消费者奉承行为对双态度、再购买倾向以及自尊的影响研究

Nowadays, many services firms, especially those rendering high-quality services, empower their front-line employees to give customers extra benefits such as free dishes, desserts, or presents at their discretion due to the need for producing satisfaction or even delight and for flexibly dealing with service incidents. Aware of this situation through self experience, online chat rooms or word of mouth, customers tend to flatter the service people to gain themselves additional benefits. Most prior research focuses primarily on how the firm flatter customers. This research, however, explores how customers flatter the services employees to get additional benefits, based on dual attitudes and expectation confirmation/disconfirmation theories. This project aims to investigate, given that customers succeed in using flattery to make services employees offer them additional benefits, the effect of this insincere flattery on customers' implicit and explicit attitudes as well as on their immediate and delayed repurchase intentions. Specifically, explicitly articulated satisfaction is proposed to coexist with implicitly held dissatisfaction. Furthermore, explicitly articulated satisfaction is suggested to exert a stronger impact on immediate repurchase intentions than implicitly held dissatisfaction, while implicitly held dissatisfaction would more significantly influence delayed repurchase intentions than explicitly articulated satisfaction. Three scenario-based experiments would be conducted to test these effects. In addition, self-esteem is proposed to be both a moderator and a mediator in the above effects. To enhance generalizability of the results, a field experiment would be conducted in the fourth study. Our findings can offer new theoretical implications for flattery, satisfaction and dual attitudes literature from a fresh perspective as well as provide insightful managerial implications.

消费者在购买时经常会奉承服务人员以获得额外的物质利益（譬如免费的样品），这种现象在日常生活中是普遍存在的。以前的研究主要是关注企业如何奉承消费者，本课题在双态度以及期望确定/不确定理论的基础上，从消费者奉承员工这一新角度进行探索性研究。本课题旨在研究如果消费者奉承服务员工成功即获得了额外的物质利益将会如何影响消费者的隐性和显性态度以及即时和延迟再购买倾向。本课题提出奉承行为会同时导致显性满意和隐性不满，显性满意会对即时再购买倾向产生更大的影响，而隐性不满则会对延迟再购买倾向产生更显著的影响。为此，本课题会首先采用实验法设计消费者奉承员工的情境，对由此产生的双态度和即时/延迟再购买行为倾向进行测量。此外，本课题提出自尊在以上关系中起调节和中介作用。随后进行的实地测试会增加实验结果的普遍性。本课题对我国这一现象进行研究得出的结论不仅具有深刻的理论意义，也将对企业如何设计服务策略提供现实指导。

在日常生活中，消费者经常会奉承服务员工以获得额外的利益。譬如，在一家化妆品店里，消费者经常会奉承销售员工以获得更多的样品。消费者奉承服务员工这一现象是普遍存在的，但是消费者奉承这一行为对于其态度以及再购买行为倾向的影响及其起作用的机制在相关文献中却很少被涉及。本项目旨在研究消费者奉承成功之后对其显性态度、隐性态度以及即时、延迟再购买倾向的影响，并研究自尊的调节和中介作用。经过研究发现消费者奉承行为会同时导致显性满意和隐性不满，显性满意对即时再购买倾向产生了更大的影响，而隐性不满则对延迟再购买倾向产生了更显著的影响，自尊在以上过程中起调节和中介作用。本项目主要研究了四个问题，分别是消费者奉承行为实验情境的设计以及实验方法的选定；双态度的表征和量化、测评量表的制定；分析和检验即时与延迟再购买行为倾向的表征和量化、测评量表的制定；以及分析和检验自尊的调节和中介作用。对这些研究内容，本项目不仅使用了情境法、也在实验室做了相关实验去验证，并已顺利完成。本项目的科学意义包括以下两点，首先，对相关服务营销理论有所贡献。以前的文献大多从服务员工如何奉承消费者的角度出发去研究，本项目从消费者奉承服务员工这一创新角度进行研究，并验证了消费者奉承行为对其满意度以及再购买倾向的作用机制，这不仅对相关服务营销理论有所贡献，而且对于企业如何设计服务策略也有一定的指导作用。其次，对双态度理论也有一定的贡献。本项目进一步验证了消费者对同一事物可能产生两种不同的态度，即显性态度和隐性态度。消费者奉承成功后会导致两种态度并存，即显性满意和隐性不满。以前的研究表明，服务员工奉承消费者之后，消费者的隐性态度会比显性态度更加正面。本项目研究发现消费者奉承服务员工获得额外的物质利益之后，他们的隐性态度反而比显性态度负面。因此，并不是所有奉承体验的结果都是一样的，这对双态度理论的发展做出了贡献。