相對感受：參考點對於顧客體驗的影響

Relative Sentiment: The Influence of Reference Points in Customer Experience

服務創新著重於形塑愉悅的顧客體驗，但成敗的關鍵卻是期望落差的衡量。體驗總是蘊含著某種期待，一旦與當下感知不符，就會形成落差，造成不滿情緒。早期文獻著重於分析落差型態與驗證期待因子，後則轉向旅程優化、感受分析以及口碑建立等做法。然而，這些新服務的成效卻不如預期，因為企業忽略來自時間的經驗比對，以及未能關注顧客的情緒性感受。有鑑於此，本研究分析一家百貨公司的服務創新，探索由過往經驗所形成的參考點會如何影響顧客的感受，進而造成期望的落差。理論上，顧客的期望受到現在與過往經驗所包夾，顧客對服務客觀的績效評估其實內嵌著主觀的感知評價。要深入理解期望落差，就必須分析感受的內涵及其相對性。本研究藉由經驗的參考點來闡釋顧客可能產生的相對感受，並由此歸納出時間的經驗相對性、精準的分眾相對性和情緒的感受相對性等三項觀念。實務上，服務設計可藉由轉換參考點以提升服務素質，藉以橋接期望與體驗的間隙。本研究揭示，分析參考點有助於理解顧客因過往經驗而產生的相對評價。體驗設計需建立在過往經驗的理解，才能將相對的感受轉換為相應的感動。

Service innovation aims for shaping delightful customer experience, but the key to success lies in the measure of expectation gap. Experience often contains certain kind of expectation. When experience misaligns with customer’s perceived value, it forms discrepancy within expectation, leading to discontented emotion. The early literature examines various types of expectation gap and verifies factors influencing expectation gap. The latter studies attend to journey optimization, sentiment analysis, and word-of-mouth marketing. However, these innovative services often lead to unintended consequence. This is due to our negligence of temporal comparison of experience, while paying insufficient attention to the hidden sentiment of customer. For this reason, this article examines a department store’s service innovation, and explores how reference points shaped by prior experience may influence customers’ sentiment while enlarging expectation gap. Theoretically, this article indicates that customer’s expectation is encapsulated by present and past experience, customers’ objective assessment of service performance is subjectively embedded with their perceived value. To deepen our understanding of expectation gap, we need to examine the substance of sentiment in relation to customers’ previous experience. This case study thus elaborates relative sentiment by means of customers’ referential experience, and summarize three novel concepts in terms of temporal relativity of experience, precision relativity of segmented audience, and emotional relativity of sentiment. Practically, the concept of relative sentiment brings forth new practices of service design. Designers could transform reference points into elevated services in order to bridge the experience-expectation lacuna. As this study reveals, the analysis of reference point will help to comprehend how customers form their perceived value in relation to their past experience. Hence, experience design should be based upon a deeper understanding of prior experience, and only by so doing could designers translate relative sentiment into appreciative expectation.