Investigating the Effect of Brand Experience and Service Quality on Brand Loyalty mediated by Brand Trust in Travel Umroh Al Madinah Mutiara Sunnah Kediri City

This study analyses the effect of brand experience and service quality on brand loyalty mediated by brand trust. This type of research is explanatory research and primary data collection using a questionnaire. The sampling technique used stratified proportionate random sampling method. The number of samples was 127 respondents who were Umrah pilgrims of PT Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah. The data was processed using SmartPLS 3.0 software. The results showed that Brand Experience and Service Quality each had a significant effect on brand trust. Brand Experience has a significant effect on brand loyalty, while service quality has no significant effect on brand loyalty. Brand trust significantly mediates the relationship between brand experience or service quality variables on brand loyalty.


INTRODUCTION
Competition for the attention of customers is very high because of the many business competitors that continue to emerge.Customers have many choices in choosing a product and service with good quality.Companies that are able to provide good service quality, then the company will be able to increase customer satisfaction and consumer confidence from customers.
Companies not only want to increase profits, increase the number of sales, or maintain an increasing market share, but they also want to have loyal customers.Customer needs and wants are always changing, so the company's task of building brand loyalty for customers is very difficult.Service quality is an important component in fostering customer trust and loyalty to brands (Etemadi et al., 2016).The better the quality of service received by customers, the higher customer satisfaction with the brand (Chinomona & Pooe, 2015).
Companies not only want to increase profits, increase the number of sales, or maintain a growing market share, but they also want to have loyal customers.Customers' needs and wants are always changing, so company programmes to foster customer brand loyalty are very difficult.Customers often evaluate the functional characteristics of service quality both "during" and "after" the delivery of service performance.Service quality is based on customer-employee interactions (i.e., process aspects), service outcomes (i.e., outcome aspects), and the service environment (Brady & Jr, 2001).Therefore, consumers' perceptions of service quality are usually based on a comparison of actual service performance with brand expectations (Brady & Jr, 2001).
A successful brand has a strong relationship with its customers, which distances them from competing brands.Experiencing the brand is the first step in building the relationship.The concept of "brand experience" first appeared in the experiential marketing literature by (B.Schmitt, 1999) and is now gaining importance (B.H. Schmitt & Zarantonello, 2014).Brand experience is defined as the subjective internal behaviours (such as sensations, emotions, and cognitions) and stimuli involved in a brand's design, identity, packaging, communication, and environment (Brakus et al., 2009).Shopping, buying, and consuming occur directly as well as indirectly interacting with media, including electronic and print media (Sivarajah, 2020).
Businesses must maintain customer trust by improving service quality.If a company is trusted more by its customers, they will become more loyal and may recommend the product or service to others (Etemadi et al., 2016).The level of customer trust in a company is positively correlated with the quality of service provided (Sahin et al., 2011).This is in accordance with the findings of empirical research which states that brand trust has an influence on their loyalty (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001).
The Umrah travel business is one of the business fields with a very high level of competition.Umrah travel is competing to get Umrah pilgrims with various programmes offered so that they get attention and become the choice for pilgrims.Umrah worship is an alternative choice if there is no opportunity for them to perform the Hajj.Based on information obtained by researchers, prospective pilgrims who register for Hajj in 2023, the estimated departure is in 2058.Pilgrims need approximately 35 years to wait and be able to leave for the holy land to perform the hajj.As of August in 2023, there were more than 800 thousand Umrah pilgrims from Indonesia.It is possible that by the end of 2023, the number could break the one million pilgrims mark.The Umrah travel business offers great opportunities for profit, but on the other hand also raises many enormous challenges.Indonesia is among the countries that send the largest number of Umrah pilgrims in the world, exceeding countries in the Southeast Asian region.
Indonesian Muslims look forward to performing one of the sunnah acts of worship, Umrah.The demand continues to increase every year, especially since the queue to perform the hajj pilgrimage has now reached dozens to decades.In addition, Indonesian Muslims have been unable to visit the House of Allah for the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.However, when the Saudi government allowed its pilgrims to visit the Kaaba again, many of Allah's guests came to relieve their homesickness by circumambulating the Kaaba and making a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad.Based on the Ministry of Religious Affairs' Siskopatuh as of 19 December 2022, the total number of Umrah pilgrims in Indonesia is 957,016, with the largest number in West Java (171,275 pilgrims), East Java (160,977 pilgrims), and DKI Jakarta (124,999 pilgrims).When umrah officially reopens in August 2022, Soekarno Hatta airport will be the most affected place as it serves as an embarkation point for umrah pilgrims.
Umrah travel is the subject of this research.Umrah and Hajj plus travel is a company that offers Umrah and Hajj plus packages.The costs of Umrah and Hajj plus packages are very diverse and vary.The more expensive umrah packages have better programmes and facilities.Umrah packages include visas, PP flight tickets, hotel accommodation, land transportation (BUS AC), zam-zam water, worship equipment, and pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina.All umrah travel competes to attract customers by offering a variety of umrah packages, providing customers with a variety of information about the quality of services provided by each travel agency.many cases of umrah fraud are committed by individuals offering umrah trips.
This research was conducted in Kediri City.There are many umrah travellers in this city, including Almadinna Mutiara Sunnah, Gemilang Tour & Travel, Rameyza Tour & Travel, Tourindo, Mastour, Arminareka Travel, and Shafira Tour & Travel.Most of these umrah travellers function as branches, not head offices.Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah Travel is the subject of this research.It offers umrah and hajj registration.Travel Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah Kediri City always provides guidance and personal guides to pilgrims both when in the country and when performing umrah in the holy land.
The formulation of the problem in this study is to investigate the effect of Brand Experience on Brand Trust, the effect of Brand Experience on Brand Loyalty, the effect of Service Quality on Brand Trust, the effect of Brand Trust on Brand Loyalty, the effect of brand experience on brand loyalty mediated by Brand Trust, and the effect of service quality on Brand loyalty through Brand Trust.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Brand Experience Brand experience is the actual sensation, feeling, cognition, and behavioural response.Therefore, brand experience is not the same as brand evaluation, engagement, attachment, and consumer satisfaction.Brand experience also differs from brand personality conceptually and empirically (B.H. Schmitt & Zarantonello, 2009).To date, most research on experience has focused on useful product characteristics and category experiences rather than experiences provided by brands.Consumers are also exposed to a variety of specialised stimuli relating to brands.These stimuli include colours used to identify brands (Bellizzi & Hite, n.d.), shapes (Veryzer & Hutchinson, 2014), typography, background design elements, slogans, mascots, and brand characters (Mandel & Johnson, 2002).

