Research Information System
International Conference on Business and Technology (ICBT), İstanbul, Turkey, 6 - 07 November 2021, vol.485, pp.783-804, (Full Text)
Since customers are the ultimate perceivers or definers of their experiences, so they may carry different meanings and interpretations of 'luxury'. Some may perceive 'luxury' when the state of satisfaction or delight is achieved, whereas for others, 'luxury' may be experienced when one feels an enhancement in his/her well-being resulting from a service experience. However, service providers nowadays are also trying to enhance customer well-being which is considered something beyond customer satisfaction as per contemporary service literature. Therefore, this research aims to re-interpret luxury hospitality from the experienscape perspective to predict perceived well-being (a human-centric outcome) through customer satisfaction (a behavioral affective reaction) in the context of Malaysian beach resort hotels. Using a questionnaire as a research instrument, data was collected from beach resort hotel guests who stayed at any one of the fifteen 5-star and 4-star beach resort hotels located in Langkawi, Malaysia. A total of 306 responses were obtained from the beach resort hotel guests, using a convenience and snowball sampling approach. A significant and positive effect of functional, natural, and cultural experienscape on customer satisfaction was found, while sensory and social experienscape had a non-significant impact on customer satisfaction. Also, there was a significant and positive effect of social and natural experienscape on perceived well-being, while sensory, functional, and cultural experienscape had a non-significant effect on perceived well-being. Moreover, there was a significant impact of customer satisfaction on perceived well-being and customer satisfaction also mediates the relationship between experienscape components and perceived well-being. Our findings are theoretically meaningful as it is the first empirical research that translated 'luxury' through the interaction between experienscape and perceived well-being through the mediation of customer satisfaction in the context of beach resort hotels.