| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 企業管理學系研究所 === 96 === In physical service settings, we interact not only with the service providers but with other customers. Furthermore, the influence of other patronages was even more critical in the virtual space. However, the issue of “other customers” was neglected by scholars and practitioner compared to the other components in the service environment.
Although in a handful of past literature, we find that scholars have classified the behaviors which “other customers” may have based on the role theory, the question that with which target customers will interact, what characteristics the targets have, and which psychological mechanism is responsible for these interactions still remain unknown. Since interpersonal attraction has been regarded as the foundations of all kinds of relationships by social psychologists, and which was also used in managerial field such as WOM, organizational behavior, and buyer-seller relationships. As a result, the researcher tries to use theories pertaining to attraction to explain the questions above.
Researcher conducts two experiments to examine the relationships of antecedents（similarity, physical attractiveness, and valence of appraisal from others）, interpersonal attraction, and possible outcomes. In experiment 1, the results indicate similarity of interactive does induce interpersonal attraction which mediates the impact of WOM on subjects’ attitudes and purchase intentions. In addition, the more attractive experimenters are, the more persuasive they are. In experiment 2, interpersonal attraction mediates the impact of appearance and appraisal on subjects’ satisfaction in the same way of experiment 1, yet it presents the inverse relation between attraction and purchase intentions which different from the first experiment.
The major contribution of this article is to provide insight into the nature of customer-to-customer interaction and the empirical evidence for the social service setting concept addressed by Tomb and McColley in 2003. On the other hand, we extend the scope of attraction research to short-term relationship between customers that becomes more and more important and complex at the same time. In the end of this article, researcher provides the managerial implication and the future research directions.
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