Effect of Brand Experience on Brand Trust
The results of research from Akoglu & Ozbek (2022) show that brand experience has a significant effect on brand trust.Therefore, the first hypothesis in this study is : H1: Brand Experience has a significant effect on brand Trust

Effect of Brand Experience on Brand loyalty
The results of previous research show that brand experience has a significant effect on brand loyalty (Sahin et al., 2011).Therefore, the fourth hypothesis in this study is: H4: Brand Experience has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty

The Effect of Brand Experience On Brand Loyalty Is Mediated By Brand Trust
The results of previous research show that Brand Experience has a significant effect on Brand loyalty mediated by Brand Trust (Akoglu & Ozbek, 2022;Huang, 2017;Sahin et al., 2011).Therefore, the first hypothesis in this study is : H6: Brand Experience has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty mediated by Brand Trust

Brand Trust
To keep a brand alive in the long term, it is crucial to build customer trust.According to Morgan & Hunt (1994), trust is an important factor in fostering a sustainable desire to maintain long-term relationships between businesses and consumers.Brand trust is considered essential for commercial success (Morgan & Hunt, 1994)."The average consumer's willingness to trust a brand's ability to fulfil its stated function" is the definition of brand trust, according to (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001).Researchers have found that trust is a major factor in the formation of brand loyalty.Indicators of brand trust variables include credibilty, integrity, benevolence adopted from research (Gurviez, 2003) and (Munuera-Aleman et al., 2003)

