Associations of Experience, Social Media, and the Physical Environment with Café Preference and Its Links to Emotional Connection and Customer Loyalty: Evidence from Riobamba, Ecuador

Urban cafés can form part of a destination’s tourism offering as experiential consumption settings. Grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework, this study examined the associations of the measured physical-environment, social-media, and experience constructs with the café-preference measure and its relationships with emotional connection and customer loyalty. It also assessed the indirect preference–emotional connection–loyalty association. A quantitative cross-sectional design and convenience sampling were used to survey 152 café consumers in Riobamba, Ecuador. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). All three measured antecedents were positively associated with the café-preference measure. The experience measure had the largest numerical coefficient, followed by the social-media and physical-environment measures, but this ordering is interpreted as sample- and specification-dependent. The café-preference measure was positively associated with emotional connection and customer loyalty, and emotional connection was positively associated with loyalty. The indirect association was significant; however, the cross-sectional evidence does not establish a temporal or causal mediating process. Given unsatisfactory global model-fit diagnostics and measurement boundaries, the findings represent context-specific associations rather than a comprehensive explanation of café consumer behavior.