Social Customer Relationship Management Practices, Customer Empowerment And Loyalty Of Customers Of Hotels In The Central Region Of Ghana

Abstract

ABSTRACT In today's fast-evolving digital landscape, hotel businesses in Ghana are adopting social CRM practices to connect with customers and cultivate loyalty. This research, concentrating on the Ghanaian hotel sector, seeks to examine the influence of SCRM practices on CL, particularly focusing on the role of CE. The relationship theory and empowerment theory, positivism philosophy, quantitative research method, and explanatory research design were employed. A group of 370 hotel guests from central region of Ghana took active role in the study. The researcher employed IBM SPSS V27 to prepare the data and Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM v4) for data analysis. The findings showed that effectively implemented SCRM practices can significantly improve customer loyalty through customer empowerment. Moreover, the results discovered that CK had a negative effect on both CE and CL which rejected H1a. However, improvements in customer service quality, increased social media/online community usage, utilizing integrated marketing channels, and offering value-added services had a constructive effect on both CE and CL. Interestingly, despite the positive effect of online communities on loyalty its effect was non-significantly within the context. It was, therefore, recommended that hotel firms should foster customer empowerment by encouraging various psychological attachments, because the results revealed that market advantage favours the nimblest hotels that pawn the ever-changing market conditions and integrate real-time customer empowerment and SCRM practices.