Impact of tacit knowledge on customer loyalty

ABSTRACT

Tacit knowledge about customers held by contact personnel is a priority for better satisfying customer needs and creating added value. This research project seeks to develop a model to analyse the impact of tacit knowledge on loyalty for rural tourism lodgings. A questionnaire was applied to the clients of rural tourism lodgings who had either already consumed rural tourism services at least once or were then currently consuming such services. By applying structural equation models, the results demonstrate how tacit knowledge does improve the performance of employees in engaging in affective bonds and enables better understanding of the needs and expectations of customers. Furthermore, the results confirm how tacit knowledge about customers represents a resource able to promote customer loyalty and thus a very strong potential source of competitive advantage.

KEYWORDS:

• Tacit knowledge
• trust
• affective commitment
• customer loyalty
• service quality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the project «UID/GES/04630/2013».