Sevicescape and customer loyalty of high-end rural homestay in China: a case study of Beijing / Zhang Yuting and Mazlina Mahdzar

• Main Authors: Yuting, Zhang, Mahdzar, Mazlina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Hotel & Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA 2024
• Subjects: Homestay; Rural industries
• Online Access: https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/97750/1/97750.pdf; https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/97750/; https://www.jthca.org/

High-end rural homestay is an emerging accommodation product in China in the context of rural revitalization. This study aims to explain its servicescape and explore the relationship between the servicescape and customer loyalty in high-end rural homestay. The study adopts user-generatedcontent analysis with grounded theory to identify the dimensions and relevant attributes of servicescape in 1502 reviews of high-end rural homestay in China, which was reported by customers on the Tujia.com platform. A total of three dimensions comprising Physical Environment, Social Environment, and Complementary offering and twelve attributes were constructed and used in this study. The findings from the attributes highlighted that physical environment are more frequently than those in social environment, while this reversed in the reviews of loyal customers. Moreover, loyal customers’ reviews and ordinary customers’ are compared to figure out that there are some differences between the specific attributes (rural setting, service attitude, visitor-to-visitor interaction, visitor-tostaff interaction, homestay location, local cuisine, entertainment/leisure activities), which are more frequently contributing to customer loyalty, thereby providing relevant theoretical and managerial information.