The Impact of Brand Experience on Customer Citizenship Behavior among Airlines’ Passengers: An Examination of the Mediating Roles of Brand Relationship Quality, Affective Commitment, and Brand Loyalty.

This study investigates the significance of brand experience in deciding customer citizenship behavior with the mediating roles of brand relationship quality, affective commitment, and brand loyalty for airline passengers of 20 international airline brands operating on international routes to and from Pakistan. The stimulus-organism-response model served as an overarching theory for the conceptual model. However, social exchange and brand relationship theories also helped explain the interaction among study constructs. This cross-sectional survey research followed the positivist research philosophy. This study used quota and purposive sampling techniques. Thereby, three major cities: Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, yielded 395 credible responses from international air travelers of Pakistani descent. PLS-SEM is used to evaluate structural model relationships between constructs. This study demonstrates the significance of the direct relationship between brand experience and customer citizenship behavior, with the multiple and serial mediation effects of brand relationship quality, affective commitment, and brand loyalty in the relationship between brand experience and customer citizenship behavior. The findings show that brand experience has a robust direct effect on customer citizenship behavior. Other significant direct effects include the impact of brand experience on brand loyalty and the effect of brand relationship quality on customer citizenship behavior. The significant mediating relationships include the mediating role of brand relationship quality between brand experience and brand loyalty, the mediation effect of brand loyalty between brand experience and customer citizenship behavior, and the mediating role of brand loyalty in the relationship between brand relationship quality and customer citizenship behavior. This study made a significant theoretical contribution to the larger body of knowledge by extending the S-O-R model and the brand relationship theory. This study will help brand managers implement campaigns to capture airline passengers’ experiences. It will help future studies understand the use of hierarchical component models in SEM and operationalize brand experience construct in the airline industry context