Study On Trust Transfer Mechanism From Customer-employee Trust To Customer-firm Trust:from Guanxi Context

Based on its different levels and orientation, Constumer trust can be classified into two types:customer-employee trust and customer-firm trust(Xiaorong Fu,2010). Current literatures on relationship marketing emphasized the importance of constructing a private trust relationship between customers and employees, scholars are aslo calling for firms to build strong relationships with their customers because trust relationships with customers could ensure future retention, mouth-to-mouth referrals, and long-term profitability (e.g.,Brown,2001; Anderson and Robertson,1995; Morgan and Hunt,1994).Thus, the trust relationship between customers and employees appears to represent a source of sustained competitive advantage (Hansen et al.,2003). Nevertheless, these efforts can sometimes result in customer-employee relationships that overwhelm or supersede the customer-firm relationships, which will in-turn weaken the status of firm in customers and cause potential harm. An imbalanced customer-employee relationship(where customer-employee relationships are stronger than customer-firm relationship) would cause potential harm.Cases of customer loss caused by employee loss are not unusual.This phenomenon is especially prominent in china’s Guanxi contextFirms in china often use the pre-existing trust relationship between customers and employee to promote business, this can bring firms benefit as well as a immeasurable risk.Once customer-employee trust exceeds that of customer-firm, employees may more or less have the initiative on customer trust, if employees try to threat firms on their momentum, it will be extremely tough and passive for firms to implement management and control.More seriously, because customer trust mainly comes from the private relationship with employees, once employee leaves the firm, customers may also on his/her heels, this can cause firms a big loss. Once firms were "relationship-kidnapped"by its employees, the follow-up CRM will be extremely hard. Based on the special characteristic of Guanxi, this paper takes the customer relationship in the insurance industry in china market as the main object.Applying social judgment theory, group entitativity theory, attribution theory and extended-self theory, we classified customer-employee trust into renqing-based and transaction-based dimension, and explored the relationship and transfer mechanism between renqing-based customer-employee trust, transaction-based customer-employee trust and customer-firm trust, and also analyzed the moderating effect of both behavioral and mental similarities between a firm and its employees in this transformation process, thus to help firms to effectively identify and manage different levels of customer trust, and provide relevant theoretical support or practical suggestions for firms to maintain and increase customer relationship assets even under the circumstance of staff turnover.Applying empirical analysis, we draw the following conclusion:Firstly, we differentiated customer-employee trust into renqing-based and transaction-based dimension and developed corresponding measurement scale.renqing-based trust between customers and employees comes from the pre-existing "private" trust between customers and employees before the deal, this kind of trust is ascribed and obligated, and it’s the unique trust structure apart from that of the western society. While transaction-based trust origins from the mutual interaction between customers and employees during the deal, this kind of trust is prescribed, it contains both affect-based and recognition-based dimension in western trust literature.By extracting the renqing-based trust from customers-employee relationship, This paper somehow makes a supplement on current trust research theory.Secondly, we find three ways to achieve trust transfer:renqing-based customer-employee trust-^customer-firm trust; renqing-based customer-employee trust→transaction-based customer-employee trust→customer-firm trust; transaction-based customer-employee trust-*customer-firm trust. Our results showed that renqing-based customer-employee trust has significant positive effect on the customer-firm trust(a=0.5799, t=5.9585, p<0.01);Renqing-based has significant positive effect on transaction-based customer-employee trust(a=0.5094, t=8.1216, p<0.01);Transaction-based customer-employee trust has significant positive effect on the customer-firm trust (a=0.5737, t=8.5223, p<0.01) and transaction-based customer-employee trust is a partial mediation to renqing-based customer-employee trust on customer-firm trust.Thirdly,we also testify the factors influencing customer trust transfer:the perceived behavioral and mental similarities between a firm and its employees. Customer perceive behavioral similarities between a firm and its employees moderate the effect of transaction-based customer-employee trust on customer-firm trust(a=0.1130, t=2.0939, p<0.05), while Customer perceive mental similarities between a firm and its employees moderate the effect of renqing-based customer-employee trust on customer-firm trust (a=0.2620, t=4.0562, p<0.01). These findings are beneficial for managers to effectively identify and deal with customer relationships within firms, to distinguish customer-employee trust and customer-firm trust, and to understand their mutual relationship as well as transfer mechanism.In general, these findings can provide supports for firms to achieve the goal of transfer customer-employee trust to customer-firm relationships.