Social and Cultural Experiences with Loyalty towards Hotel Services: The Mediating Role of Customer Satisfaction
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MDPI Switzerland
Abstract
Description
The increasing role of the customer experience, based on the feelings the customers
acquire from the interaction with a firm’s product and services, has been considered an effective
influence on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customer satisfaction also plays a linking role
in the performance–loyalty link. This study, therefore, investigated the effect of the social- and
cultural-experience dimensions on loyalty towards hotel services, with customer satisfaction playing
a mediating role. Based on a cross-sectional survey of 532 customers of three-star hotels in Lagos
State, Nigeria, the analysis was carried out with partial least squares structural equation modelling.
The results showed that social and cultural experience jointly account for about 38% of the variance in
consumer loyalty, customer satisfaction has a moderate impact size on loyalty, and social and cultural
experiences have a moderate and low effect size on customer loyalty, respectively. The study further
established an indirect and significant effect to show that customer satisfaction partially mediates the
association between cultural experience and loyalty and the association between social experience
and loyalty. Consequently, since the hotel service environment provides the types of experiences
that customers expect, sustainability strategies based on the aspects of the hotel service environment
would provide memorable experiences for guests’ satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, this study
has both theoretical and practical implications for researchers and practitioners, by suggesting
additional dimensions to the traditional customer-experience realms.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), HM Sociology