WHEN CUSTOMERS FEEL UNDERSTOOD: EMPATHY DRIVING EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE AND ADVOCACY IN HOSPITALITY

Abstract

This study investigates how affective and cognitive empathy influence customer advocacy in the hospitality industry through the mediating role of customer emotional experience and the moderating role of service context. Drawing on survey data from 174 respondents and analyzed using SPSS, the study applies regression, mediation, and moderation techniques to test the proposed model. The findings reveal that empathy has a strong positive effect on customer advocacy and significantly enhances customer emotional experience. Emotional experience partially mediates the relationship between empathy and advocacy, indicating that empathetic interactions first shape customers’ emotions, which then encourage supportive behaviors such as recommendations and positive word-of-mouth. However, service context does not significantly moderate these relationships, suggesting that empathy remains effective regardless of environmental conditions. The results highlight empathy as a fundamental interpersonal resource that strengthens emotional bonds, customer loyalty, and brand support. The study contributes theoretically by integrating empathy, emotion, and advocacy into a unified framework and offers practical implications for hospitality managers, emphasizing the importance of training employees in emotional understanding and perspective-taking skills to improve customer relationships and long-term organizational outcomes.