Building Credible Service Brands: Exploring the Mediating Role of Customer Trust in Driving Loyalty

Abstract

The central role in conditioning consumer responses in the service environment of intangibility and increased risk is brand credibility. This research will focus on the influence of brand credibility on customer trust and customer loyalty and evaluate whether customer trust is a mediating factor between credibility and customer loyalty. The sample of 300 service consumers was provided and the measurement and structural models were tested with the help of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results have shown that brand credibility has a significant positive effect on customer trust and customer loyalty. Customer loyalty, in its turn, is greatly increased by customer trust. The mediation analysis finds a partial mediating role of customer trust, which proves that trust is an important psychological process by which credibility reinforces the results of loyalty. This research makes a contribution to the body of service marketing literature by presenting solid-grounded evidence of the mechanisms through which brand credibility is related to service loyalty. Under managerial considerations, the findings indicate credibility-building programs and trust-enriching measures as being critical towards establishing better and more durable customer relationships.