Predictors of customer loyalty in the Pakistani banking industry: a moderated-mediation study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an original framework to explore the effects of social influence (SI), market orientation (MO) and service quality (SQ) with moderating effect of emotional intelligence (EI) on customer loyalty (CL) and to discuss the mediational role of customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – This study applies six original concepts – SI, MO, SQ, EI, customer satisfaction to develop an integral model to enhance CL. In addition, this research employs an empirical study by means of the questionnaire survey method to verify the hypotheses and to explore its managerial implications. Structural equation modeling has been applied to verify the research framework. Findings – The empirical results show that MO, SI and SQ significantly affect CL with presence of customer satisfaction as a mediator. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the direct relationships between MO and SI on CL are not supported. However indirect paths present full mediation except in case of SQ where mediation was partial. Moreover, EI was found to enhance the partially mediated relationship between SQ and CL with mediational role customer satisfaction. Hence, banks should invest resources to increase MO, SI and SQ to increase customer satisfaction and CL. Originality/value – This study summarizes the literature on customer satisfaction and relationship marketing into a new managerial framework of CL. It utilizes new arrangement of four construct – SI, MO, and SQ with EI – to develop an original framework to enhance CL. Although past research has highlighted the relevant issues about CL, none explores it with MO and moderating role of EI on SQ. Therefore, this paper develops the research framework of CL to fill the research gap specifically in Pakistani context.