“Impact of laptop dealer firm’s service quality on customers’ loyalty in Jordan”

This study aims to investigate how various aspects of service quality in laptop dealer companies affect customers’ loyalty in Jordan. Data were collected from 341 Jordanian clients of dealer firms selling laptops in Jordan (HP, LG, Toshiba, Apple, Samsung, Sony, and Dell). Collected data were then analyzed; the hypotheses were assessed with the help of SPSS and structural equation modeling. The findings showed that customers’ loyalty is significantly impacted by reliability, accessibility to service, and safety. Furthermore, the value of beta represents relative importance. The dimension of safety showed the highest level in size of the impact on customers’ loyalty, and its value was 0.446 of the total impact. Next, the access to service dimension was the second factor in the impact size (0.239), and the reliability dimension demonstrated the smallest impact size with 0.146. Additionally, the findings revealed that reliability, access to service, and safety explain 52% of the variance in customers’ loyalty to purchase a laptop in Jordan. As a result, the study recommends that Jordanian laptop dealer firms consider all three service quality characteristics, particularly safety, to maintain the loyalty of their customers.


INTRODUCTION
At both the management and marketing levels, quality dimensions of service (safety, reliability, and access to service) and customers' loyalty have been seen as having a close connection. The concepts of service quality and loyalty of customers', in particular, have gotten significant attention in marketing due to their impact on consumers' purchasing power. Service loyalty is regarded as one of the most crucial elements in service marketing. Devoted clients with significant purchasing power are the cornerstone of any organization. However, even though these two ideas have been frequently employed in marketing literature, their connection still needs to be clarified (Kheng et al., 2020).
In the realm of information and communication, laptops have recently attracted much attention because they are portable gadgets. Currently they serve as both an open window and a multipurpose tool. More and more people are using laptops for work, school, banking, commerce, communications, and other facets of life. Laptops are crucial for businesses like hospitals, banks, schools, universities, and telecommunication corporations. Companies that manufacture laptops, including Toshiba, HP, Dell, Lenovo, and others, swiftly joined the Jordanian market. These days, laptops are an essential part of online education for colleges and institutions, which improves student contact and interactivity (Shajrawi, 2016). However, there are few studies on under-

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES
Quality has recently come to have a prominent position in both international and domestic marketplaces. According to Bel-Hassan (2012), quality is the capacity to realize the desires of consumers in a way that fulfills their expectations and pleasure, which is why this age is known as the "Quality era." Quality is described by Al-Rousan and Badruddin (2010) as a product's ability to satisfy customers by meeting their demands, which are present in daily existent areas such as healthcare, education, and telecommunications. According to Shajrawi (2021), a service is an intangible activity that may be provided by one party to another to meet the demands and satisfy a consumer's interests. According to Kotler and Armstrong (2012), a "service" is any intangible activity or utility the producing party may provide to a third party to meet the client's demands.
Service quality has become a significant problem in the field of marketing. It has been dealt with through its characteristics. As defined by Shajarawi (2021), performance arises from customers' beliefs as an evaluation process of service levels. Parasuraman et al. (1988) researched the difference between customers' capabilities and service performance. According to Zeleke (2012), reliability is how well a company will fulfill its delivery, service, problem-solving ability, and pricing obligations. Archakova (2013) clarified that safety is the ability to work at a high level for a short period and securely provide a service to some customers. Majid (2007) emphasized that providing the service to a customer in a safe and risk-free environment is what is meant by safety. Halwaz and Damour (2012) explained the service access as the ability of customer's to use the service at preferred location and time. Customers' loyalty is a comparison between customers' attitudes and behavior to repurchase products and services. Zeithaml et al. (1996) clarified that customers' loyalty is the customers' behavior to repurchase different products or services from the same firm. Bloemer and Kasper (1995) claim that loyalty is measured or evaluated by repeat purchasing of a product, service, or brand from the same company. As Kotler et al. (1999) noted, the cost to attract new customers is more than the cost to retain a present customer.
The application of specialized skills through procedures, operations, and actions for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself is defined by some researchers as a type of service. The concept of quality of service has not been addressed or precisely defined. A review of the existing literature has shown that research has approached the concept from a production viewpoint and a customer's viewpoint. Production viewpoints focus on a product's objective or technical quality and standardized product measurement. In contrast, customers' viewpoints focus on customers' perceptions or quality in a customer eye. Due to the complex nature of quality, the customers' perspective has become the dominant method for defining service quality in research (Akter et al., 2019).
Kiran and Diljit (2011) revealed that service quality and value positively impact customers' satisfaction and loyalty. Binnawas et al. (2019) indicated that the quality of education service and student happiness positively impact students' behavioral intentions. In addition, student happiness was a mediator between higher education service quality and students' behavioral intentions.
Roy et al. (2019) explicitly examined the impact of B2B experience services versus quality of service and its effect on immediate outcomes (satisfaction and perceived value) and customers' outcomes (loyalty and word of mouth). It was indicated that the effect of service experience on satisfaction and perceived value is more substantial than service quality. Besides, the indirect effect of service experience on loyalty and word of mouth (satisfaction) is more potent compared to service quality. Julius and Jatmika (2019) showed a positive effect of service quality on customers' loyalty, confirming that trustworthiness, asser-tiveness, and empathy impact customers' loyalty. Cuesta-Valiño et al. (2022) revealed that service quality affected patient loyalty and satisfaction. The study recommended that hospital leadership and the employees who provide the health services should pledge continuous quality improvement programs and monitor healthcare quality for patient satisfaction and loyalty. Parasuraman et al. (1988) found that consumers used similar criteria to evaluate service quality that falls into ten main categories.
Customers' loyalty is characterized as a comparison of consumers' attitudes and behaviors toward further purchases of goods, services, or repurchases. Bloemer and Kasper (1995) stated that customer's loyalty is measured or evaluated by a repeat purchasing of a product or service from the same company. Zeithaml et al. (1996) defined customers' loyalty as the customers' willingness to purchase different products or services from the same firm. According to Kotler et al. (1999), acquiring new customers' is more expensive than keeping existing ones. Several studies have attempted to define loyalty from a one-dimensional perspective (behavioral loyalty). Lv et al. (2020) defined loyalty as the customers' commitment to a particular product. Kasiri et al. (2017) stated that customers' loyalty is impacted by consumer satisfaction, but the highest impact was shown by the available quality compared to technical quality. A consumer's loyalty to a service is more likely to be tangible to customers of an organization or company than to a tangible product because loyalty to a service depends more on developing personal relationships. This means that higher service loyalty depends on developing personal relationships incompatible with loyalty to tangible products (Budianto, 2019).
Venkatesan (2020) investigated the relationship between the factors of the administration service quality (tangibility, dependability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and accessibility) and increasing customers' loyalty at Tirupattur's commercial banks. The findings showed customers administrative services are impacted by loyalty in a Malaysian mobile phone operating center. Nurysh et al. (2019) examined the factors with perceived value and service quality that might directly affect consumer satisfaction. The findings showed that consumer happiness is substantially impacted by perceived value and service quality. Consumer satisfaction is also significantly impacted by perceived value and service quality. However, the interaction of perceived value and service quality with the attraction of alternatives has minimal influence on increasing customers' serenity. The service quality aspects (pricing, quality of service, consumer value, and image of brand) have a substantial impact on consumer satisfaction, according to Yulisetiarini and Prahasta (2019) and Nurysh and Chan (2017). In addition, Khan and Fatima (2018) claim that service quality significantly impacts consumer happiness. According to Muala (2016), customers' loyalty is significantly impacted by tangibility, dependability, empathy, and responsiveness.
Therefore, this paper aims to examine the impact of quality of service dimensions of laptop dealer companies on consumer loyalty in Jordan. Based on previous studies, the following hypotheses have been developed ( Figure 1): H1: Reliability significantly impacts customers' loyalty.
H2: Safety significantly impacts customers' loyalty. H3: Access to service significantly impacts customers' loyalty.

