This study aims to analyze effects of department store's royalty program on relationship quality and intend to relationship continuity. More specifically, composition factors of royalty program that consumers are aware of, when buying fashion goods in...
This study aims to analyze effects of department store's royalty program on relationship quality and intend to relationship continuity. More specifically, composition factors of royalty program that consumers are aware of, when buying fashion goods in a department store were examined and effects of department store's royalty program on relationship quality(trust, immersion and satisfaction) of consumers and effects of their relationship quality on intend to relationship continuity(continual use intention and word of mouth intention were analyzed. Also, awareness of consumers about royalty program according to demographic characteristics in a department store and differences between relationship quality and intend to relationship continuity were investigated.
To achieve these research purposes, previous studies were reviwed and empirical study was performed by using questionnaires. For an empirical study, a survey was carried out in Seoul and Kyung-gi Province with consumers, who experienced credit card transactions to purchase fashion goods in department stores (Lotte, Shinsegae and Hyundai) from Oct. 5th to 31st in 2009. 381 papers of questionnaires were used to analyze data and in order to efficiently analyze collected data, frequency analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, ANOVA analysis and t-test were performed using SPSS 13.0 program. The results of this study are as followings;
First, composition factors of royalty program were classified into 5 categories such as conformity, shared value, benefit of use, psychological availability and convenience. Among them, conformity, benefit of use, psychological availability and convenience influence consumer trust, and psychological availability and convenience influenced their satisfaction. Also, conformity, benefit of use, psychological availability and convenience of royalty program had effects on rational immersion of consumers, but didn't have effects on their emotional immersion significantly.
Second, relationship quality(trust, satisfaction and immersion) and intent to relationship continuity(continual use intention and word of mouth intention) of consumers were examined. As a result, satisfaction, rational immersion and emotional immersion influenced consumers' continual use intention. Of them, satisfaction of goods had the highest effect on consumers. Therefore, consumers with higher satisfaction of purchase had more intentions to use department stores continually. However, their emotional immersion had a negative effect on word of mouth intention. Therefore, as consumers were emotionally immersed in buying goods, their words of mouth intention were decreased.
Third, differences among royalty program, relationship quality and intent to relationship continuity of each department store by demographic characteristics were analyzed. As a result, there were statistically significant differences in age, department store that they mainly use and monthly average incomes. People in over 50's were more highly aware of shared value, benefit of use, trust in department stores or continual use intention than other age groups. And a group, which mainly visits Hyundai department store were highly aware of trust, satisfaction and rational immersion and consumers who mainly use Lotte department store were aware of word of mouth intention. Also, people with higher monthly average incomes were aware of benefit of use, psychological availability and conformity highly.
In conclusion, some measuring categories suitable for factors of royalty program in a department store need to be classified more in depth, although, this study provided a meaningful implications by introducing department store's royalty program as an impact variable of trust, immersion, satisfaction, continual use intention and word of mouth intention of consumers. Also, other variables influenced by department store's royalty program should be studied and developed in future researches in order to study on it in various aspects.