Sustainable development goals and quality practices: a winning combination for customer loyalty in ride-hailing companies

ABSTRACT Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are both a guide for growing more sustainably and a useful tool for engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) that can boost sustainable economic models. Hence, in this paper, we shed light on how companies’ application of SDG practices affects perceived quality (PQ) and consumer loyalty based on the resource-advantage theory of competition (RAT). Exploratory analysis was used to create a scale of SDG practices, which was confirmed through confirmatory analysis. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the mediation between the constructs. Our findings indicate that PQ mediates the relationship between SDG practices and loyalty, confirming a previous result on CSR. Hence, PQ retains paramount importance; only through PQ can SDG practices affect loyalty. We also propose the theoretical foundations for conceptualizing SDG practices among ride-hailing companies and empirically demonstrate the mediation effect of PQ.