Service Quality and Price Effects on Customer-Perceived Firm Performance: The Mediating Role of Trust at PT Anugrah Karunia Mahakam

In shipping agency and general supplier services, customers evaluate providers through operational dependability, pricing practices, and confidence in business commitments. This study examined the associations of service quality and price with customer-perceived firm performance and considered customer trust as a potential intermediary at PT Anugrah Karunia Mahakam. A quantitative explanatory, cross-sectional survey was conducted with 61 customers selected through purposive sampling. Responses to a 19-indicator, five-point Likert-type questionnaire were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 4.0. All indicators exceeded the specified outer-loading threshold, and the reported AVE and HTMT values met the measurement criteria. Price showed the largest association with trust (β = 0.778), whereas the service quality–trust coefficient was small (β = 0.061). For customer-perceived firm performance, the estimated coefficients were 0.397 for trust, 0.277 for service quality, and 0.102 for price. The model explained 55.1% of the variance in trust and 42.9% in customer-perceived firm performance. These results indicate differences in how pricing and service evaluations relate to relational confidence and perceived organizational performance within the surveyed company. The coefficient pattern is compatible with a possible indirect pathway through trust, but the statistical significance of mediation cannot be established from the reported coefficients without bootstrap inference. The findings support cautious managerial attention to pricing fairness, service dependability, and trust while acknowledging the single-company, nonprobability, cross-sectional design.