Introduction:

While social enterprises meet human needs and create social value, they need to focus on value creation, customer satisfaction, and loyalty, as they can facilitate the generation of long-term relationships with the social enterprise and its survival.

Objective:

This research explores the effect of life purpose on customer value creation and its influence on satisfaction and loyalty among customers of social firms operating in the service sector in two Mexican cities, Puebla and Jalapa, both located in the Centre-East of Mexico.

Materials and methods:

An explanatory and cross-sectional investigation was conducted with 392 active customers. Structural equation modelling was used treating all variables as latent.

Results:

It was found that purpose in life was a significant and positive antecedent of customer value creation. In addition, customer value creation had a substantial effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Conclusions:

The findings have implications for understanding the complexity of value creation in social firms focused on the delivery of services and the nature and dimensionality of customer value creation for social enterprises and its positive impact on customer retention. The results can help academics and social enterprises to develop better strategies to meet the needs of consumers belonging to vulnerable groups.

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