The Impact of Brand Experience, Brand Image, And Customer Support on Brand Loyalty Mediated Via Brand Trust Among Hotel Consumers in Liaoning Province, China

Abstract

The hotel industry in China has experienced profound changes in consumer expectations, service experiences, digital interactions, and brand competition.Consumer expectations, service experiences, digital interactions, and brand competition have all undergone significant transformation in the hotel industry in China. Building brand trust is a key strategy that can give hotel brands a positive perception and experience of guests that will bring about ongoing loyalty in this context. To explore the effect of brand experience and brand image on brand trust of the hotel consumers in Liaoning Province, China, the present study is conducted. The trust of the brand is now considered as the most important relational instrument in the development of brand loyalty between the consumer's perception of the brand and the building of the brand. The theory applied in this study is brand experience theory, brand equity theory based on customer's theory and relationship marketing theory. The brand experience is defined as the conceptualization of the brand's experience through the sensory, affective, behavioural, and intellectual responses that are elicited by hotel stimuli and service encounters and the brand image is defined as the general associations and perceptions that consumers have about a brand of hotel. Customer support is also included in the conceptual discussion because service recovery, service responsiveness, communicating with the customer, and providing customer post-purchase assistance can aid in the process of building trust, but these two are not included in the two proposed hypotheses. This study is based on quantitative research method and structured questionnaire is recommended for the hotel consumers of Liaoning Province. The analytical technique of this research is descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis and structural equation modelling. The results of the statistical processing given as illustration indicate that there is a positive correlation between brand experience with brand trust as well as between the brand image with brand trust. The proposed model also demonstrates a significant relationship between the brand trust and brand loyalty, thus confirming the role of brand trust as one of the main process investigated in the studies on the relationship of the Hotel brand. The findings provide suggestions for hotel managers on experiential design, positioning, ensuring service consistency, communication quality, and trust building mechanisms. The study has brought a geographically based model of the relationship between hotel brands in Liaoning Province, and set up a model framework for further empirical research of primary consumer data.