Exploring the nature of the relationships between service quality and customer loyalty: an attribute-level analysis

Customer loyalty has emerged as a strategic imperative for most firms. Many studies conducted in different industries have empirically proven that the overall perception of service quality is one of the essential factors to establish customer loyalty. The value of these empirical findings per se has been questioned because of the derivative information for lack of specificity and diagnostic usefulness to managers. Moreover, extant literature has signified the nature of the relationship between service quality and customer behavior to be disparate. These purported disparities may result from prior research on the basis of global-level analysis. Thus, this study is intended to examine the nature (including main, curvilinear and moderation) of the relationships between service quality and customer loyalty at the service-attribute level. Service quality is conceptualised in terms of four service attributes: personnel, operational, physical and merchandise. Customer loyalty consists of two behavioural indicators: visiting frequency and amount spent per visiting. The research sample was drawn from the customer database of a large wholesalers located at the metropolitan area of Kaohsiung in Taiwan. Regression analyses were performed to analyse the hypotheses under study. Most empirical results have confirmed evidence available in the extant literature and highlighted the complex nature of the quality--loyalty relationship. By implication, these disparate relationships identified in prior global-level studies may coexist when the basis of research analysis was on the attribute level. The research findings derived from the attribute-level analysis, we believe, may provide important information to both academics and practitioners.