Abstract
Despite the important role of cognitive capital as a facet of social capital, there is little empirical work examining the causal effect of cognitive capital dimensions on sustaining customer satisfaction. Thus, there is a need to investigate the relationship between these constructs via employee self-efficacy. Our proposed hypothetical framework is tested in the tourism industry sector employing a quantitative research method. Drawing from social capital and social cognitive theories, we generated items from a piloted questionnaire which was administered to 600 top and middle managers in hotels and travel agents using drop and collect methods. We test our hypothetical model using SEM techniques with 490 usable cases. The survey results indicate that cognitive capital dimensions have direct and indirect relationships with sustained customer satisfaction. In addition, employee self-efficacy mediates between exogenous constructs and the endogenous construct. Surprisingly, these two exogenous constructs: shared norms and shared values do directly influence shared goals and enhance employee self-efficacy. Additionally, shared goals enhance employee efficacy which subsequently leads to sustained customer satisfaction. These findings shed light on the impact of intra-firm social interactions on customer experience in hotels and travel agents. Managers should use cognitive capital to improve the level of service employee self-efficacy and subsequently sustain customer satisfaction. The paper outlines theoretical and managerial implications and addresses possible directions for further research.
Highlights
Speaking, maintaining a consumer relationship is based on sustaining customer satisfaction, which is determined by various factors including service quality, service performance, employee performance, service failure recovery, customer expectations [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
We build on prior studies, such as [35,50,51,52,53,54], which argue that cognitive capital deals with shared norms, shared values, shared representation, and shared goals which enable employees to have a commonly shared practice and create social networks to support their self-efficacy
Ref. [112,162] and modified to tap the managerial beliefs about the impact of social cognitive on building and sustaining customer satisfaction constructs with their respective items which are modified in the Egyptian context
Summary
Speaking, maintaining a consumer relationship is based on sustaining customer satisfaction, which is determined by various factors including service quality, service performance, employee performance, service failure recovery, customer expectations [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. No study has yet examined the impact of cognitive capital on building and sustaining customer satisfaction through employee self-efficacy. Transactions in order to ensure that cognitive capital dimensions (shared value, norms, and goals) affect positively employees’ self-efficacy that in turn sustain customer satisfaction. Despite ever-increasing interest in the development of cognitive capital, employee self-efficacy, and building and sustaining customer satisfaction concepts, these studies are disconnected, and numerous important empirical questions remain under-explored. This study investigates the effect of cognitive capital dimensions on building and sustaining customer satisfaction in the long term through the mediating role of employee self-efficacy in the Egyptian tourism context (category A travel agents and five- and four-star hotels). Our considered key dimensions of cognitive capital (i.e., shared norms, shared values, and shared goals) enhance employee efficacy which subsequently leads to sustained customer satisfaction. We discuss the main contributions and directions for future research
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