| dc.description.abstract | With business rivalry getting fiercer, the most pressing issue that organizations must
address is how to gain customer loyalty and maximize client lifetime value. The focus of
Relationship Marketing Orientation is on building, developing, and maintaining a
positive customer relationship exchange. The fruitful relationship with customers is
expected to increase customer loyalty. Nonetheless, due to the competitive environment's
dynamics, the building and maintenance of client loyalty is becoming increasingly
difficult. As a result, it is necessary to assess the extent to which relationship marketing
approach and its parts of practice have a substantial and positive impact on client loyalty.
As such, this study sought to evaluate the adoption of relationship marketing orientation
and its effect on customer loyalty using a census of survey of fourteen (14) star-rated
hotels in North Rift Region of Kenya. The objectives included to: establish the effect of
service quality, customer emotions and customer perceptions on customer loyalty in
these star-rated hotels. It also examined whether hotel characteristics moderated the
effects of the relationship marketing orientation on customer loyalty. The study was
informed by three theories, namely Social Exchange Theory, Assimilation Theory and
Equity Theory. A cross-sectional research design was used to randomly sample 384
guests using a Multi-Stage Sampling Method from the hotel guests who visited the hotels
between January and June 2019. Data was collected using a questionnaire that was
issued to the respondents. The reliability of the questionnaire items was tested by use of
Cronbach Alpha Coefficient with a coefficient of 0.7. The validity of the questionnaire
items was evaluated using expert reviews. The findings were presented using descriptive
and inferential statitistics. Descriptive statitics entailed summarizing the data and
Multiple Linear Regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis on the effect of
relationship on Customer Loyalty. The moderating variable of hotel characteristics was
used in the moderated Multiple Linear Regression. The study found that service quality,
customer emotions and customer perceptions had a significantly strong positive
relationship with customer loyalty, with β coefficient values of 0.326, 0.248, and 0.829,
respectively, at p<0.05. The overall significance of the model was R
vii
2
=0.612, P<0.005.
The hotel characteristics (size, star-rating and location) were found to have a significant
effect in moderating the effect of Relationship Marketing Orientation on customer
loyalty. Therefore, the study concludes that service quality, customer emotions and
customer perceptions would have significant positive effect on customer loyalty and the
outcomes would vary with hotel characteristics of size, star-rating and the location of the
hotel. Therefore, the study recommends that, to gain customer loyalty, hotels need to
continuously improve on their service quality, customer emotions and customer
preceptions. Further, to gain from hotel characteristics proprietors should ensure the
hotel is easily accessible, and they should obtain favourable star-rating and continue
growing their business capacity to meet customers‘ expectations. | en_US |
