The Influence Of Switching Costs On Customer Retention Of Economy Hotels

In the background of Chinese tourism industry for transformation and upgrading, the development of the hotel industry has entered a period of adjustment in order to upgrade.In recent years, the rapid development of the Economy Hotel has become a highlight of the hotel industry.With competition intensified, low customer retention rate has always bothered economy hoteliers.The switching costs in maintaining customer relationship can not be neglected, which is related to the sustainable development of the hotel.So based on the Cognitive-Affective-Behavioral theory and Investment Model theory, from two key points of switching costs and customer retention, this article explored the effects of switching costs of Economy Hotel on customer retention,including direct effect different dimensions of switching costs on customer retention and moderating effect different dimensions of switching costs on the relationship between customer retention and its antecedent variables(customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, and customer trust).On the basis of the review on related research achievements about switching cost, customer retention, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction and customer trust, this thesisrefined the research subject,and raised the related hypotheses.Through questionnaire survey on Economy Hotel customers,this article obtained basic data and used SPSS19.0 software to do descriptive statistics analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis on the effective data.Through the empirical analysis, the research conclusions finally obtained are as follows:(1) the customer perceived value, customer satisfaction and customer trust have significant positive effects on customer retention;(2)procedural switching costs, financial switching costs have significant positive effects on customer retention,but the Relational switching costs has no significant positive effect on customer retention;(3) different dimensions of switching costs have moderating effects on the relationship between customer retention and its antecedent variables(customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, customer trust).This study enriches the research of switching costs and customer retention,inspired Economy Hoteliers to retain customers and has a certain theoretical significance for the sustainable development of Economy Hotel. At last, based on the above conclusions, this paper put forward some suggestions to retain potential customers and existing customers for theEconomy Hotel operators and managers.