Tipping means “to give a grantuity to a servant or employee”. It is a widespread custom in which service patrons give sums of money above and beyond the contracted price of the service to the workers who have served them. These tips are supposed to be an incentive/reward for service or an economic exchange. In Taiwan, customers compensate tips to tour leader is not only a norm, but also a culture. When the Journey terminates, the amounts of tips compensated by customers will somehow be influenced by the degree of perception to customer satisfaction. Owing to the service encounter in bridge of tour leaders and customers will certainly affect customers’ satisfactions, and go further to affect the willingness of customers’ tipping intention. Furthermore, customers’ tipping intention will also be affected by price sensitivity. In total, 460 questionnaires were distributed by tour leaders in this study，and 434 questionnaires were returned. In deduction of 71 incomplete ones, eventually, 363 effective questionnaires were returned, 79% returning rate.
This study has discovered that, first of all, service encounter has significantly positive influence in tipping intention. Besides, customer satisfaction also has significant positive influence. This indicates that higher customer satisfaction will lead to higher tipping intention. As a result, customer satisfaction dominates intermediate effect to both service encounter and tipping intention. Ultimately, price sensitivity has moderating effect in the relation of customer satisfaction and tipping intention. This study also expounds the research meaning, research constraint and outgoing research directions.
