Experiential Marketing and Brand Loyalty in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach

This study employs structural equation modelling to investigate the relationship between experiential marketing and brand loyalty in the Nigerian telecommunications industry, drawing data from subscribers in Kano State, North West Nigeria, and Oyo State, South West Nigeria. Experiential marketing, which seeks to engage consumers through sensory, affective, cognitive, behavioural, and social experience dimensions, has been proposed as a powerful brand loyalty driver in competitive service industries. Nigerian telecoms brands have increasingly adopted experiential marketing through retail experience centres, subscriber events, and digital immersive campaigns, yet the empirical effect of these investments on loyalty outcomes remains unmeasured. Grounded in Schmitt's experiential marketing framework and the stimulus-organism-response model, the study tests a hypothesised path from experiential dimensions through brand attitude to brand loyalty. A cross-sectional quantitative survey of 400 mobile network subscribers is conducted using stratified random sampling. CFA is used to validate measurement models, and SEM is employed for structural model estimation. Preliminary findings confirm that affective experience (emotional engagement) and sensory experience have the strongest direct effects on brand attitude, which fully mediates the experience-loyalty relationship. Social experience dimensions show significant effects among younger, community-oriented subscriber segments. The study provides a validated experiential marketing measurement framework applicable to the Nigerian telecoms context and delivers actionable loyalty strategy recommendations for network operators. Keywords: experiential marketing, brand loyalty, telecommunications, structural equation modelling, Nigeria