Satisfaction and Loyalty in Local Food Festival: Do Switching Barriers Matter?

Abstract

In food tourism context, attracting customers and provision of satisfaction is of necessity. In accord with the call for empirical evidence within the extant literature, this study examines switching barriers and its role as moderator on the relationship between satisfaction and customer loyalty, at a food festival in Delhi, India. Switching barriers can be a vital factor for attracting more tourists into organized festivals, if implied adequately and maintained on a controlled manner. Creating switching barriers can be an effective approach for obtaining long-term visitors from marketing and tourism aspects. A questionnaire was designed specifically using related measures based on the literature. Various regression models were applied to estimate switching barriers’ effects and to further analyze our hypotheses. Interaction plot exhibited suppressing effect of switching barriers on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The results of this study found that the role of switching barriers is not merely statistically significant, but requires critical attention from organizers. JEL Classification: M3, M30, M31, M37, M39

Food tourism research in India – current trends and future scope

“…The last group examined tourists’ perception, satisfaction and revisit behaviors in relation to various constructs like street food, ethnic food, restaurant ambience, food quality, service quality, food image, food festivals, food neophobia and memorable experiences (Chatterjee and Suklabaidya, 2021; Kala, 2020; Khanna et al , 2022; Mawroh and Dixit, 2023; Payini et al , 2020; Piramanayagam et al , 2020; Zargar and Farmanesh, 2021). Religion, nationality and culture also influence consumer behavior in food tourism (Mekoth and Thomson, 2018).…”

“…Hence, the number of studies in India has been limited compared to those outside India. Food tourism research in India has been carried out under various themes, emerging role of food tourism (Chand et al , 2007; Sabari Shankar, 2022), foreign tourists’ culinary preferences (Updhyay and Sharma, 2014), using food tourism to market destinations (Abraham and Kannan, 2015; Kumar and Singh Rana, 2016; Mehul Krishna Kumar, 2019; Pal, 2020; Rana et al , 2018; Sahoo, 2020), importance of food tourism (Mohanty et al , 2020; Mohapatra, 2017), street foods and tourists experiences (Gupta et al , 2019a; Gupta et al , 2019b; Gupta and Sajnani, 2019; Khanna et al , 2022), sustainability using street foods (Panicker and Priya, 2021), food image and local cuisine (Chatterjee and Suklabaidya, 2021; Gupta et al , 2020), food culture and tourism (Mekoth and Thomson, 2018; Mohanty et al , 2020), slow food and tourism development (Ahlawat et al , 2019), food neophobia and food event revisit intentions (Payini et al , 2020), food tour experiences of tourists (Kaushal and Yadav, 2020), local food consumption experiences of tourists (Mawroh and Dixit, 2023; Piramanayagam et al , 2020), satisfaction and loyalty among local food festival visitors (Zargar and Farmanesh, 2021), measuring gastro-nostalgia among food festival visitors (Mandal et al , 2022) and development of a foodie scale (Setia et al , 2022).…”