No abstract

No abstract

Purpose This study aims to propose a comprehensive causal model to examine the relationships between customer experience and four key factors in brand building, i.e., brand loyalty, brand trust, brand affect and brand involvement. The dimensionality of customer experience in full-service hotel is also particularly examined in relation to brand building. Design/methodology/approach Three steps of data collection were used: interviews of 50 customers on their experiences of staying full-service hotels, a small survey of 176 hotel guests to establish the measurement scale of customer experience and a major survey of 732 hotel customers in ten major Chinese cities to test the model of brand loyalty. Findings Customers’ experiences with full-service hotels are proposed to be categorized into functional, affective and social. There is a chain effect from customer experience to brand trust and to brand affect and then to brand loyalty. The brand involvement does moderate relationships between customer experience and brand trust and brand affect but not brand loyalty. Practical implications For full-service hotels, social and functional experiences are critical in building brand loyalty, and therefore, they need to be the focal points in the enhancement of customer experience. Also, hoteliers are advised to develop emotional connections between the customers and the hotel brand – an effective way of building trust and affection. Originality/value According to the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first few studies to link customer experience to brand loyalty with comprehensive causal effect analysis. This study also contributes to the knowledge of customer experience in the context of the full-service hotel sector.

Purpose The paper aims to identify the emergent themes of hotel guests’ satisfaction, to compare the distribution of the attributes of the themes between Chinese and North American guests and to compare the importance of the themes for different satisfaction levels between Chinese and North American guests from a cross-cultural perspective. Design/methodology/approach By adopting Python (a computer language), the word-frequency method was used to identify emergent themes of hotel guests’ satisfaction. Topic modeling was adopted to compare the attributes distribution of each theme and the features of satisfaction between Chinese and North American guests. Findings First, three themes were identified including functionality, staff and price. Functionality can be further categorized into five subthemes, namely, room, travel, food, environment and hotel facility. Second, the distribution of the attributes of the themes between Chinese and North American guests was compared from a cross-cultural perspective. Chinese guests tend to mention both lifestyles- and social norms–related attributes and expect personalized service, while North American guests mainly prefer to describe lifestyle-related attributes and prefer standardized service. Third, the study compared the changing importance of the themes (functionality, staff and price) for different satisfaction levels between Chinese and North American guests. As the satisfaction level decreases, the importance of functionality decreases, that of staff increases and that of price remain stable for Chinese guests. In contrast, the importance of each theme has fluctuated mildly from the high to the low satisfaction level for North American guests. Practical implications Proposed managerial implications are to highlight lifestyle- and social norms-related attributes, as well as personalized service for Chinese guests. However, lifestyle-related attributes and standardized service should be facilitated for North American guests. Specific suggestions were made to help improve hotel performance such as the good performance of functional-related attributes, which could enhance satisfaction and better staff performance, which would reduce dissatisfaction. Originality/value By mining big data, this study investigated hotel guests’ satisfaction from a dynamic instead of a static perspective. This study provides some rare insights into differences in key attributes influencing satisfaction levels of Chinese versus North American guests staying in luxury hotels in China. This study also takes a novel approach to examine the dynamics of the importance of the various themes at different satisfaction levels, and contrast these dynamics between Chinese and North American guests. The findings offer valuable insight into market segmentation and management in the hospitality industry.