How Omnichannel ICT-Enabled Marketing Shapes Customer Engagement and Loyalty in Culinary Hospitality Services

This study examines how app-based omnichannel ICT-enabled marketing shapes customer engagement and service loyalty in the culinary hospitality industry within an urban emerging-market context. Drawing on an ICT-centered and service-systems perspective, the research conceptualizes mobile applications as integration hubs that coordinate multiple service modes—delivery, dine-in, takeaway, and drive-thru—into a unified customer experience. A quantitative, explanatory research design was employed using a cross-sectional survey of 150 chain-restaurant mobile app users in Jakarta. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that app-based omnichannel ICT-enabled marketing has a positive and significant effect on customer engagement and service loyalty. Customer engagement also demonstrates a positive effect on service loyalty and partially mediates the relationship between omnichannel ICT-enabled marketing and loyalty. These findings suggest that perceived ICT integration quality, reflected through consistency, seamlessness, and coordination across service modes, plays a pivotal role in translating technology-enabled service design into relational outcomes. This study contributes to the hospitality ICT literature by extending omnichannel research beyond a marketing-centric perspective and highlighting the strategic role of integrated mobile app infrastructures in high-frequency culinary service environments. From a managerial standpoint, the findings emphasize the importance of treating mobile applications as core service platforms that support engagement-driven loyalty in chain-restaurant operations.