Exploring the impact of customer experience quality on brand love in a private higher learning institution: service quality as a moderating factor

This study examines how customer experience quality influences brand love in a private higher education institution and whether service quality reinforces this relationship. Using the EXQ model, four experience dimensions peace of mind, moment of truth, outcome focus, and product experience were analyzed based on survey data from 263 students at a Malaysian private university. Data were analyzed using PLS-SEM. Findings reveal that peace of mind, moment of truth, and outcome focus significantly and positively affect brand love, highlighting that students’ emotional attachment is shaped by reassurance, responsiveness at key touchpoints, and the perceived achievement of desired academic outcomes. In contrast, product experience has no significant effect, suggesting that tangible aspects of higher education, often viewed as credence-based services, are baseline expectations rather than emotional drivers of brand love. Service quality does not directly influence brand love but enhances the effects of moment of truth and outcome focus on brand attachment, indicating its role as a supportive rather than primary factor. Customer experience and branding theory by demonstrating that the EXQ framework is context-dependent: in higher education, emotional-relational experiences are central to developing brand love, while service quality primarily amplifies these experiential effects rather than acting as an independent precursor.