IMPACT OF TRUST, SATISFACTION AND SERVICE QUALITY ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY: A STUDY OF PAKISTAN’S HOTEL SECTOR

Abstract

In today’s competitive market place attaining customer loyalty has become very crucial. In order to achieve success, growth, and sustainability for any business it is very essential to meet the expectations of the customer. The improvement of quality in the context of both the services and goods results in the customers being loyal. Trust, Satisfaction and service quality are recognized to be crucial factors that encourage the customers to make repeated purchases or avail themselves of the services from a particular sector repeatedly. How the firm builds trust in the minds of customers, the service quality it provides, and how it satisfies its users has become a significant subject matter. Competitive advantage can be adequately achieved due to the vast expansion observed in hotel services. Hotel managers are training their staff to adequately deal with their visitors providing them excellent services in order to obtain customer loyalty and spread positive words about their services in the marketplace through that loyal ones. The primary objective behind conducting this study is to examine the impact of the most commonly used factors that are Trust, Satisfaction, and Service Quality on Customer Loyalty in Pakistan’s Hotel Sector. This study was further narrowed down to four renowned hotels (Pearl Continental, Awari, Movenpick, and Ramada) that are being found in the metropolitan cities of Pakistan. A theoretical framework was established to inspect the relationship between the three aforementioned factors and customer loyalty. The data for this research was catered from 384 respondents residing in the cities of Karachi, Islamabad, or Lahore via online questionnaires developed through Google docs because of the current pandemic situation. 7 points Likert scale for both independent and dependent variables were adapted from previous research to develop the questionnaires for the current research. The data collected was tested by incorporating SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) software and tests such as reliability, validity, correlation, and regression of variables were run to draw conclusions. The findings posit that Satisfaction and Service Quality has a significant impact on Customer Loyalty in context to Pakistan’s Hoteling Industry. The results disclosed has significance in both theoretical and practical means. This research will develop a better understanding of all the three factors namely Trust, Satisfaction, and Service Quality for Hotel Managers, and contribute towards extending the literature. Also, the outcomes of this study will provide better insights to the marketers about different tactics and the importance of Trust, Service Quality, and Satisfaction, which they can utilize for their business in order to obtain customer loyalty, involvement, and a competitive position in the market.