Do Relationship Marketing Constructs Enhance Consumer Retention? An Empirical Study Within the Hotel Industry

Abstract

The increasing growth of new hotels in the Malaysian domestic market indicates that the hospitality and tourism industry is growing rapidly. As a result, there will be high competition as customers can easily switch from one hotel to the other. Therefore, to maintain competition in the market, it is crucial for hotels to recognize the importance of conflict handling, trust, and customer commitment in maintaining good relationships with their customers. Hence, the objective of this study is to study, relationship marketing constructs such as conflict handling, trust, and commitment are evaluated based on their direct and indirect relationships with customer retention. Overall, 188 questionnaires were collected from hotel guests in Malaysia to evaluate the structural relationships between these constructs and the performance of the measurement model using SmartPLS 3.2.3. Moreover, the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) was used to identify measures that could be utilized to enhance management activities. The research outcomes of this study indicated that customer retention is directly influenced by conflict handling, whereas customer engagement is directly affected by trust, conflict handling, and commitment. However, conflict handling, commitment, and trust indirectly affected customer retention via customer engagement. The IPMA also revealed several aspects to help decision-makers and managers prioritize their actions efficiently. The results of this study revealed that customer engagement and conflict handling had the highest effect, whereas commitment and customer engagement had the highest performance on customer retention in the hotel industry. Therefore, to maintain customer loyalty, it is recommended that hotel managers prioritize their customers’ complaints and resolve them effectively.