Title: Testing the relationship between hotel service quality and hotel brand personality

Authors: Dimitrios Nikolaidis; Sotiria Christina Chrysikou; Kostas Alexandris

Addresses: City College, International Faculty of the University of Sheffield 3, Leontos Sofou Str., 7th Floor, 546 26 Thessaloniki, Greece ' City College, International Faculty of the University of Sheffield 3, Leontos Sofou Str., 7th Floor, 546 26 Thessaloniki, Greece ' Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of PE and Sport Science, Thermi Campus, 54124, Greece

Abstract: This study aimed to test the influence of service quality on the development of brand personality in the context of five-star hotels. One hundred and sixty one (N = 161) Greek individuals, who had experienced staying in five-star hotels in Greece participated in the study. They filled adjusted versions of the SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988) and brand personality (Aaker, 1997) questionnaires. The confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the factorial validity of the two models in the context of the study. The results of the path analysis showed that all the brand personality dimensions were significantly predicted from the five service quality dimensions, with the sincerity and excitement dimensions being the two most highly predicted ones. Furthermore, the tangible and empathy dimensions of service quality were the strongest contributors towards the prediction of all the dimensions of hotel brand personality. The theoretical and applied implications of these results are discussed.

Keywords: hotel service quality; hotel brand personality; luxury hotels; hotel services; hotel brands; five-star hotels; Greece; SERVQUAL.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHEM.2016.082170

International Journal of Hospitality and Event Management, 2016 Vol.1 No.4, pp.355 - 369

Received: 30 Apr 2016
Accepted: 24 Jul 2016
Published online: 09 Feb 2017 *

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