| Customer satisfaction has been a focus of researchers and marketers as an important antecedent of customer loyalty. Research has proven that satisfied customers show loyalty by purchasing more products or services, recommending products to others, and being less price sensitive (Anderson, Fornell, and Mazvancheryls, 2004; Homburg, Koschate, and Hoyer, 2005). Recent studies propose customer delight as a new variable of interest in satisfaction research and are anticipated to possibly produce greater customer loyalty than satisfaction (Hicks, Page, Behe, Dennis, and Fernandez, 2005). Like customer satisfaction, customer loyalty is also considered crucial to the success of a business organization because loyal customers are less expensive to retain than to find and develop new customers (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990). In recent years interest has also grown in understanding the multi-phases of loyalty as a useful way to segment customers with differential strategies (Knox and Walker, 2001; McMullan and Gilmore, 2002; Palmer, McMahon-Beattie, and Beggs, 2000).;The problem of this research is to examine the impact of customer satisfaction and delight on loyalty by empirically testing a model. Furthermore, the study aims to better understand four phases of loyalty development: cognitive, affective, conative, and action loyalties. Data were collected from guests who stayed at a Midwestern resort during a peak summer vacation time using an online and a paper survey (1,573 subjects from an online survey, 87 subjects from a paper survey). The model was tested applying structural equation modeling (SEM) to estimate the relationship between customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty in a tourism and hospitality context.;The findings support the proposed model and suggest that (1) customer satisfaction has a direct and positive influence on cognitive and affective loyalty; (2) customer delight has a direct and positive influence on cognitive and affective loyalty; (3) customer satisfaction has a greater influence on cognitive loyalty than on customer delight; (4) customer delight has a greater influence on affective loyalty than on customer satisfaction; (5) cognitive and affective loyalties have a direct and positive influence on conative loyalty; and (6) conative loyalty has a direct and positive influence on action loyalty.;This study is one of few empirical studies on customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty and tests a more comprehensive model than previous research efforts. This study will contribute to the body of knowledge on customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty and provide important theoretical and applied suggestions for the tourism and hospitality industry. Future studies should replicate the findings and test the model with different samples such as types of accommodations (e.g., motel, business hotel, bed and breakfast), places (e.g., other states, other countries), and service industries (e.g., restaurant, airline, cruise). With attitudinal research, validating the accuracy of action loyalty or intended future behaviors should be validated with actual measures of future returns to the business and recommendations of the business to others. |
