The Impact of Parcel Delivery Service Quality on Customer Loyalty : Focusing on the Chinese Parcel Industry

The rapid expansion of e-commerce in recent years has triggered an explosive increase in demand for logistics services, propelling China’s parcel delivery industry to become the largest in the world. However, this remarkable quantitative growth has not necessarily translated into consistent service quality. Persistent customer dissatisfaction remains, fueled by service imbalances, frequent delivery delays, and a lack of transparency in information provision—factors that may ultimately weaken customer loyalty. This study seeks to empirically investigate how various aspects of service quality influence customer trust, satisfaction, and loyalty, with a particular focus on the Chinese parcel delivery industry. To structure the analysis, service quality is broken down into four dimensions: order process quality, delivery performance, customer service responsiveness, and information service quality. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the study explores how these dimensions affect customer trust and satisfaction, which in turn shape loyalty. The results indicate that delivery performance and information service quality are the most influential factors in enhancing trust and satisfaction. Moreover, customer trust is shown to exert a more substantial impact on loyalty than satisfaction, underscoring its central role in sustaining long-term customer relationships. This research offers valuable practical insights for designing customer-oriented service improvement strategies in the parcel delivery sector, while also contributing to the broader application of service quality theory in logistics contexts.