METHODOLOGY
To achieve the research objective, this study purposely considered those firms that offer laptops in Jordan (HP, LG, Toshiba, Apple, Samsung, Sony, and Dell). An online survey questionnaire was developed, and convenient sampling was used in this study. The sample consisted of 400 clients of Jordanian companies. However, out of the 400 questionnaires sent to the participants, 341 responded to and sent back the questionnaire. This converted into a response rate of 85.2%, which is reasonably good. The study uses a descriptive-analytical technique for data collection and hypotheses testing. Data were gathered via an online questionnaire. A 5-point Likert scale was used to assess each variable.

RESULTS
The KMO and Bartlett values are 0.904 (> 0.50), according to Table 1; this means that the variance percentage in the variables used in collecting data was suitable. Furthermore, the Bartlett test results in an output value of a Chi-Square value of 3494.480, with a DF of 210, a significance value probability at the 1% level (p = 0.000 < 0.01), representing a good fit for sampling.

Respondents' profile
The profiles of the responders are shown in Table 2 16.7% make less than 220 JOD, and 51.6% earn between 200 and 500 JOD. In the same context, the majority (58.9%) have used laptops for between six and ten years, 25.8% have used them for 1-5 years, and 15.2% have used them for less than a year. In addition, 32% of respondents said they used laptops under the Dell brand, followed by 18.8% using Lenovo, 16.7% Apple, and 15.8% Toshiba, with 9.1%, 5.6%, and 2.1% using Samsung, Acer, and LG laptops.

Correlation analysis
According to Table 3, the reliability means range from 4.48 to 4.61, which suggests that most respondents strongly agree with all of the reliabil-ity dimension's measurement items. Additionally, the frequency distribution of the five scales, which ranges from 57.8% (197) to 67.4% for the scale SA (Strongly agree), supports this (230). Additionally, the frequency distribution for the A (Agree) scale ranges from 27.6% (94) to 35.8% (122). The total of the A and SA scales reveals that most respondents agree with all of the items used to gauge the dependability dimension. The same was seen about service access and safety. The vast majority of respondents' replies were on the A and SA scales, displaying that most of the respondents agree with the statements on access to services and safety.
Additionally, the results showed that customers' loyalty items had the most significant replies on the A and SA scales. Since the combined frequency is considerably greater than that of the other three scales, most respondents support the items related to customers' loyalty. The overall mean of each variable is around 4, except reliability, which has an overall mean of approximately 5. This shows that most of the respondents strongly agree about dependability and support the statements about customers' loyalty, safety, and access to services.

