationship of customer participation and customer satisfaction,the article carried out three studies by taking the medical service industry as example.First,deepen the research of customer participation,analyzed the dimensions of customer participation;Second,based on the theory theoretical analysis,the driving factors of customer participation and the demographic variables' regulatory effect are studied from the point of perceived risk; Third,analyzed the customer participation's influencing mechanism for satisfaction, and analyzed the influence pathes of how the dimensions of customer participation effected customer satisfaction through service quality,consumption mood,confidence and perceived control。 In order to test the study's hypothesis,the empirical analysis was used in the article.The author interviewed experts and patients in community and hospital in the first ten days of Jul,2008.And,combined the interviews and related theories,scale for pre-investigation was made.In the middle ten days of Jul,2008,small scale survey was carried out aiming at testing the scale,100 questionnaires and generated 62 completed responses are surveyed.According to the empirical analysis to these data, formal questionnaire was made.Subsequently,on-site visitor interviews and random sampling surveys were conducted mainly in communities,hospitals and super markets for hospitalizing experience.At last,855surveys were disseminated,which resulted in 525 usable questionnaires for analysis,61.4%effective response rate.Data analysis software tools were SPSS15.0 and AMOS 7.0.Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis,Structural Equation Modeling(SEM),multiple linear regressions were employed for the data analysis.Based on the theoretical research and empirical analysis,following conclusions was drew:(1) Customer participation had three dimensions.To do an in-depth analysis of customer participation behavior,and then to identify the dimensions of Customer participation,is the theoretical premise of studying its relationship with other related variables.After the theoretical reasoning and the empirical analysis,the study found three dimensions of customer participation:responsible behavior,information searching and interpersonal interaction,under the context of medical services.The three dimensions of customer participation reflected different level of participation. Responsible behavior dimension which was customers' obligations when customers acted as corporate "part-time employees",reflected the most basic and the lowest level of participation.The other two dimensions reflected the customer's active participation.(2) Perceived risk had an obviously driving effect on customer participatiion.Compared to consuming entity products,customers perceived more risks when receive intangible services,because they lack service quality assessment standards.Customer participation was a kind of effective strategy for customer to avoid various kinds of risks,therefore,perceived risk was the important driving factor affecting the customers' decision-making on service participation.The research results showed that:time risk,performance risk,psychological risks,financial risks affected customer participation significantly.Time risk was negative related to customer participation,however the other three kinds of risks were positive related to customer participation.(3) Demographic variables had moderating effects on the relationship between perceived risk and customer participation.Based on verifying the relationship between perceived risk and customer participation,this study was to further discuss the moderating effects of demographic variables such as gender,age, income.The final research results showed that:gender didn't have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between perceived performance risk and customer participation,while it had significant moderating effects on the relationship between the other three kinds of perceived risks and customer participation.Age had significant moderating effects on the relationship between perceived time risk, perceived performance risk and customer participation,while it didn't have significant moderating effects on the relationship between perceived psychological risks, perceived financial risks and customer participation.Income had a significant moderating effect on the relationship between perceived financial risk and customer participation,while it didn't have significant moderating effects on the relationship between the other three kinds of perceived risks and customer participation.(4) Service quality had mediating effects on the relationship between customer participation and customer satisfaction.Just as Maddern,Maull et al. (2007) pointed out that service quality was a key driver of customer satisfaction.This study also found that information searching and interpersonal interaction of customer participation's dimensions had significant impacts on patients' perceived technical quality and function quality.We also found that both technical quality and function quality had significant impacts on customer satisfaction,but function quality had stronger effect than technical quality.It indicated that function quality had stronger effect on customer satisfaction in medical services industry;hence we could improve the satisfaction level of patients effectively through improving function quality.The final results showed that customer participation could have impact on customer satisfaction through service quality.(5) Customer participation will affect satisfaction through emotion.Different degree of customer participation will have much effect on customer's emotion in the course of service.This result have been supported by empirical study,the dimensions of responsibility behavior,informational search and interpersonal interaction of customer participation have significant effect on acromegalic emotion,including positive and negative emotion.Mattila and Enz(2002) found that the evaluation of customer for service course have high relationship with prior and procedural emotion. The empirical study of this paper found similar results,positive emotion have significant positive effect on satisfaction,and positive emotion have significant media effect between acromegalic participation and acromegalic satisfaction.(6) Customer participation will affect satisfaction through information.If acromegalics have same basic medical knowledge,and the interaction of behavior and emotion between doctors and patients will degree on the medical service,then the sense of trust of acromegalics will be increased.Trust will contributed to enhance satisfaction customers,Swan,Bowers et al.(1999) pointed out satisfaction of consumers was one of results that consumers trust salesman.This paper proved the point further that trust has significant effect on satisfaction.The results of route analysis showed that customer participation will improve customer satisfaction by enhancing trust of customers.(7) Customer participation will affect satisfaction through perceived control. The empirical study of this paper showed that the two dimensions of informational search and interpersonal interaction of customer participation have significant positive effect on peceived control.Prior informational search and procedural service experience will improve peceived control.Customer participation and informational search will enhance satisfaction by increasing peceived control.In the course of interpersonal interaction,peceived control is the requisite factor for getting interaction satisfaction,this paper supports this result also,and these results showed peceived control have significant effect on satisfaction.This study had deepened the understanding of customer participation and gotten some theoretical progress.Firstly,from the perspectiveof perceived control,the literature of determinants of customer participation can be systematically summarized. So this paper has made an empirical study on how perceived control can influence customer participation.Secondly,the study introduced the consumption affection to the research of customer satisfaction.Finally,based on the literature research,this study has made and analysis of how customer effect customer through customer' physical,psychological and emotional benefit.