Modelling determinants of customer loyalty in services sector across different cultural contexts

Research on customer loyalty in services has regained interest among academics and practitioners alike because of economic value that international service providers can gain across different cultures due to recent developments in communications technology. International service providers have a wider variety of communication channels to use to approach their customers, but they need a better understanding of how their customer loyalty is formed across different cultures. In this conceptual paper, the authors aim to model determinants of customer loyalty and put forward propositions to be empirically tested in further studies. The originality of the paper manifests itself in the theoretical model proposed, which clearly delineates determinants of customer loyalty (i.e., marketing communication channels, perceived service quality and customer satisfaction) and emphasises the importance of strategic decisions about communication channel options to match customer preferences to predict combined effects of customer loyalty across different cultural contexts