Investigating the mediating role of word of mouth advertising in the impact of travel agencies services on the customer's purchase intention

In the current competitive era, one of the most important factors for the success of travel agencies is customer loyalty to the services provided by them. Therefore, the quality of services provided by travel agencies, given that a large number of service recipients believe in the suggestions of friends or family more than any other type of advertising, can affect the customer's intention to buy. Accordingly, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of word of mouth on the impact of service quality on customer purchase intention in airline travel agencies in Bushehr province. The research is applied and descriptive-correlation in terms of purpose and method, respectively.The population of the study encompasses customers of travel agencies in Bushehr province. A random sampling method was adopted to distribute and collect the required data. The data were collected through distributing questionnaires among 384 customers. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed through convergent validity and its reliability was confirmed through Cronbach’s alpha method for the whole questionnaire (0.9). Data analysis was performed with structural equation modeling (SEM) using SmartPLS software. According to the data analysis results, 41.4% of the total effect of service quality variable on customer intention to buy in airline travel agencies in Bushehr province indirectly explained by word of mouth variable.