Effect of Brand Trust on Brand Loyalty
Based on the results of previous studies which show that brand trust has a significant effect on brand loyalty (Akoglu & Ozbek, 2022;Huang, 2017;Muttaqien, 2017), the hypothesis in this study is: H3 : Brand Trust has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty Service Quality Service quality is the customer's perception of various aspects such as interactions, physical environment, and outcomes.Service quality dimensions such as tangibility, trust, assurance, responsiveness, and empathy are used to assess service quality.Service quality can be defined as "the degree of discrepancy between customers' normative expectations of service and their perceptions of service performance" (Parasuraman et al., 1985).Service quality can also be defined as consumer perceptions of the quality of interactions, the quality of the physical environment and the quality of results (Sahin et al., 2011).

Effect of Service Quality on Brand Trust
Based on the results of previous studies which show that Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Trust (Etemadi et al., 2016;Zehir et al., 2011), the second hypothesis in this study is: H2 : Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Trust The Effect of Service Quality on Brand Loyalty Based on the results of previous research which shows that Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty (Muttaqien, 2017), the fifth hypothesis in this study is: H5 : Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty The effect of Service Quality on Brand Loyalty mediated by Brand Trust Based on the results of subsequent studies which show that Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty mediated by Brand Loyalty (Etemadi et al., 2016;Muttaqien, 2017;Zehir et al., 2011), the seventh hypothesis in this study is: H7 : Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty mediated by Brand

Loyalty
The research conceptual framework of the study is shown in the figure below:

RESEARCH RESULT DAN DISCUSSION
PLS consists of evaluating two models: measurement model and structural model.The measurement model looks at the relationship between indicator items and their latent variables, and the structural model looks at the relationship between latent variables and other latent variables.The results of the model validity test produce information about the validity and reliability of the model.The path coefficient image generated from the data processing output using SmartPLS 3.0 is presented below :  The results of the validity calculation in table 1 show that each item measuring the Brand Experience, Service Quality, Brand Trust and Brand Loyalty variables has a loading factor value above 0.7 so that all items in the study are declared valid.Source: Data processed using SMARTPLS 3 Based on the above calculations, it can be explained that the variables Brand Experience, Service Quality, Brand Trust, and also Brand Loyalty have an AVE value above 0.5.These results indicate that each item in an instrument is declared valid in measuring each variable.Source: data processed using SMARTPLS 3.0 All declared items have the ability to calculate the latent variable corresponding to their own items.This is because, based on the cross loading calculations shown in Table 3, the variables Brand Experience, Service Quality, Brand Trust and Brand Loyalty produce larger loading values for the item as a whole than the other variables.Source: data processed using SMARTPLS 3.0 The results of table 4 show that the Brand Experience, Service Quality, Brand Trust and Brand loyalty variables each have an AVE value above 0.5, a Composite Reliability value above 0.7, and a Cronbach Alpha value above 0.7, so it can be concluded that all items are declared reliable in measuring a variable.The next step when doing statistical testing using PLS is Structural measurement.Path model (testing the significance of all hypotheses) is used for structural measurement.The following is a picture of the path model, a table for testing direct effects and indirect effects.The results showed that brand experience has a significant effect on brand trust.The more experience the Umrah pilgrims get, both related to sensory experience, affective experience, intellectual experience and behavioural experience, the more the pilgrims' trust in the Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah brand will increase.The resulting research is in accordance with research conducted by Akoglu & Ozbek (2022).One example is the respondent's assessment of intellectual experience.Pilgrims appreciate the umrah guide and the procedures for carrying out the umrah and they are very familiar with the worship process.This has a big influence on the trust of pilgrims related to the Al Madinna Mutriara Sunnah Brand.Pilgrims feel Travel does not directly have a real impact on the formation of Umrah pilgrims' loyalty to the Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah brand.Umrah products are one of the high-cost products for the religious tourism category, so that Umrah pilgrims have a high involvement in finding information about Umrah bureaus that offer excellent quality in serving pilgrims.Umrah pilgrims are not simply loyal after joining the Umrah programme.Service quality variables are not a guarantee for a travel agency to create brand loyalty if it has not been able to create trust or satisfaction of pilgrims with the brand.The results of this study are in accordance with research conducted by Muttaqien (2017) which shows that service quality has no significant effect on brand loyalty.

