Recently travel agencies are exposed to the influence of various internal and external environmental changes and, as a result, their business risk is gradually increasing. Furthermore, today?fs customers have a larger variety of choices than ever an...
Recently travel agencies are exposed to the influence of various internal and external environmental changes and, as a result, their business risk is gradually increasing. Furthermore, today?fs customers have a larger variety of choices than ever and experience the products and services of travel agencies in numerous contact points before they decide to give their loyalty to any specific agency or brand. Thus, travel agencies have come to attach importance to customer satisfaction with their services, and the customer?]oriented change of basic market paradigm also gives priority to customer satisfaction. In this situation, only external customers?f satisfaction is demanded by force while internal customers?f namely, workers?f satisfaction is neglected in corporate policies.
However, travel agencies are highly dependent on human resources compared to other business categories, and organization members?f roles are critical to business performance. In service industries, moreover, the labor process and its control happen characteristically among the employer, workers and consumers and this has been concretized through the concept of emotional labor. Because in emotional labor customers?f perception of workers in their interaction with the workers affect their perception of service quality and product quality, workers?f emotion control should be added as one of various efforts to enhance travel agencies?f performance.
Thus, this study was conducted in order to examine travel agency workers?f emotional labor according to the organization and job characteristics of travel agencies and the effects of such emotional labor on travel agency workers?f customer?]oriented selling behavior, to identify the moderating role of social support and emotional intelligence for resolving cognitive dissonance reduction experienced by the workers in this process, and ultimately to spotlight the importance of social support and emotional intelligence.
For these purposes, this study performed literature review and empirical research together. Through literature review, we clarified concepts related to organization and job characteristics, emotional labor, customer?]oriented selling behavior, social support, and emotional intelligence, which are the antecedent variables of emotional labor necessary for empirical research, and tested the adequacy of measuring instruments. In addition, factor analysis was performed for the variables in order to measure the validity and reliability of each factor and to determine correlations among the factors.
The subjects of empirical analysis in this study were the workers of listed travel agencies in Seoul that were among the top 10 companies in terms of sales. The reason for limiting the geological scope to Seoul was that most of listed travel agencies were located in Seoul and listed travel agencies were believed to have a system as an enterprise. For these travel agency workers, we conducted a questionnaire survey and used a total of 507 questionnaires in the empirical analysis. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS WIN 18.0 and research models, causal effects, moderating roles and hypotheses were tested through frequency analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, multiple regression analysis, and moderated regression analysis.
The results of empirical analysis on the hypotheses formulated in this study are summarized as follows. First, emotional display rule, interaction, job autonomy and feedback were found to have a positive effect on external behavior and internal behavior in travel agency workers?f emotional labor. However, job routineness did not have an effect on travel agency workers?f emotional labor.
Second, with regard to the effect of emotional labor on customer?]oriented selling behavior, both external behavior and internal behavior in emotional labor had a positive effect on customer?]oriented selling behavior.
Third, with regard to the effect of organization and job characteristics on emotional labor, social support was found not to play any role as a moderating variable. However, colleague support played a negative role as a moderating variable between feedback and external behavior and between job autonomy and internal behavior.
Fourth, with regard to the effect of emotional labor on customer?]oriented selling behavior, emotional intelligence played a moderating role between external behavior and customer?]oriented selling behavior, but not between internal behavior and customer?]oriented selling behavior.
The results of analyzing the relation between travel agency workers?f emotional labor and their customer?]oriented selling behavior have implications as follows.
First, in case of travel agency services where emotional labor is integrated in the labor process, it is necessary to manage emotional labor according to organization and job characteristics and the members?f psychological wellbeing is most important for improving their job?]related attitude positively.
Second, because emotional labor experienced by travel agency workers during their job performance influences their customer?]oriented selling behavior, which, in turn, affects business performance, it is necessary for travel agencies to develop an internal marketing system for reinforcing positive emotional labor that workers experience during their work. What is more, workers?f psychological conflicts should be identified through education or role plays and customer satisfaction programs should be operated in order to find and resolve customers?f complaints and discontents.
Third, although social support is an important factor to be provided systematically to travel agency workers who interact with customers frequently, it is provided little in real situations. In order for social support to play its role of supporting workers actively, institutional devices and education programs should be established and, based on them, communication should be activated and trust should be established within the organization. Based on this, moreover, organization members should exchange active support in order to enhance workers?f recovery resilience and self?]esteem.
Fourth, because emotional intelligence is the most effective means to increase customer?]oriented selling behavior, there should be appropriate ways to improve workers?f emotional intelligence through education and training.
The results of this study suggest that travel agencies, which are highly dependent on human resources, should consider emotional intelligence in selecting their workers and improve the workers?f emotional intelligence through education and training. Furthermore, they suggest the necessity of reinforcing customer?]oriented selling behavior and enhancing business performance through introducing and activating social support systematically for the efficient performance of emotional labor.