Perceived Service Quality and Customer Loyalty Among Third-Party Logistics
Keywords:
Customer loyalty, Negros Occidental, Service quality, SERVQUAL, Third-party logisticsAbstract
This study examined the service quality of third-party logistics (3PL) providers in Negros Occidental, Philippines, as a predictor of customer loyalty, employing an exploratory descriptive-correlational research design. The participants were 39 logistics managers from 15 companies who, owing to their direct involvement in managing third-party logistics (3PL) operations, were well positioned to assess the service quality of their 3PL providers. Because warehouses within the same company may share contracts, procurement policies, 3PL providers, and management, the responses were treated as clustered rather than independent, and the findings are reported as exploratory. The study used the SERVQUAL framework to assess the perceived service quality of these providers across five dimensions, namely tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy, while customer loyalty was measured using Oliver’s (1997) four-phase loyalty model encompassing cognitive, affective, conative, and action loyalty. Spearman’s rank-order correlation and simple linear regression were used as exploratory inferential tools, and the resulting p-values were interpreted as indicative rather than confirmatory. Results revealed that all five perceived service quality dimensions were rated fair, with empathy obtaining the highest mean (M=2.05) and responsiveness the lowest (M=1.56). Across all four loyalty phases, conative loyalty registered the highest disagreement (M = 1.00), indicating a complete absence of re-patronage intentions. In this exploratory analysis, perceived service quality was not significantly correlated with customer loyalty and did not significantly predict customer loyalty, F(1,37)=0.25, p=.622, accounting for only 0.7% of the variance in customer loyalty. These exploratory findings detected no evidence of a direct service quality-to-loyalty association in this setting; given the small, clustered sample, they are inconclusive and need confirmation, and customer loyalty among 3PL-utilizing warehouses in Negros Occidental may be shaped by factors beyond service quality perceptions alone. The study suggests that 3PL providers in the province of Negros Occidental may benefit from improving delivery reliability, complaint resolution systems, personnel competence, and empathetic service practices to build sustainable customer relationships.
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