Factors influencing customer loyalty to educational tour buses and measurement invariance across urban and rural zones

Abstract

The study analyses factors that influence the loyalty behaviour of educational tour bus users in Thailand. Factors that are examined include consumer service expectations, service quality perceptions, satisfaction, trust, perceived value, commitment, past experience, and competitor attractiveness; these variables are studied via application of structural equation modelling. According to the study results, user satisfaction and perceived value of bus services imposed significant and direct influences on loyalty levels (p < .001), whereas service expectations, service quality perceptions, and past experiences indirectly affected loyalty levels. However, as the hypothesis that the model parameters show invariance between urban and rural areas was not proven, separate models for the two zones must be developed to determine appropriate policies for both areas. The intention of this study is to provide guidelines that assist educational tour bus owners in developing services that are suitable and safe according to user needs.

Keywords:

• educational tour bus
• satisfaction and loyalty
• transportation
• service quality
• multi-groups structural equation modelling

Acknowledgement

The researchers would like to express their gratitude to all the schools that cooperated in the completion of the questionnaire. Besides, we would like to thank Suranaree University of Technology, which offered a scholarship and Enago (www.enago.com) for the English language review.