Effects of Traditional Market Service Quality Factors on Customer Value, Relational Quality, and Behavioral Intention

Purpose – The aim of this study is to develop an empirical model of the effects of traditional market service quality factors on customer value, relationship quality, and behavior. The specific objectives of the study are as follows: 1) to classify study objects into cultural tourism markets and non-cultural tourism markets as well as to verify the differences in service quality among the two markets and, 2) to present practical service marketing methods that fit with the characteristics of the traditional markets by amending the five quality evaluation items of SERVQUAL (a multiple-item scale for measuring service quality) to suit the characteristics of the traditional markets and establish the relationship among customer value, relationship quality, and behavior intention. Research design, data, and methodology – The study methods of empirical investigation are as follows. First, this study selected for a study object the Suwon Paldalmun Gate Market to represent the cultural tourism market, and general traditional markets to represent the non-cultural tourism market. This study also conducted personal interviews in order to increase the response rate and collected a total of 418 responses between March 18, 2014 and April 05, 2014. The total of 418 responses used for this study excluded 14 responses that had either misleading information or missing values. Results – This study verified the perceived differences of service quality based on traditional market specialization through an independent sample t-test. It appeared that the perceived service quality of the cultural tourism market was generally higher than that of the non-cultural tourism market. This study executed a path analysis in order to examine the effects of service quality factors on customer value, relationship quality, and behavior intention. This study also comprehensively analyzed the specialized market and non-specialized market separately. Although there were some differe