The Indonesian ship agency business is at the heart of the country’s archipelagic trade connectivity, yet their ability to translate the service digitalization and promotional communication into long-lasting customer relationship is empirically under-explored, especially through the lens of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This research aims to analyze the effect of Digitalization Technology and Promotion Strategy on Customer Satisfaction and its implications for CLV, with Customer Satisfaction as a mediating variable, in the setting of a foreign ship agency service provider, PT Pelayaran Karana Line. A cross-sectional approach was used in a quantitative explanatory research design. The primary data was collected through an online structured questionnaire to 150 respondents which were determined using Slovin’s formula from 240 shipping principals’ principal representatives from 24 shipping principals with a purposive sampling technique. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4.0. The measurement model showed acceptable convergent validity (AVE 0.637-0.693), discriminant validity and reliability (composite reliability 0.953-0.970) for all constructs. The structural model showed good explanatory power (R² of 0.727 for Customer Satisfaction and 0.909 for CLV; Q² = 0.975). All seven hypothesized relationships were statistically supported (p < 0.05). Digitalization Technology and Promotion Strategy have a significant and positive effect on Customer Satisfaction and CLV, both directly and indirectly through Customer Satisfaction, which is the strongest direct predictor of CLV (β = 0.654). These findings extend the nomological network between digitalization and marketing communication to customer value in a business-to-business maritime service context and offer practical guidance to ship agencies for reinforcing automation, promotional value communication and relationship-continuity management.
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