Customer loyalty in the sport services industry: the role of service quality, customer satisfaction, commitment and trust

Abstract

Despite the fact that customer loyalty is essential for business survival, the relationship between perceived service quality and customer loyalty remained relatively underdeveloped and a review of these studies indicates that validity and reliability issues have yet to be fully addressed. This shortage is more intense in the context of sport and there have been very limited attempts to investigate the relationship between service quality and loyalty in the context of sport. This study examined the generalizability of a previously validated model concerning how customer perceptions of quality of services provided affect customer loyalty in the sport services industry. For this, data were collected from 437 sport service users include some different sport area. The a priori proposed model concerning service quality perceptions and customer loyalty was tested using structural equation modeling techniques. The proposed model was determined to fit the data reasonably well. These results indicate that customer loyalty can be explained by customers’ perceptions of the service quality of sport services provider. The theoretical and practical implications of the model within the framework of sport services management are discussed.