Customer loyalty in the kids café business: the role of relationship benefits

ABSTRACT

This study explores the positive relationships between the three dimensions of relationship benefits (confidence benefits, social benefits, and special treatment benefits), attitudinal loyalty (consumer emotion and customer commitment), and behavioral intention in the Kids’ café segment. To test the proposed hypotheses, structural equation modeling was utilized based on data from a total of 263 customers visiting Kids cafés in South Korea. The current study demonstrated the role of relationship benefits as a key determinant of attitudinal loyalty (customer emotion, customer commitment) and behavioral loyalty in an emerging business paradigm of Kids’ café services. The results offer insight not only into how the salient constructs might impact behavioral loyalty but also provide practical guidelines for enhancing the effectiveness of relationship benefits thus helping facilitate behavioral loyalty in the strategic relationship marketing practices of Kids cafés.

KEYWORDS:

• Kids café
• relationship marketing
• attitudinal loyalty
• behavioral loyalty

Disclosure statement

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