互動性、等待時間資訊與等待發生時點對消費者情緒反應之影響

Abstract

現今社會生活步調快速，時間被視為價值單位的情形下，消費者對於等待的容忍度已漸漸降低，等待儼然已成為一種機會成本。在服務業裡，等待容易帶給消費者強烈的初步印象，過長的等待會影響到消費者的情緒反應，進一步影響到顧客滿意度。因此，等待對於行銷領域的重要性日趨重要。 本研究以咖啡廳為模擬對象，採用實驗法進行研究，結合場地理論與期望模式兩個理論架構，並加入個人時間風格量表，探討互動性、等待時間資訊與等待發生時點等變數，對於等待情緒反應的影響。 研究結果發現： 1.互動性的有無並不會影響消費者等待服務時的正向或負向情緒反應。 2.是否提供等待時間資訊會影響消費者在等待服務時的正向或負向情緒反應。 3.等待發生時點的遠近會影響消費者等待服務時的正向或負向情緒反應。 4.有無「互動性」與是否提供「等待時間資訊」，兩者在交互作用下，會影響消費者等待時的正向情緒反應。 5.是否提供「等待時間資訊」與「等待發生時點」的遠近，兩者在交互作用下，影響消費者等待時的負向情緒反應。 6.個人時間風格對等待時的負向情緒反應具有顯著影響，而且屬量的受試者之負向情緒平均數皆比屬質的受試者來得高。 因此，本研究對行銷上的建議：等待常為服務傳遞過程中無法避免，當消費者面臨消費中的等待時，應主動提供等待時間資訊，並不斷更新資訊，讓消費者瞭解到等待的原因與狀況，此舉將讓消費者感受到被重視，強化對等待的滿意與可接受度。另外，可加強服務人員與消費者之間的「互動性」，提高消費者的正面情緒。 研究貢獻主要有：為消費中的等待提供整合性研究、消費者行為理論之擴展應用、個人時間風格對於等待情緒反應之影響，本研究同時發現個人時間量表並不能完全適用於台灣，這個特別的發現可提供後續服務業行銷的研究者，繼續探討個人時間風格與等待的相關課題之研究。

The pace of the society is fast. Time is considered the value unit since consumers have less and less tolerance when waiting for service. Waiting seems to be a kind of opportunity cost. In the service industry, it is apt to leave a strong preliminary impression on consumers during the process stage. Waiting too long influences consumers’ affective responses, and further their satisfaction. Therefore, understanding how consumers feel is particularly important in marketing. This study regards coffee shop as the imitating target, and uses the experiment method along with the Field Theory, the Anticipatory Model, and the Time-Styles Scale, to probe the impact of three independent variables, interaction, waiting-duration information, and the distance to the goal state, on consumers’ affective responses. The results demonstrate that: 1. The existence of interaction neither impacts the consumers’ affective responses positively nor negatively. 2. Whether waiting-duration information is provided affects the consumers’ affective responses positively and negatively. 3. Whether the distance at further or at closer to the goal state affects the consumers’ affective responses positively and negatively. 4. There is an interactive effect between interaction and waiting-duration information on consumers’ positive affective responses. 5. There is an interactive effect between waiting-duration information and the distance to the goal state on consumers’ negative affective responses. 6. Consumers’ personal perception of time impacts their negative affective responses. Moreover, quantitative subjects have more negative affective responses than qualitative ones. It’s unavoidable to keep consumers waiting before they are being served. Therefore, constantly providing and updating waiting-duration information makes consumers understand their current circumstance and feel being paid attention. It also consolidates consumers’ satisfaction and acceptance. Moreover, enhancing the interaction between the waiters/waitress and consumers helps strengthen positive affective responses. The contributions of the study are as follows. First, the study provides an integrated research on in-process waiting. Second, the study largely extends the application for the theory of consumer behaviors. Third, the study discovers the impact of personal perception of time on affective responses. Meanwhile, the study has a special discovery that the Time-Styles Scale can’t be completely applied to the consumers in Taiwan, which offers researchers room for future studies of the topics related to time styles and waiting.