Service Quality On Customer Value, Customer Satisfaction And Customer Loyalty - Empirical Research On The Car Dealership Service Industry In Hangzhou

With the transition of market conditions from seller's to buyer's, which intensifies the competition further, marketing keystone has been turning from exchange to relationship unconsciously. Now relationship marketing has been on the academic and practical frontiers. Even in the field of consumer goods, there have been many illustrations which reveal people pay more attention to the relationship except for the conventional brand equity orientation. In this context, the author chose automotive dealer service as the research object and investigated the influence of service quality on customer value, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty on the basis of a lot of existing literature. It is expected that the explanation of how service quality affects customer loyalty will be useful to complete our understanding of service components in consumer goods industry.This thesis focused around two subjects. The first is to explore and confirm the constructs of service quality for automotive dealers and to evaluate the influence of each antecedent on overall service quality. The second is to investigate the interrelationships between service quality, customer value, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and to seek the explanation of how service quality affects customer loyalty. A conceptual model, including 5 antecedents of service quality and 6 hypotheses, was built up and also empirically tested in order to resolve them.A questionnaire survey was carried on among the Hangzhou private vehicle owners by quota sampling, in addition to individual interviews. 296 valid samples were collected out of 700 in two months with effective returns-ratio at 42.3%. The data has been tested and in accordance with the general rule of construct validity and reliabilityThe research model was empirically tested using SEM technology and found that (1)the five elements of service quality proposed by PZB were supported, and sorted them into enhancing and hygiene factors; (2)the direct effects of service quality, customer value and customer satisfaction on customer loyalty and the indirect effects of service quality and customer value on customer loyalty were supported; (3)the total effects of service quality, customer value and customer satisfaction on customer loyalty. To sum up, five out of six hypotheses were proofed.According to the conclusions, integrated investigation of the interrelationships between the four variables helps to understand the role of service quality to customer loyalty. While considering the complexity of the influence on customer loyalty, the limitations of this study are unavoidable, and some advices were suggested for subsequent research.