Service quality perceptions and customer loyalty in casinos

Abstract

Purpose – Building and maintaining service quality is one means of retaining customers and thus establishing competitive advantage in the casino industry. The current study aims to investigate the relationship between casino service quality, player segments and customer loyalty in an Asian casino.

Design/methodology/approach – The research involves the conduct of focus group interviews with different segments of gamblers.

Findings – The interview findings indicate that players at different segments have distinct perceptions of service quality. Operationalising service quality into five dimensions, this study has shown that various dimensions of service quality have differing effects on customer loyalty, and the level of loyalty varies across different segments.

Research limitations/implications – It is insufficient to view service quality as the customer's judgement about an entity's overall excellence or superiority as has been defined in the services literature. Differing perceptions and attitudes arise with customers of different segments and are resultant from the variety of service encounters that a customer experiences. To obtain positive customer perceptions towards the organisation's service quality, it is advisable to manage each service encounter closely and to develop service encounters nuanced to the expectations of different segments.

Originality/value – This is the first study to incorporate customer pyramid segmentation approach into the analysis of the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty. It provides insights into the relationship between service quality, customer segments and customer loyalty through interviewing casino customers of different segments based on customers' services preferences and the card segmentation system employed by the survey casino