Investigating the Mediating Role of Perceived Corporate Reputation on the Relationship between Customer Satisfaction, Customer Trust, and Loyalty: A Study of Lebanese Hotels

Abstract

The last decades have observed an escalating growth of research on corporate reputation because of its importance as a source of competitive advantage. Service industries rely on corporate reputation to differentiate themselves from competitors, and to send different signals to multiple stakeholders about their performance. Nevertheless reputation in the hotel industry can be damaged easily because of the intangibility and the simultaneous production and consumption of provided services. In addition, reputation had a significant role in hotels’ recovery in Lebanon during the post COVID-19 period where reputed hotels were able to survive and recover faster. The current paper examined the influence of customer satisfaction and trust on perceived corporate reputation and customer loyalty among 135 hotel customers in Lebanon using path analysis with AMOS23 software. The results showed that customers in the hotel context in Lebanon exhibited no loyalty towards their hotels. Moreover, customer trust and customer satisfaction has a great role in influencing perceived corporate reputation.