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臺大管理論叢
第
26
卷第
2
期
323
Service Experience Management in Asia: A Review and Directions
for Future Research
1. Introduction
In an era of increasingly competitive environment, creating superior service experience
has been regarded as one of the central objectives for today’s service industries. Service
firms around the globe have integrated the concept of service experience into their daily
operations. A service experience occurs when a customer has any sensation or emotional
response from interactions with the elements of a context created by service firms (e.g.,
product, service, participation, technology, etc.). Service experience is identified as a key
factor of customer loyalty (Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010) and the core of service offering
(Schembri, 2006). Therefore, academic researchers are increasingly interested in exploring
service experience related issues.
Despite the importance of service experience in service industries, there still lacks a
thorough review of research literature in this field. In this paper, we review service
experience related literature in Asia and identify opportunities for future research. Seven
academic aspects of service experience research are identified with directions for future
research: customer/employee emotion, service employee management, service environments,
customer participation, self-service technologies, service failure/recovery, and customer
loyalty management.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Customer/Employee Emotion
Previous research indicates that the interaction between customers and service
employees is critical for the customers’ evaluations of services, including perceptions and
emotions (Bitner, 1990). Two important research streams that address the role of emotions in
service encounters are emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994) and emotional labor
(Hochschild, 1983). Emotional contagion refers to the flow of emotions from a service
employee to a customer, with the customer “catching” the emotions that the employee
displays (Hatfield et al., 1994). Emotional labor is defined as service employees’ display of
expected emotions as a self-regulatory process (Hochschild, 1983). Although both streams
Jiun-Sheng Chris Lin
, Professor, Department of International Business, National Taiwan University
Cheng-Yu Lin
, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of International Business, National Taiwan University
En-Yi Chou
, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of International Business, National Taiwan University