An empirical examination of passenger loyalty and its antecedents in the global cruise industry : A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Lincoln University

Abstract

Cruise ships are an inclusive service as they are responsible for providing transport, accommodation, food, entertainment and recreation for their customers. Cruise ships operate in a competitive tourism marketing environment and they must provide a high level of service quality for their passengers. Research that develops a meticulous and robust cruise service quality model will make a valuable contribution to the cruise industry. In addition, examining the interrelationships among cruise service quality, cruise line image, passenger satisfaction and passenger loyalty is vitally important for cruise ship management to develop effective marketing strategies. This research uses comprehensive hierarchical modelling to determine the primary dimensions and sub-dimensions of cruise service quality and to examine the interrelationships among the four higher-order constructs: cruise service quality, cruise line image, passenger satisfaction and passenger loyalty. The roles of cruise line image and passenger participation as mediator variable in the modelling framework are also tested. The gender effect on all of the constructs under investigation is also examined. The data were collected from passengers of medium, large and mega cruise ships that visited Akaroa (New Zealand) and Benoa (Bali, Indonesia) port of calls, during the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 cruise seasons. Three dyadic interviews and a pre-test were conducted before data collection. Preliminary data analysis, exploratory factor analysis, structural equation modelling and an independent sample t-test are used to analyse the data. The results reveal that cruise service quality is a multidimensional construct with a hierarchical structure having 10 first-order sub-dimensions, four second-order primary dimensions (interaction quality, physical environment quality, outcome quality and social factors), and one third-order dimension (cruise service quality). Social factors are the most important primary dimension of cruise service quality, followed by physical environment quality, outcome quality and interaction quality. For the interrelationships among the four higher-order constructs, the results show that cruise service quality and cruise line image are the antecedents of passenger satisfaction and cruise line image and passenger satisfaction are the antecedents of passenger loyalty. The empirical results confirm that cruise line image and passenger participation are mediator variables in the modelling framework. No gender effect on cruise service evaluation was found. An epilogue chapter discusses the possible impacts of COVID-19 on the current results and the development of future cruise service quality models.