Is coolness important to luxury hotel brand management? The linking and moderating mechanisms between coolness and customer brand engagement

Purpose This study aims to contribute by forming the concept of luxury hotel brand (four- and five-star hotel) coolness and revealing its promoting role to customer brand engagement with brand satisfaction and brand love as connecting components and materialism as a contingent factor. Design/methodology/approach A conditional model linking luxury hotel brand coolness and customer brand engagement is proposed and tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique on a data set of 284 customers. Findings Luxury hotel brand coolness reflecting various brand qualities fosters satisfaction and love, which facilitate CBE. Materialism positively moderates the impact of luxury hotel brand coolness on brand satisfaction and love. Research limitations/implications Future studies should further generalize the findings by extending the current research on different hospitality services and luxury consumption. Also, more personality traits and personal values should be investigated as moderators. Practical implications Luxury hotel brand management should place brand coolness at the center of luxury hotel brand strategies. Originality/value This study fills in the gap of unraveling the central role of luxury hotel brand coolness in fostering customer brand engagement with brand satisfaction and love as catalysts and materialism as a contingent condition.