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Abstract
Professional services are typically high in credence properties, information asymmetry, and associated with client anxiety and uncertainty. To reduce client anxiety and ensure a positive service evaluation, creating client psychological comfort through interpersonal communication is vital. Psychological comfort represents a person’s feelings of security, reassurance, peace of mind, and reduction of anxiety. While its role is discerned among academics and practitioners, client psychological comfort lacks rigorous investigation in professional services and its association with interpersonal communication.
Using uncertainty reduction theory and the revised social interaction model as theoretical foundations, this thesis provides empirical examinations of psychological comfort generated from client perceptions of professional service providers’ (affiliative or dominant) communication style, as in choice of words and manner, in three interrelated studies. Study 1 explores the impact of communication style on client psychological comfort and subsequent outcomes (satisfaction, repurchase intention, WOM recommendation) in a medical services setting. It tests moderating effects of cognitive social capital and cultural value orientation. The results reveal the different influences of affiliative and dominant styles on psychological comfort and service outcomes, under conditions of high cognitive social capital and collectivist value orientation.
Study 2 tests the internal validity of the communication style - psychological comfort relationship using an experimental design and examines joint impacts of communication style. The findings verify the causal relationship between the two variables. Combined effects of two styles create different levels of psychological comfort. Study 3 investigates, in the financial advisory services, the mediating role of attributional confidence on the communication style - psychological comfort linkage across clients’ cultural value orientations. Attributional confidence partially mediates affiliative style and psychological comfort. Although the impact of communication style on attributional confidence is not significantly different across two cultural value orientations, attributional confidence stimulates higher psychological comfort among clients with an individualist value orientation.
This thesis contributes to service literature by examining the influence of communication style on client psychological comfort, the contingency conditions, and the underlying mechanism. It offers implications on client psychological comfort-building strategies and client uncertainty reduction.