Title: An empirical study of factors affecting customer loyalty – Taiwan high-speed rail service industry as an example

Authors: Chin-Hung Liu, Shih-Kai Liao

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, 35, Lane 215, Sec. 1, Chung-Shan RD., Taiping City, Taichung County 411, Taiwan. ' Department of Business Administration, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, 35, Lane 215, Sec. 1, Chung-Shan RD., Taiping City, Taichung County 411, Taiwan

Abstract: Since opening in January 2007, High-Speed Rail (HSR) service has gradually gained its competitive advantage in inter-city transportations along western Taiwan. Therefore, this study is aimed to explore the effects among Taiwan High-Speed Rail (THSR) Corporation|s service quality, complaint handling, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The subjects of this study are passengers of THSR Corporation. A questionnaire is administered to collect research data, and statistic analyses are further conducted to find out the current operations of THSR Corporation and verify the relationships and effects among the proposed factors. The research results reveal that service quality, complaint handling and total customer satisfaction would significantly and positively influence customer loyalty; different lifestyles of passengers would also significantly influence |service quality|, |complaint handling|, |total customer satisfaction| and |customer loyalty|; some of the demographic variables would lead to significant differences in the perceptions of service quality, complaint handling, total customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Keywords: THSR; Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation; railways; service quality; service recovery; total customer satisfaction; competitive advantage; customer loyalty; inter-city transportation; complaint handling; passengers; lifestyles; questionnaires; demographic variables; service operations; informatics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOI.2010.031114

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics, 2010 Vol.5 No.2, pp.130 - 157

Published online: 21 Jan 2010 *

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