CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE LINKING SERVICE QUALITY AND BRAND REPUTATION IN COFFEE SHOPS

Abstract

The increasing competition within the coffee shop industry has shifted managerial attention from product quality toward the creation of memorable customer experiences that strengthen brand competitiveness. This study investigates how interaction quality, physical environment quality, and green practices influence brand personality and brand reputation through the mediating role of customer experience. A quantitative explanatory research design was employed using survey data collected from 350 customers of Tanah Tujuh Coffee in Indonesia. Data were analyzed using covariance-based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) with IBM AMOS 26. The findings reveal that all three service attributes significantly enhance customer experience, with physical environment quality emerging as the strongest determinant. Customer experience subsequently exerts a significant positive effect on brand personality, which in turn strengthens brand reputation. In addition, customer experience serves as a significant mediating mechanism linking service attributes to branding outcomes. These findings extend the experiential marketing literature by integrating interaction quality, servicescape, and sustainability perspectives into a unified experiential branding framework. The study also contributes empirical evidence from an emerging market, demonstrating that experiential value creation constitutes a strategic pathway for developing stronger brand reputation in the coffee shop industry. Managerially, the findings suggest that coffee shop operators should prioritize integrated experience-centered strategies encompassing atmospheric design, employee interaction, and environmentally responsible practices to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.