Purpose The purpose of this paper is to advance research on the relationship between customer experience and customer loyalty by exploring the serially mediating roles of brand equity and customer satisfaction and the moderating roles of age, gender, education and family income in the retail banking industry. Design/methodology/approach A total of 500 responses of retail banking customers were used to test the model using the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach. Advanced statistical techniques, such as importance-performance map analysis and a joint application of FIMIX-PLS and PLS-POS, were used to gain new insights. Findings The study highlighted that the relationship between customer experience and loyalty is serially mediated by brand equity and customer satisfaction. Age, gender and education were found to be significant moderators in the customer experience–loyalty relationship. Age and gender were found to be significant moderators in the brand equity–loyalty relationship. Practical implications The study strongly suggests that practitioners not only focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences but also on providing leverage brand equity and satisfaction to build customer loyalty. Practitioners should focus on training their front-line employees to improve the quality of their behavior and relations with customers and thereby build customer loyalty. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the mediating role of several variables sequentially and the moderating role of customer demographics in the customer experience–customer loyalty relationship.

PurposeThis study aims to explore whether frontline employees' service recovery performance as well as customers' recovery satisfaction (RS) act as mediating mechanisms that simultaneously transmit the positive influence of an integrated service recovery system (SRS) on customers' service loyalty (SL).Design/methodology/approachA total of 134 useable retail banking branch cases (including responses from 134 branch heads, 439 frontline employees and 941 customers) were used to test our model using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach.FindingsService recovery system, measured as a higher-order multidimensional construct, has a strong and positive influence on customers' SL. Besides, service recovery performance partially mediates, along with RS, the relationship between SRS and SL. Finally, customers' recovery satisfaction has the strongest influence on service loyalty.Practical implicationsThis study strongly suggests that practitioners not only focus on implementing an effective SRS but also on leveraging service recovery performance and RS to build sustained customers' loyalty. Practitioners must provide more attention to training their frontline employees, reward and recognize employees and continually evaluate their employees' recovery efforts.Originality/valueThe role of frontline employees' service recovery performance and customers' RS as mediating mechanisms in transmitting the positive effect of SRS on customers' SL is investigated using the combined perspectives of social-technical system theory and interdependence theory.

PurposeThe central purpose of this study is to investigate the relative effects of leadership styles, i.e. transactional leadership and transformational leadership, and achievement motivation on the entrepreneurial potential of MBA and engineering students. This study also examines whether the MBA and engineering students differ in terms of their entrepreneurial potential.Design/methodology/approachThis study has used a cross-sectional research design along with a quasi-experimental research method to investigate the study's objectives on a sample consisting of 952 engineering and business students. The study has also used the PLS-SEM approach to carry out the data analysis, and to evaluate the group differences among MBA and engineering students concerning the relationships investigated, i.e. leadership motivation-entrepreneurial potential, and achievement motivation-entrepreneurial potential.FindingsThis research has primarily made four findings. First, the study has found that there are statistically significant differences between students pursuing a business education, and those students who are seeking management education about their entrepreneurial potential. Second, this study demonstrates that leadership and achievement motivation are strongly associated with entrepreneurial potential. Third, this research shows that the achievement motivation-entrepreneurial potential is more substantial among engineering students than among business students. However, the leadership-entrepreneurial potential relationship is more influential among MBA students than among engineering students. Lastly, the effect size of leadership is small in comparison with the effect size of achievement motivation, which is substantially healthy.Originality/valueThis research has attempted to address the riddle of a leadership attribution error in the context of entrepreneurship. Accordingly, this study has demonstrated that the idea of leadership attribution error has empirical evidence in the context of entrepreneurship also. Further, this study has tried to address the “behavior-motive preeminence” dichotomy. The results of this research show that internal motivation is more reliable than external leadership behavior in cultivating the entrepreneurial potential of students.

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