Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction, and Behavioral Intentions in Fast-Food Restaurants

For different types of companies, quality might refer to quality of products or quality of service. Compares with quality of products, service quality is much more difficult to measure because service is intangible and acts and processes only existing in time. In addition, service has unique characteristic which cannot be found in products, such as customer influence, inseparability of production and consumption, heterogeneity, perishability and labor intensity (Nie & Kellogg, 1999). Even though, there are still many practitioners and academics are keen on measuring service quality because it has already emerged as a key strategic issue. Companies want to better understand service quality, and to establish methods for improving quality to achieve competitive advantage and build customer loyalty (Abdullah, 2006). Based on the importance of service quality, an increasing number of literatures and companies pay attention to measuring

Food chain industries are starting to realize the significance of service quality and how it affects customers’ satisfaction. Customer dissatisfaction occur all the time whether it is something as simple as getting the wrong order at a fast food chain restaurant or a service complaint at an expensive restaurant. A customer must be the priority of every business around the world because customers are the ones to buy the goods and services (Lesley & Faure, 1992). According to Thompson (2014), everyone working in the food chain industry will have to deal with customer dissatisfaction at some point in their career, how you handle those dissatisfaction makes all the difference.

Employees must first align their perceptions of service quality to what the customer’s perceptions are (Becker & Wellins 1990). Understanding what drives the customer establishment relationship is important to turning one time customers into loyal

Carman, J. M. (1990). Consumer perceptions of service quality: An assessment of the SERVQUAL dimensions. Journal of Retailing, 66 (1), 33-55.

This paper discusses the results of a research project on service quality for Tim Hortons. The purpose of the report is to measure:

This research attempts to know whether the factors, restaurant types and the average price determines customer satisfaction in the full service restaurant chains .The variable types indicate whether the restaurant is an Italian restaurant or a seafood /steakhouse while the price indicates the average amount paid per person for dinner and drinks, minus tip. The customer diner overall satisfaction is reflected as score with higher value indicating greater overall satisfaction. The regression model is used to determine whether the overall satisfaction is related to average meal price and the type of restaurant.

This chapter discusses literature review of theories and models and conceptual framework which is evidence of the study variables - Quality of service and customer satisfaction. The definition of Service, quality, customer satisfaction, the concept of quality of service, and the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction is briefly discussed.

Horst Treiblmaier* Institute for Management Information Systems Vienna University of Economics and Business Augasse 2-6, 1090 Vienna, Austria1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report provides an in-depth analysis of the conduct of a market research project exploring customer expectation, satisfaction and behaviour in relation fast food restaurants. Particular attention is paid to Subway restaurants outlining the key strategies needed in order to increase popularity and therefore visitor numbers.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENHANCED RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT & COMPUTER APPLICATIONS VOL. 2 ISSUE 2, FEB.-2013 ISSN NO: 2319-7471

Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont., Canada N6A 3K7 Lowry Mays School of Business, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4217, USA Received 20 March 2000; accepted 4 May 2000

Customers play a very crucial role in a success of a company, without the customers a business especially a restaurant business cannot succeed. It is essential for the restaurant to understand the needs and wants of the customers and provides them with top quality food items so that it provides them with satisfaction and exceed beyond their expectations. If the customer is completely satisfied with the food and the service that is being provided by the restaurant then it would to them becoming loyal to the restaurant and would not switch over to their competitors.

Service quality has become a main idea for student academic to study in many industries especially in hospitality industry. In Wilson et al (2008), service can be discussed in the terms of below four characteristics:

Submitted to the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Business Administration The University of Tsukuba

Service quality represents a fundamental aspect of delivery, which strongly influences consumer satisfaction and, as a result, loyalty. In today’s global market a customer’s service expectation has to be met and exceeded eventually in order to retain customers as well as achieve success. Perceived quality of a product or a service is becoming one of the major competitive factors in the business world and has led to the innovation of the ‘Quality Era’ (Peeler, 1996). In simple words, the comparison of customer expectations with service performance is service quality. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is defined as a pleasurable fulfilment response toward a good, service, benefit, or reward (Oliver, 1997). Both of these