Making the long and adventurous journey from quality to loyalty

Abstract

This paper analyses the antecedents of loyalty in a collaborative consumption (CC) setting, taking into account the mediating role of satisfaction and the fulfilment of expectations between perceived quality and loyalty. The methodological approach uses structural equation modelling, with a sample of 301 customers collected in Spain in June 2018. The CC-Qual scale of 21 items gathered under five dimensions assesses perceived quality, which is composed of three dimensions related to the platform (‘site organisation’, ‘platform responsiveness and agility’ and ‘legal protection and trustworthiness’), and two related to the service provided by the peer (‘peer service provider’ and ‘social interaction’). Both sets affect loyalty in the same way, through the mediation of the fulfilment of expectations and satisfaction. The model is useful for academics because it explains how the fulfilment of expectations and satisfaction mediate between quality and loyalty. This is also interesting for practitioners in a CC setting, where it is very easy for customers to change provider.

Keywords:

• collaborative consumption
• quality
• service
• sharing economy
• loyalty
• fulfilment of expectations

Acknowledgement

This article was written as part of a research project titled ‘improvement of quality in collaborative consumption companies: model, scale and loyalty (CC-Qual)’ (ref: rti 2018-096279-b-i00) funded by the ministry of science, innovation and universities of Spain within the aid programme for R&D ‘Retos de Investigación’ project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain [grant number RTI2018-096279-B-I00].