Endang Sulistya Rini

This study was aimed to discover the direct influences of rational, emotional, and spiritual marketing on satisfaction, trust, and loyalty of Shariah banking customers in Medan. This study was an associative research, which is a research connecting two variables or more to see the influence of one variable on another. This study was conducted by means of an exploratory approach. The population in this study was Shariah Banking customers in Medan. Total sample was 200 customers from 64 branches of Shariah banks across Medan. By using path analysis with SPSS 21 program, the results showed that there were direct and indirect influences of rational, emotional, and spiritual marketing on customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. Only emotional marketing variable had insignificant influence on the satisfaction of Shariah banking customers in Medan. This study was limited to impact of rational, emotional, spiritual marketing variables on satisfaction, trust, and loyalty of Shariah banking customers. Other variables which influence satisfaction, trust, and loyalty such as customer relationship management (CRM) and portfolio performance should be used, because they’re factors which influence consumer behavior. For Shariah banking in Medan, the research result was expected to give useful suggestions and inputs for Shariah banking in Medan in implementing marketing strategies, especially rational, emotional, and spiritual.

This study aims to examine the effect of tourism image, experiential value, and satisfaction on the intention of revisiting the tourist area. The present study used associative analysis to ascertain the link between two or more variables. The study is being conducted in North Sumatera province, Indonesia, specifically in the tourist area of Lake Toba. The research population is comprised of an undetermined number of tourists that visited the tourist area around Lake Toba. The sample size of 324 was determined, which was obtained by multiplying the least number of samples by four or five questionnaire item categories. An accidental sampling approach was employed in this study, and data processing was performed using descriptive and inferential statistics and Smart-PLS software. The empirical findings indicate that although the tourism image has a significant and positive impact on experiential satisfaction, the direct effect of experiential value has a negative value on experiential satisfaction. Moreover, through tourism experiential satisfaction, experiential value has a negative value on intentions to revisit the destination. On the other hand, the indirect relationship between the tourism image and the intention to revisit through tourism experiential satisfaction has a positive value.

Acknowledgment
We would like to express our gratitude to the Ministry of Education and Culture’s Directorate of Research and Community Service for funding this study via the “Higher Education Excellent Basic Research Grant Fund” program.

Destination loyalty has become a topic that needs attention in tourism research, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic because it affects the number of visitors to tourist sites. This study aims to test the effect of destination image on destination loyalty through destination authenticity. The respondents in this study were visitors to the Ecotourism Mount Leuser National Park in Indonesia. The questionnaires were distributed to 301 respondents using purposive sampling. The data were processed using SEM-PLS methods. The results show that destination image influences destination authenticity (p-value <0.05). Next, destination authenticity affects destination loyalty (p-value <0.05) and destination image influences destination loyalty (p-value < 0.05). Finally, destination image through destination authenticity influences destination loyalty (p-value < 0.05). The findings of this study can be beneficial to the respective governmental bodies that seeks to improve destination authenticity and destination image to enhance destination loyalty of visitors and promote revisit intentions toward the Ecotourism Mount Leuser National Park in Indonesia. This study can be used as a reference for tourist destination managers to increase destination loyalty by maintaining and managing the tourist destination area properly. The government acts as a policymaker and is responsible for preserving the environmental impact of tourism, such as pollution, other environmental hazards, and land use issues stemming from poor planning, regulation, and engineering of the site, attractions, and facilities.

Acknowledgment
This study is funded by the DRTPM of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, grant number [097/E5/PG.02.00.PT/2022], for the 2022 fiscal year.

Although there is general consensus that social media can enhance collaboration among contributors, the debate continues regarding the optimal approach for integrating consumer resources into brand communities on these platforms. This paper investigates how customer social participation impacts customer resource integration and mutually beneficial interactions within social media brand communities. Utilizing the Partial Least Squares approach to Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and involving 295 participants, the findings reveal that customer social participation positively affects both customer resource integration (β=0.415, p=0.000) and mutually beneficial interactions (β=0.753, p=0.000). Furthermore, mutually beneficial interactions significantly influence customer resource integration within the brand community (β=0.432, p=0.000). Notably, mutually beneficial interactions act as a mediator in the relationship between customer social participation and customer resource integration (β=0.325, p=0.000). These findings contribute to the emerging research stream on customer social participation, resource integration, and mutually beneficial interactions in marketing contexts, offering valuable insights for both scholars and practitioners. The study also provides practical implications for brand community activities and suggests several avenues for future research.

Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Technology Research of Indonesia under the Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant in 2022, Number 59/UN5.2.3.1/PPM/KPDRTPM/TI/2022.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
This paper examines how marketing capability and product advantage influence market performance in creative culinary SMEs operating in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Recognizing that internal strategic resources must align with consumer perceptions to drive success, the study positions perceptual product congruity as a psychological mediator linking organizational capabilities to market outcomes. Using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with data from 334 culinary businesses, the analysis reveals three key direct effects: marketing capability on perceptual product congruity (β = 0.413; f² = 0.218), product advantage on perceptual product congruity (β = 0.369; f² = 0.146), and perceptual product congruity on market performance (β = 0.456; f² = 0.239). Importantly, perceptual product congruity also mediates the relationships between marketing capability and performance (β = 0.144, p = 0.001) and between product advantage and performance (β = 0.162, p < 0.001). These findings demonstrate that psychological alignment between products and consumer identity drives performance, particularly for culturally meaningful offerings like traditional culinary products. The research extends self-image congruity theory to resource-constrained SMEs in emerging markets while offering practical guidance for perception-based marketing strategies that leverage cultural narratives and identity alignment.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Banks invest in digital platforms expecting stronger loyalty. Yet, it remains unclear why some investments build durable relationships while others do not, because prior research conflates what customers do with how they experience it. This study tests whether co-created service experience mediates the relationship between customer-perceived digital transformation and customer loyalty among digital banking customers in Indonesia. Survey data were collected in 2025 from 360 customers of five banks in Medan, Indonesia, who had used mobile or internet banking for at least six months, ensuring direct experience with digital banking, and were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with bootstrapping. All four hypotheses were supported: digital transformation was strongly associated with co-created service experience (β = 0.659, p < 0.001) and significantly associated with loyalty directly (β = 0.425, p < 0.001); co-created service experience was significantly associated with loyalty (β = 0.478, p < 0.001) and partially mediated the digital transformation–loyalty relationship (indirect effect β = 0.315, p < 0.001; VAF = 42.6%), with the model explaining 67.8% of the variance in loyalty. Digital transformation is thus associated with loyalty through two distinct routes, only one of which depends on customers feeling like genuine participants. Institutional trust was not measured directly in this study, so the link between this pattern and Indonesia's institutional trust conditions is interpretive and requires further testing. Because the sample is limited to a single city, findings apply to this market and should not be generalized to Indonesian banking as a whole.