뷰티종사자의 전문성이 고객 신뢰도와 구전의도에 미치는 영향 = The Effects of Beauty Service Workers’ Professionalism on Customer Trust and Word-of-Mouth Intention

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Beauty services are performed by closely interacting with customers. The customers often evaluate beauty professionals by considering both their technical performance and professional explanations. In this context, college-level beauty education could help beauty professionals develop expertise that combines practical skills with knowledge-based consultation. Our study examined how the expertise of beauty professionals who completed junior college or four-year-university programs influenced the trust of clients and word-of-mouth intention. We surveyed customers who had used ten hair salons in the Seoul metropolitan area. The hair salons were operated by cosmetologists whose educational background was disclosed through profiles, in-store information, or online channels. We used SPSS to analyze a total of 306 valid responses and conducted reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and mediation analysis. Our findings confirmed that the expertise of beauty professionals positively influenced the trust and word-of-mouth intention of customers. Technical and knowledge expertise also showed significant positive effects on both the trust and word-of-mouth intention of customers. The trust of the customers positively influenced the word-of-mouth intention and partially mediated the relationship between expertise and word-of-mouth intention. Our results demonstrate that customers respond not only to visible technical skills but also to the professional knowledge and explanations provided during beauty services.
Therefore, beauty education should continue to strengthen both practice-based training and theoretical education so that beauty professionals could build customer trust and encourage positive recommendations.