Building brand relationship quality among hotel loyalty program members

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of the loyalty program members’ satisfaction toward the hotel loyalty program benefits and the customer management relationship initiatives of individual hotels on the brand relationship quality (BRQ), i.e. their relationship quality with the hotel brand, and its outcomes. The moderating impact of membership level on the hypothesized relationships was also investigated. Design/methodology/approach A usable sample of 920 active members of a hotel loyalty program was obtained. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares method was used to estimate the structural relationships and to investigate the moderating effect of membership level. Findings Employee’s customer orientation, membership communication and hotel stay-related benefits are determinants of the loyalty program members’ BRQ. BRQ is also confirmed as a higher-order construct of three latent variables which include trust, satisfaction and commitment. Moderating effects of the membership were partially supported in this study. The strongest effect of BRQ is on members’ word of mouth followed by shares of purchase. BRQ is found to have negative relationship with members’ willingness to serve as marketing resource, but the impact was small. Research limitations/implications This is a cross-sectional study with a population of active loyalty program members of only one luxury hotel group. The sample size of the top-tier members is also smaller in comparison to the other two groups. Practical implications This study contributes to the understanding of the antecedents and consequences of BRQ and the body of knowledge about loyalty program for hotel industry. Originality/value This is one of the few studies investigating the effectiveness of hotel loyalty programs from the active members’ perspective and the moderating effect of membership level on the relationships among BRQ, its antecedents and its outcomes.

Loyalty membership for luxury hotels in Malaysia

“…As an initiative, hotels usually offer membership loyalty status to encourage the same customers to return to the same hotel or another within the same hotel chain. This loyalty membership is offered to provide a value-added advantage for selected customers who continuously come to stay at the same hotel (Lo et al, 2017). Loyalty membership has become a common marketing strategy among hoteliers because of the ability to provide flexibility and customisation based on customers' needs (Tanford et al, 2016).…”

Sustainability in Accommodation Service Industry: The Role of Quality and Value

“…The latest research about client loyalty in hotel industry commonly use some determinant factors such as satisfaction, involvement, perceived value, switching cost, quality and the other related factors [5,18]. In line with researchers that commonly use bivariate analysis approach, most of the studies measure customer loyalty using conative loyalty [2,19].…”

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“…Namun dalam penelitian sebelumnya peran SAI dalam mempengaruhi perceived value tidak dapat disimpulkan. Lo et al (2017) menyelidiki pemakaian konsumen dar i layanan kartu kredit dan menyimpulkan bahwa program loyalitas tampaknya memperkuat perceived value konsumen karena pengguna cenderung mengabaikan program loyalitas atau diskon dari perusahaan. Namun teori reaktansi psikologis menyatakan bahwa orang bereaksi terhadap upaya untuk mengontrol kebiasaan dan ancaman untuk kebebasan memilih, dimana SAI dapat menyebabkanreaktansi konsumen yang menciptakan motivasi untuk menegaskan kembali kebebasan mereka terancam.…”