The influence of service quality, digital marketing, and unique selling proposition on customer loyalty through brand trust as a mediating variable (a study at energy event id)

The event organizer industry in Bali is becoming increasingly competitive, requiring companies to continuously build and maintain customer loyalty. This study aims to analyze the effects of service quality, digital marketing, and unique selling proposition (USP) on customer loyalty and to examine the mediating role of brand trust at Energy Event ID. This study employed a quantitative approach with a causal associative research design. The population consisted of all Energy Event ID customers from 2023 to 2025, totaling 313 customers. A sample of 176 respondents was determined using the Slovin formula and selected through simple random sampling. Data were collected through online questionnaires and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4.1 software. The study was grounded in the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) Theory, where service quality, digital marketing, and USP acted as stimuli, brand trust as the organism, and customer loyalty as the response. The results indicate that brand trust was found to be the most influential variable affecting customer loyalty, with the highest path coefficient value of 0.410. Furthermore, service quality, digital marketing, and USP have positive and significant effects on brand trust. Brand trust also has a positive and significant effect on customer loyalty. The mediation analysis reveals that brand trust partially and complementarily mediates the effects of service quality, digital marketing, and USP on customer loyalty. The R-square value of customer loyalty is 0.732, indicating that 73.2 percent of the variance in customer loyalty can be explained by the proposed model, while the remaining 26.8 percent is explained by other factors outside the model.