Hypotheses testing and regression analysis
The items of each variable that have undergone confirmatory factor analysis are shown in Figure  2. Smart PLS 3 was utilized to evaluate the data. Instead of considering how the variables interact, the results of confirmatory factor analyses were created based on the effect model. Table 4 shows the measurement model, which consists of mean-variance extracted, factor loading, Cronbach's Alpha, and variance inflation factor (VIF). According to the findings, the object loading results varied from 0.58 to 0.88. All CA values surpassed the minimal value of the criteria (0.7), which shows strong reliability of the research variables, even if the acceptable threshold is 0.40, as shown by other studies. Similarly, composite reliability (0.83-0.91) represents the need for the construct's items to accurately match its hidden ones. Table 4 shows that all items are related to variables since each variable is closely related but has a low correlation with other variables according to discriminant validity. The study indicates that the values indicate to what extent the scales do not reveal some other variables ( Table 5). The output values of each AVE (diagonal values) are more extensive than their associated correlation coefficients, showing adequate discriminant validity. Table 6 shows the significant impact of a variable for each element. This indicates that each component is closely related to its structure. Figure 3 presents the SEM results, which examined the impact of laptop companies' quality service dimensions on consumer loyalty in Jordan.
Results from route analysis and SEM-based hypothesis testing are shown in Table 7. The findings showed that customers' loyalty is significantly impacted by the dependability of service quality parameters at 1% (p = 0.003 < 0.01) and a positive coefficient value (β = 0.146). H1 is supported. Additionally, the findings showed that customers' loyalty is statistically significantly influenced by service availability at 1% (p = 0.000 < 0.1). H2 is supported by a substantial positive coefficient value (β = 0.239). The findings indicated that safety significantly impacts consumer loyalty at the level of 1% (p = 0.000 < 0.01) between safety and customers' loyalty. So, H3 is backed by a positive coefficient (β = 0.446) result. Additionally, the findings revealed that the safety dimension's coefficient value is larger than those of dependability and access to service, indicating that a consumer believes safety has a more significant influence on customers' loyalty (52%), which shows that safety, accessibility to services, and dependability account for 52% of the variation in customers' loyalty.

DISCUSSION
This study proposed a model with different dimensions of service quality for a laptop selling company on customer loyalty in Jordan, derived from previous studies. This paper suggested three hypotheses which were estimated using the SEM model and general model fit. SEM models were appropriately presented in this study, the three hypotheses H1: Reliability significantly impacts customers' loyalty. H2: Safety significantly impacts customers' loyalty. And H3: Access to service significantly impacts customers' loyalty, whichwere supported. These results are consistent with Venkatesan    The results reported that the overall means of all variables is about four except for reliability which has an overall mean of about 5, which indicates that the majority of the respondents agree with the items of access to service, safety, and customers' loyalty and strongly agree with the items of reliability. Further, the results revealed that reliability, access to service, and safety as service quality dimensions statistically affect customers' loyalty in Jordan. This effect is significant at 1%, indicating that service quality dimensions have a statistically significant positive impact on customers' loyalty. All the respondents perceive that reliability, access to service, and safety dimensions' positively influence their loyalty in purchasing a laptop.
The findings showed that the dependability of service quality parameters at 1% (p = 0.003 < 0.01) significantly impacts customers' loyalty with a positive coefficient value (β = 0.146). Additionally, the availability of service at 1% (p = 0.000 < 0.1) significantly affects customers' loyalty, supported by a substantial positive coefficient value of β = 0.239. The findings indicated that safety has a significant impact on consumer loyalty at 1% (p = 0.000 < 0.01), by a positive coefficient (β = 0.446) result. Additionally, the findings revealed that the safety dimension's coefficient value is larger than those of dependability and access to service, indicating that a consumer believes safety has a more significant influence on customers' loyalty (52%), which shows that safety, accessibility to services, and dependability account for 52% of the variation in customers' loyalty.

CONCLUSION
This study aimed to examine the impact of service quality dimensions of laptop dealer companies on customers' loyalty in Jordan. The findings have necessary ramifications for academics, decision-makers, and executives of laptop businesses in Jordan. According to the findings, respondents assigned the safety factor more weight, which impacted their loyalty. To keep their customers' loyalty, Jordanian laptop manufacturers must consider all three aspects of service quality, notably safety. The demographic factors utilized to characterize the respondents are the only ones to which the findings of this paper are applicable. Based on these results, the study suggested that laptop firms in Jordan should consider all three service quality characteristics, notably safety, to keep their customers' loyalty. Future studies may broaden the subject area to include other businesses, regions, and aspects of service quality. The results of the current study have significant implications for researchers, policy makers, managers of laptop in Jordan. The results open insights into the perceived factors that affect the dimensions of service quality and customer loyalty for purchasing laptop in Jordan.