The relative impacts of physical, social and e-servicescape on the resort hotel guest loyalty

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to uncover the impacts of the three forms of servicescape namely physical, social, and e-servicescape on customer loyalty in the context of resort hotels, as well as to what extent place attachment explains the underlying mechanisms of these direct relationships. Servicescape essentially refers to the physical environment of a resort hotel in which guests experience the service. This study is underpinned by the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework and place attachment theory, employing a questionnaire survey as the main method of data collection. A total of 549 resort hotel guests, selected using purposive sampling technique participated in this study. The PLS-SEM is used to analyse the data. The results showed that all dimensions of the three forms of servicescape, except for social density (social servicescape) have significant impacts on customer loyalty. Regarding the mediation roles of place attachment, represented by either place dependence or place identity, the findings indicated that place attachment mediated the relationships between the dimensions of all three servicescape forms and loyalty, except for ambient conditions (physical servicescape) and social density (social servicescape).