An Empirical Study on the Influence of Service Quality of Association on Customer Satisfaction: the Moderating Effect of Willingness to Participate

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of service quality of consumer life cooperatives on customer satisfaction and to suggest ways to secure the competitiveness of consumer life cooperatives by extracting service quality factors for customer satisfaction in contributing to the maintenance and operation of consumer life cooperatives, operating stores, and preparing new stores through the study on how the willingness to participate in the members affects customer satisfaction. The empirical study was conducted through the online survey method for the members who use the Jayeondrim store of the Icoop Store among domestic consumer life cooperatives after confirming the suitability of the questionnaire through the preceding research. Based on the collected questionnaire, the suitability of the measurement tool was reviewed and hypothesis testing was conducted. The hypothesis test results are summarized as follows. First, among the five factors of service quality, tangibility, responsiveness, and assurance had a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. Second, willingness to participate had a moderating effect on the relationship between the five factors of service quality and the relationship between responsiveness and customer satisfaction, and the relationship between assurance and customer satisfaction. Based on the results of the empirical analysis of this study, the implications of the research are presented as follows. First, since the life cooperative store is not just a place to sell organic food and processed products to its members, but a place to be a venue for its members, the life cooperative should encourage its members’ satisfaction through continuous efforts and education to improve service quality. Second, the life cooperative can be expected to be more efficient through on-the-job training for employees with more focus on tangibility, responsiveness, and assurance among service quality components.