Attitudinal and Behavioural Loyalty amongst casino players in Macau

Abstract

Since delivering high quality service tends to improve the loyalty of valued customers, operators should have an understanding of how such customers react to the provision of such experiences. The current investigation was undertaken in Macau casinos and explored the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty, with the latter operationalized on the basis of attitudinal and behavioural dimensions. The researchers used a quantitative method to explore this relationship amongst gamblers characterised by low, medium or high visiting frequency. The segments that were chosen for analysis purposes were consistent with a commonly used approach to segmentation within the survey casinos. Service quality was measured by using a newly developed four dimensional scale (CASERV). The results indicate that service quality explains significant variance in customer loyalty. In particular, Service environment and service delivery make substantial contributions to both attitudinal and behavioural loyalty. However, when analysing the relationship separately for VIP and non-VIP players, service quality has minimal influence on the behavioural loyalty of the latter group. Implications of these findings are provided for practitioners and researchers.