The Role of Customer Satisfaction in Mediating the Influence of Brand Personality and Service Quality on the Loyalty of Beachwalk Shopping Center Customers

Abstract

In 2018 and 2019, there was an increase in the number of shopping centers in Bali, which led to the tight competition in the industry. The movement of customers from one shopping center to other shopping centers indicate that the loyalty of customers can be categorized as low. This challenges business practitioners in their attempt to maintain and win the competition within the industry. This research focuses on the role of customer satisfaction, brand personality and service quality in developing the loyalty of Beachwalk Shopping Center customers. This research is categorized as an associative quantitative study and was conducted in Badung Regency, Bali. The data consists of 218 Beachwalk Shopping Center visitors, collected by distributing questionnaires which include open-ended and close-ended questions. The validity and reliability of these questions have also been verified. The analysis technique used is the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and the analysis tool utilized is the SmartPLS 3.0. The research results revealed that customer satisfaction and brand personality have a positive and significant influence on customer loyalty, but service quality does not have a significant influence on customer loyalty. The results also showed that customer satisfaction is capable of mediating the influence of brand personality and service quality on the loyalty of Beachwalk Shopping Center customers. Another result of this study is that there is no significant difference between the satisfaction and loyalty of local and foreign customers, indicated by both having equally high values of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Keywords: brand personality, service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-20-11 Publication date: July 31 st 2020