Effects of Selection Attributes on Satisfaction and Loyalty of Multiplex Cinemas : Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Purpose - As the growth potential of the cultural contents industry steadily grows, the cinemas industry is growing fast especially due to popularity and commerciality. The recent in the cinemas industry is evolving on multiplex cinemas that combine cultural facilities such as theaters, restaurants, and shopping centers. Due to the rapid growth of multiplex cinemas, many researchers have studied the characteristics of visiting customers in Korea. Among them, selection attribute of multiplex cinemas, including the service quality and physical environment, is important because it may examines the cause of customer 's behavior. Thus, this research focuses on the effects of the selection attributes of the multiplex cinemas on customer satisfaction and their loyalty. This research suggests the guidelines for how cinemas should manage their customers and build their customers satisfaction and loyalty that improve business performance. Research design, data, and methodology - This study tests the structural relationship between selection attributes of multiplex cinemas, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. selection attributes of multiplex cinemas divide into five sub-dimensions such as movies facility quality, services, cleanliness, accessibility, and snack bars quality. In order to examine the purposes of this research, research model and hypotheses were developed. All constructs were measured with multiple items developed and tested in the previous studies. The data were collected from 100 students in their 10-20s and were analyzed using SPSS 22.0, SmartPLS 3.0 and fsQCA program. Result - The findings of this research are as follows. First, all selection attributes except cleanliness have significant positive impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Second, customer satisfaction has significant positive impact on loyalty. Third, as a result of fsQCA, high satisfaction and high accessibility were the necessary conditions on loyalty. Fourth, the necessary conditions for male and female groups were different. Conclusions - The implications of this study are as follows. Overall, multiplex cinemas should manage selection attributes basically regardless of the type of theater. Especially, cleanliness was not significant, but the customer probably consider it an essential and basic factors. Also, they are able to manage the selection attributes differently depending on the type of gender. For the male customers, it is effective that centralized strategy and for female customers, it is effective that emphasized the multiplex cinemas image.