Service Quality and Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty Association Moderated by Switching Cost in Hospitality Industry

Abstract

Booming travel and tourism trade cause a tremendous growth in hotel industry in Malaysia. This industry will continue to promote country and other businesses in a good way. Therefore, the evaluation of customers perception, satisfaction and loyalty in hospitality industry has been major of attention in marketing strategies. This research aims to evaluate customer loyalty at in-house restaurant hotels in Malaysia. To achieve this goal, this research takes two steps to better understand the role and influence of each constructs, (1) Examines customer satisfaction by considering the effect of service quality antecedents on customer satisfaction. (2) Investigates the association between customer satisfaction and loyalty by identifying the moderating role of switching cost in satisfaction-loyalty relationship. The data is collected through self-administrated questionnaire from hotels in two states of Malaysia from 200 customers who have been served at in-house restaurant of those hotels since last three months. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to analyze the reliability and validity of data and the hypothesized relationships in the proposed research model.

Keywords: Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Switching Cost

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