The Effect of Brand Experience on Brand Loyalty mediated by Brand Trust
The results of the study statistically inform that brand experience has a significant effect on brand loyalty mediated by brand trust.The experience felt by worshipers when using the Al Madinna Mutiara sunnah brand is able to create loyalty because worshipers already have trust in the brand.The results of this study are consistent with previous research conducted by Sahin et al (2011), Akoglu & Ozbek (2022) and Huang (2017).Brand trust in this study is able to partially mediate the relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty.This means that brand experience is able to create brand loyalty both directly and indirectly when involving brand trust variables.

The Effect of Service Quality on Brand Loyalty Mediated by Brand Trust
The results showed that service quality has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty mediated by brand trust.These results mean that the better the quality of service provided by the Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah travel agency, the more trust the Umrah pilgrims will have in a brand.With the creation of pilgrims' trust in the Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah brand, Umrah pilgrims are willing to be loyal to a brand.Trust in a brand is an important factor for respondents to be able to use the same brand in the future if they want to perform Umrah.The Umrah pilgrims' trust in the quality of service provided by the travel agency is reflected in several indicators, including a sense of security, reliable service, getting a guarantee of satisfaction, commitment, seriousness, and attention provided by Travel Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah.Brand trust in this study is able to fully mediate the relationship between service quality and brand loyalty.This means that service quality will not be able to create brand loyalty without the mediation of the brand trust variable.The results of this study are in accordance with research conducted by Muttaqien (2017), Etemadi et al (2016) and Zehir et al. (2011).

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the results of the research and discussion above, the conclusions are 1. Brand Experience has a significant effect on brand Trust 2.
Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Trust 3.
Brand Trust has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty 4.
Brand Experience has a significant effect on brand loyalty 5.
Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty 6. Brand Experience has a significant effect on brand loyalty mediated by Brand Trust 7.
Service Quality has a significant effect on Brand Loyalty through Brand Trust

ADVANCED RESEARCH
For future researchers who are interested in taking the same topic, it is recommended to use other variables that are relevant to the research, for example, brand image and brand communication variables.For mediating variables, it is advisable to use other variables, for example, brand satifaction.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The researcher would like to thank the manager of Travel Al Madinna Mutiara Sunah for allowing researchers to conduct research and provide the information needed.Researchers also express their gratitude to classmates in the Universitas Negeri Malang Management Science Doctoral Programme class A-23.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Research conceptual framework METHODOLOGY According to Sugiyono (2008), explanatory research is research that aims to describe patterns of relationship or influence between two or more variables that have symmetrical, causal, or reciprocal relationship patterns.The purpose of explanatory research is to explain the relationship and influence of several predetermined variables.In this study, Umrah pilgrims Travel Al Madinna Mutiara Sunnah Kediri City, totalling 200 people, who departed from September 2022 to September 2023.Isaac and Michael's calculation for an error rate of 5% is used to calculate the sample size of the total population of 200 pilgrims so that a sample size of 127 pilgrims is obtained.The sampling technique uses the stratified proportionate random sampling method, which is sampling based on the number of numbers departed for each departure period.The instrument used in the study used a questionnaire and used the SEM-PLS (Structural Equation Modelling) approach.The software used to process data is SmartPLS 3.0 software.Inner and outer models are used for model evaluation.The inner model examines the relationship between constructs (latent variables) in the structural equation, while the outer model examines the validity and reliability of the research model.

Figure
Figure 3. Inner Model

Table 1 .
Convergent Validity Test Results Based on Variable Loading Factor Value

Table 2 .
Convergent Validity test results based on AVE value

Table 3 .
Discriminant Validity Test Results Discriminant Validity Test Results

Table 4 .
Reliability Test Results

Table 5 .
Test Results of Direct Effect and Indirect Effect