RETRACTED: EXAMINING THE EFFECT OF CUSTOMER-TO-CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS ON SATISFACTION, LOYALTY, AND WORD-OF-MOUTH BEHAVIORS IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF PERSONAL INTERACTION QUALITY AND SERVICE ATMOSPHERICS (Retracted article. See vol. 35, pg. 394, 2018)

Few empirical studies have been conducted to explore how customer-to-customer interactions (CCI) affect satisfaction, loyalty, and word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviors in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to address this knowledge gap. Then, the paper examines the mediating role of personal interaction quality (PIQ) and service atmospherics on CCI, satisfaction, and loyalty behaviors. The study proposes a structural model of the relationships among CCI, satisfaction, loyalty, WOM, PIQ, and service atmospherics in the context of the hospitality industry. The hypothesized relationships are then tested in an empirical study with a sample of 200 guests of Laleh Hotels in the area of Tehran. The subjects were asked to complete a self-administrated questionnaire using a convenience-sampling approach. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, one sample t-test, and structural equation modeling were employed to analyze guests' perceptions of the research constructs. The results show that: 1) service atmospherics has a significant impact on CCI and hotel satisfaction, 2) personal interaction quality has a significant impact on hotel satisfaction and hotel loyalty, 3) hotel satisfaction has a significant impact on hotel loyalty and hotel WOM, and 4) CCI is significantly associated with hotel loyalty and hotel WOM.