Research Article
Establishing Relationship between Corporation and Customer-Contact Employees: Psychological Response of Customer-Contact Employees toward Relationship Bonds
Kyungpook National University
Hanyang University
Published: January 2018 · Vol. 47, No. 1 · pp. 153-175
DOI: https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.17287/kmr.2018.47.1.153
Full Text PDF
Abstract
The previous studies on relationship marketing put emphasis on the importance of the relationship between corporation and employees owing to its effects toward external customers but they lack the empirical evidence in the academic aspect. Moreover, even though the variations of corporate performance are being identified owing to the way of treating employees, the discussion for establishing the relationship between corporation and employees is not taking place. The relationship marketing literature examines relationship bonds as the strategy for relationship establishment and the literature identified that relationship bonds is decisive in the relational performance toward customers. This relationship bonds is sought as the strategy to enhance the relationship between corporation and customers and the relationship between corporations but the studies on employees is insufficient. Thus, this study aimed to explore the effects of relationship bonds on customer-contact employees. Specifically, firstly, it tried to figure out the effects of the three elements of relationship bonds(financial bonds, social bonds, and structural bonds) toward emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction through the person-job fit of customer-contact employees and secondly, it tried to examine the moderating effect of work period as the relationship period which is the relational characteristic between relationship bonds and person-job fit. For this objective, this study conducted questionnaire surveys targeting 365 service providers of financial and insurance industry. As a result of the analysis, financial bonds, social bonds, and structural bonds were found to have positive influence on person-job fit of customer-contact employees. In addition, the customer- contact employees with high person-job fit had a low emotional exhaustion and were satisfied with their job. Also, emotional exhaustion was found to be the factor which make customer- contact employees unsatisfied with their job. Meanwhile, financial bonds and structural bonds do not have a moderating effect with regard to the work period. But work period moderates positive influence of social bonds on person-job fit.
