In the post-COVID-19, untact and artificial intelligence (AI) era, beauty industry has drawn an attention as a promising career option. In such untact era, it is 'cosmetology' which cannot turn into a non-contact field. As a sector which cannot be substituted by AI, cosmetology has come under the spotlight. It cannot turn into a non-contact sector, and sustainable consumption has continued according to necessity. A soul indulging in esthetics falls into Eros which longs for making itself more beautiful and satisfied its esthetic needs with the beauty of the body and beauty of act. In other words, 'beauty' plays a decisive role in making humans immortal by forcing Eros to produce the offspring of the body and soul. In this sense, beauty service industry is tangible-intangible industry which provider total esthetic and healthcare services. Due to high demand and technology innovation, esthetic services have been segmented and diversified, and talented workforce has been produced. As a result, they have been further specialized. The ultimate goal of human resources management in beauty service industry is to how to make employees satisfied and work hard to achieve an organizational goal. 'Job Embeddedness' is a concept which makes employees stay long with their organization. Under diverse and complicated beauty service industry environments, they work at the moment of truth (MOT) of emotional labor, considering the characteristics of cosmetology. Therefore, emotional intelligence would have a positive effect on employees' development and goal achievements to help them get familiar with their job more easily. Concerning rapport building behavior in beauty service industry, employees' enhanced capabilities have a direct effect on their qualitative improvement and evaluation of services through interactions and trust between employees and customers. In fact, employees are crucial in the success or failure of beauty service industry. However, it has been difficult to find a study which examined relationships between emotional intelligence and job embeddedness against beauty service providers. Considering contemporary situations, in particular, there should be studies which unveil correlations among employees' emotional intelligence, rapport-building behavior and job embeddedness for organizational efficiency & development and goal achievement and suggest related strategies. This study aimed to investigate factors affecting beauty service workers' job embeddedness.
For this, a questionnaire survey was performed against female beauty service workers in their 20-50s, and a total of 506 copies were used for final analysis. The collected data were analyzed by reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA and correlation analysis, using a statistical program. For hypothesis testing, path analysis and covariance structure analysis (CSM) were conducted, using structural equation modeling (SEM). In addition, mediating effects were verified and derived, using bootstrapping.
First, in hypothesis 1, emotional intelligence had a direct influence on rapport-building behavior with statistical significance. This result can be interpreted as follows: Emotional intelligence can also be understood as social intelligence which uses knowledge and information to take the lead in own thoughts and behavior by distinguishing my own feelings from others. Interaction with customers could be helpful in bringing comfort and building personal bonding from business partners' polite behavior or business aspects which occur at service encounter as an intangible asset in beauty service industry.
Second, in hypothesis 2, rapport-building behavior had a direct effect on job embeddedness with statistical significance. Such result confirm that in the interactions of human resources in service industry, employees enhance unity which goes beyond understanding and trust through social activities called, 'human relationships'. In addition, employees with high rapport-building behavior revealed a high level of job embeddedness.
Third, in hypothesis 3, emotional intelligence had an indirect influence on job embeddedness with statistical significance. In other words, well understanding and control of own feelings have a positive effect on job embeddedness. As emotional intelligence which understands own and others' feelings and emotions, recognizes differences and uses them through personal thoughts and behavior increases, career commitment improves, enhancing job embeddedness.
Fourth, in hypothesis 4, rapport-building behavior plays a mediating role in job embeddedness. Even though emotional intelligent also is an important factor in enhancing job embeddedness, empathy of interpersonal relationships and rapport-building behavior, not emotional intelligence, have an influence on job embeddedness.
In conclusion, in the untact era, rapport-building behavior is a key factor affecting beauty service workers' emotional intelligence and job embeddedness. This study is meaningful in that it provides basic data which are needed in providing better services by enhancing job satisfaction and job embeddedness and developing competitive human resources management strategies.