Scholars and practitioners have long acknowledged the importance of offering superior service quality in creating long-term bonds between customers and their brands. However, the importance of service quality as a tool to enhance customer engagement remains under-explored, as addressed in this study. Survey data collected from 395 luxury hotel guests were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results reveal a positive effect of service quality on customer engagement, which consequently exerts a favorable impact on brand experience and repatronage intent. Our moderation analysis results reveal a stronger effect of the proposed relationships for women than men, thereby suggesting gender’s moderating role in the association between service quality, brand experience, and customer engagement. The paper concludes by outlining key theoretical and practical implications that arise from this research.

Introduction

In the last few decades, a shift has occurred from transactional-to relationship marketing, with the latter stressing the importance of longterm, value-laden customer interactions and relationships (Boulding et al., 2005; Rosenbaum et al., 2017; Thakur, 2018). In line with this shifting perspective, new concepts have emerged, including customer engagement (Vivek et al., 2014 Islam and Rahman, 2016a). With its core centering on customers’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral investments in interactions (Hollebeek et al., 2019; Kumar et al., 2019), CE offers insight into the dynamics characterizing consumer/brand interactions that existing relational concepts, such as involvement or commitment, have failed to fully capture (Brodie et al., 2011). Consequently, CE has gained significant traction in the last decade, particularly in the service subsector given its centrality of customer/firm interactions that is also common to CE (Kumar and Pansari, 2016; Prentice and Loureiro, 2018). Correspondingly, leading firms such as Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, BMW, Louis Vuitton, Dell, and many others have incorporated CE in their strategic agenda (Manchanda et al., 2015; Islam et al., 2017). Given its interactive nature, CE is conducive to developing customer-based outcomes, including brand trust, attachment, and loyalty, thereby helping to differentiate firms and enhance sales, competitive advantage, and profitability (Brodie et al., 2013; Islam et al., 2018), thereby offering significant benefit for (service) managers Islam and Rahman, 2019. Based on these benefits, several studies have investigated CE in the hospitality sector that is characterized by high customer/firm interactivity (Ahn and Back, 2018; Rather et al., 2019; Rather and Hollebeek, 2019). In line with these developments, we explore the effect of service quality (SQ) on CE, which remains nebulous to date. Thus, while SQ was popularized through SERVQUAL from the 1980s (e.g. Parasuraman et al., 1988), its connection to CE remains tenuous. Enhanced understanding in this area would however be valuable in highlighting those service facets that are of particular value in engaging customers.