This study aims to investigate the effect of communication effectiveness (CE) on service quality (SQ) and relationship quality (RQ) leading to customer loyalty (CL) in the context of a professional service where customers have difficulty in evaluating service quality confidently, even purchase, and consumption. CE was decomposed into frequency, bi-directionality and quality of communication while SQ was decomposed into functional and technical qualities, RQ into trust and relationship commitment, and CL into attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. The impact of seven key of explanatory variables is examined. The result supports the hypothesized model and shows that good CE with three dimensions can impact directly to SQ, but there is no influence of communication frequency to technical service quality. The dimension of RQ, relationship commitment has no influence on attitudinal loyalty but has a strong influence on behavioral loyalty. Detailed findings imply that quality and bi-directional SQ communication is more critical than frequency communication. Technical and functional SQ influencing the RQ. Trust and relationship commitment mediate the mutual influence on CL.
Keywords. communication effectiveness; service quality; trust; relationship quality; customer loyalty.