RETRACTED ARTICLE: Examining the Effect of Customer-to-Customer Interactions on Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Word-of-Mouth Behaviors in the Hospitality Industry: The Mediating Role of Personal Interaction Quality and Service Atmospherics

Abstract

Few empirical studies have been conducted to explore how customer-to-customer interactions (CCI) affect satisfaction, loyalty, and word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviors in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to address this knowledge gap. Then, the paper examines the mediating role of personal interaction quality (PIQ) and service atmospherics on CCI, satisfaction, and loyalty behaviors. The study proposes a structural model of the relationships among CCI, satisfaction, loyalty, WOM, PIQ, and service atmospherics in the context of the hospitality industry. The hypothesized relationships are then tested in an empirical study with a sample of 200 guests of Laleh Hotels in the area of Tehran.The subjects were asked to complete a self-administrated questionnaire using a convenience-sampling approach. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, one sample t-test, and structural equation modeling were employed to analyze guests' perceptions of the research constructs. The results show that: 1) service atmospherics has a significant impact on CCI and hotel satisfaction, 2) personal interaction quality has a significant impact on hotel satisfaction and hotel loyalty, 3) hotel satisfaction has a significant impact on hotel loyalty and hotel WOM, and 4) CCI is significantly associated with hotel loyalty and hotel WOM.Meysam Fakharyan has a Master of Marketing from the Young Researchers Club, Firozkoh Branch,

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“…People belonging to the millennial group express their emotions via word of mouth which has a positive and significant impact on buying decision satisfaction (β = .371, P< .05) results of the study are in direction to our H3 which is also supported by literature (Chung & Darke, 2006;Soderlund & Rosengren, 2007;Podnar & Javernik, 2012;Jamil & Hasnu 2013;Fakharyan et al, 2014) …”

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