The ability to manage customer relationships successfully provides tourism organizations with an opportunity to increase their value proposition and obtain competitive advantage. However, no study has attempted to investigate the role of new service bonds (i.e., the newness and meaningfulness of new services provided by organizations) as a relationship tactic for customer value for long-term sustainability, particularly in the context of the museum industry, which is relatively under-researched in the tourism management field. This study addresses this research gap by exploring the effects of new service bonds on customer commitment through the creation of knowledge and relational values, particularly in the museum industry. Two hundred ninety-six customers of six major museums in Hong Kong were surveyed. Findings show that both traditional relationship tactics and new service bonds affect customers' perceived relationship investment of a museum, on which new service bonds have a stronger effect. Both knowledge and relational value mechanisms are the underlying mechanisms that partially mediate the relationship between relationship investment and customer commitment.
Conventional wisdom suggests that museums are mainly for cultural preservation and exhibition. Nowadays, museums are defined as “non-profit-making institutions that serve to acquire, conserve, research, communicate and exhibit, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment” (International Council of Museums [ICOM], 2007). However, a growing number of museums are moving toward self-financing status. The contribution of museums' cultural property to the gross domestic product is becoming more significant. Generally, museums belong to the heritage tourism sector (e.g., historic buildings). The museum industry makes a greater contribution to the United Kingdom's economy than do the car manufacturing or advertising and film industries and directly supports an estimated 195,000 full-time equivalent jobs (Heritage Lottery Fund & VisitBritain, 2010). In Hong Kong, 4,844,000 people visited the major museums in 2011, a 20.08% increase in total attendance in 2010 (Leisure and Cultural Services Department of HKSAR [LCSD], 2012).
Given the significant influence of museums on society, researchers have given great attention to heritage tourism management. For instance, de Rojas and Camarero (2008) examined the dynamic interaction between perceived quality and emotion as determinants of satisfaction through a survey of visitors to an interpretation center, which is recognized as a new type of museum. Sheng and Chen (2011) analyzed the experience expectations of museum visitors, showing that museum customers have five types of experience expectations, namely, fun and leisure, cultural entertainment, personal identification, historical reminiscence, and escapism. Other studies (Caldwell, 2000; Hollenbeck, Peters, & Zinkhan, 2008) show that branded museums can attract more visitors not only to the museums but also to other heritage places and related hospitality service establishments (e.g., restaurants and hotels). Museums, together with other heritage spots and tourism industries such as amusement parks, are closely related to consumer welfare, especially to consumers' need for high-quality tourist services. Therefore, research into customer relationship management in museums is timely and critical.
Extant studies usually focused on some conventional bond-building tactics, such as financial and social bonds. This study advances this research stream by integrating a new perspective, namely, new service bonds, with conventional tactics. We examined the effectiveness of new service bonds, that is, both the newness and meaningfulness of the new service provided by museums, aside from the three conventional bonds: tangible rewards, interactive communication, and information accessibility.
As expected, new service bonds exert a significant positive influence on museum customers' perceived relationship investment. Findings also indicate the significant effect of tangible rewards and interactive communication on perceived relationship investment. However, no significant association between information accessibility and perceived relationship investment was found probably because Hong Kong is a highly commercialized society. Information is easily accessible from various channels, and consumers are used to high exposure to diverse information. As a result, consumers may perceive information accessibility as a necessary tool for museum operations but may not regard it as a special effort of the museum in building relationships with them. An alternative plausible explanation is that our sample consists of regular museum visitors who may be more receptive to information related to museums; therefore, they may not perceive information accessibility to be a critical factor for perceived relationship efforts, although they generally perceive a high level of information accessibility.
The findings of the present study indicate the effectiveness of adopting both conventional relational tactics and new service bonds in building relationships with customers in a typical hospitality context. New service bonds play a particularly critical role, having a relatively larger effect than most conventional bonds and an additional explanatory power in enhancing relational investment. This result echoes the findings on advertising agencies and the dark side of long-term relationships in that whether the service provider can continuously generate creative services affects how customers perceive and respond to the relationship (e.g., Dowling, 1994; Grayson & Ambler, 1999).
