企業要與顧客建立長久關係的關鍵之一是建立關係強度，而顧客參與是當代行銷策略的新思維，希望藉由提高顧客參與服務的生產與傳遞過程，以提高顧客的服務品質認知、滿意度以及忠誠度。本研究以台北市美髮店之消費者為對象，研究之結果發現顧客參與和關係強度具有顯著的直接與間接正向關係。間接效果分析顯示，顧客滿意、顧客承諾、及關係連結是顧客參與和關係強度之中介變數。然而，顧客參與和關係強度之直接效果遠高於間接效果，顯示顧客參與和關係強度之間存在其他更具解釋力之中介變數，值得做更進一步之探討與分析。此外，由於既有文獻顯示關係強度有助於延長顧客關係之時間長度，進而提高顧客關係的獲利能力，本研究之結果更加支持顧客參與策略對企業之重要性。
One of the important preliminary steps for organizations in building long-term customer relationship is to establish customer relationship strength (CRS). Customer participation is the marketing thought that has gained much attention of marketing scholars and practitioners in recent years. It aims to increase customers' perceptions of service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty through encouraging customers to participate in service production and delivery processes. The results of the present study show that, using the customers of barbershops and beauty parlors in Taipei as the sources of data collection, customer participation is positively correlated with CRS, both directly and indirectly. The indirect effects imply that customer satisfaction, customer commitment and relational bonds serve as intervening variables between customer participation and CRS. However, the direct effect of customer participation on CRS is much higher than total indirect effect. This indicates that there are other more important intervening variables that can explain the relationship between customer participation and CRS. Because existing literature shows that CRS can increase customer relationship longevity and a firm's long-term profitability, the research results of this paper support the importance of customer participation to firms.
