A Study on Differences in Perception on the Necessity and Importance of Hospitality System by Type of Cosmetology Business

Abstract

With the growth of the beauty industry, beauty services that include all cosmetology activities as well as intangible services have become an important factor directly related to sales, not just the supply of products or services. They are also meaningful in terms of business strategy. Most hospitality-related studies focus on food and hotels, however, and studies on cosmetology-related customer services are rare. Therefore, this study attempted to investigate customer services in cosmetology. For this, a questionnaire comprised of a total of 45 questions (general characteristics of cosmetologists: 8; perception of the need for a hospitality system:10; perception of the importance of hospitality system: 8’ hospitality system-related education: 8; etc.) was conducted. The collected data were analyzed using factor analysis (SPSS 21.0), a reliability test (factor analysis), paired t-test and independent t-test. Among a total of 230 questionnaires, 218 copies were collected and used for analysis. The results found the following: A hospitality system was a basic perception in both beauty salons and aesthetic clinics while it was a fairly new concept in makeup and nail salons. In addition, there has been little hospitality-related education across the cosmetology industry. Therefore, beauty salons and esthetic clinics must work hard to improve quality through continued hospitality education while makeup and nail salons should take greater awareness of its necessity and importance. There are limitations in generalizing the results of this study as Korea’s cosmetology industry trend and further studies on this matter based on the results of this study would make a contribution to the improvement of the hospitality systems.