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IJQSS
1,1 Service quality, customer
satisfaction, and behavioral
intentions in fast-food restaurants
78
Hong Qin and Victor R. Prybutok
Information Technology and Decision Sciences Department,
College of Business Administration, University of North Texas,
Denton, Texas, USA

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to explore the potential dimensions of service quality, and examine the
relationship among service quality, food quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction and
behavioral intentions in fast-food restaurants (FFRs).
Design/methodology/approach – The construct reliability and validity was assessed using
exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modeling was
employed to estimate the relationship among service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral
intentions.
Findings – Results indicated that five dimensions were significant: tangibles, reliability/
responsiveness, recovery, assurance, and empathy. Service quality and food quality were two main
determinants of customer satisfaction. The insignificance of perceived value is potentially due to the
homogeneous nature of the construct within the FFR group rather than the importance of the
perceived value construct within food service.
Originality/value – The FFR success model, using the original five in the SERVPERF scale and
another new dimension “recovery” to measure service quality, was empirically examined in the fast
food industry. Several potential antecedents of satisfaction, including service quality, food quality and
perceived value were also tested.
Keywords Consumer behaviour, Customer satisfaction, Fast foods, Customer services quality
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Customers’ evaluations of the service quality are critical to service firms that aim to
improve their marketing strategies (Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Jain and Gupta, 2004;
Ofir and Simonson, 2001). Firms that provide superior service quality also have a more
satisfied customer base (Aaker and Jacobson, 1994; Gilbert et al., 2004; Gilbert and
Veloutsou, 2006). Customer satisfaction is viewed as influencing repurchase intentions
and behavior, which, in turn, leads to an organization’s future revenue and profits. As a
result of the direct link with profits, the issue of service quality and customer
satisfaction has become a focus of the hospitality industries. More and more companies
are compelled to assess and improve their service quality in an effort to attract
International Journal of Quality and
customers (Gilbert and Veloutsou, 2006).
Service Sciences There are some academic studies to address the service quality and customer
Vol. 1 No. 1, 2009
pp. 78-95 satisfaction in fast-food restaurants (FFRs) (Brady et al., 2001; Gilbert et al., 2004; Kara
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1756-669X
et al., 1995; Lee and Ulgado, 1997; Qin and Prybutok, 2008); however, most of the studies
DOI 10.1108/17566690910945886 are limited to the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality.
Some other potential determinants of customer satisfaction such as food quality and Service quality
perceived value are ignored. in restaurants
Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, very few studies have examined the
recovery ability of FFRs, much less of its effect on the perceived service quality or
customer satisfaction. Understanding the interplay between the recovery mechanism
and customer behavioral intentions is important, because better recoveries increase the
customer’s propensity to return to the same service provider whereas ineffective 79
service recovery may reinforce the customer’s dissatisfaction with the service (Harris
et al., 2006). However, service recovery is not considered in the well-known SERVPERF
model even though some findings suggest that recovery dominates formation of
customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions (Spreng et al., 1995).
This study contributes to the investigation of the above issues. First, we seek to
develop a FFR success model by examining the key dimensions of service quality in the
fast food industry. Specifically, another potential dimension, recovery, is incorporated
into the SERVPERF instrument. After establishing sufficient reliability and validity of
this instrument, we proceed with the second objective – to examine the relationship
among service quality, food quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction, and
behavioral intentions.
The organization of this paper includes another five sections. The theoretical
foundation of perceived service quality and its dimensions are reviewed in the next
section, followed by the research methodology including the development of the
instrument. Then, the data analysis and findings of this study are presented, followed
by the conclusions and managerial implications. The paper concludes with a section on
the limitations of this work and potential future research.

2. Theoretical foundation
The importance of service quality is substantially addressed in the fast-food
management literature. Superior service leads to satisfied and loyal customers whose
continued patronage is essential to the success of FFRs. Conversely, poor service quality
increases customer dissatisfaction and the likelihood that customers dine at a
competitor’s FFR and/or become an active champion in persuading others to go
elsewhere (Gilbert et al., 2004). Hence, it is crucial for service managers to understand
how customers perceive the service they provide, and what components might
determine the nature of the perceived service quality in FFRs.

2.1 Measurement of service quality

Over the past two decades, the research related to perceived service quality has swelled
enormously. An important contribution to that research stream is Parasuraman et al.’s
(1988) 22-item SERVQUAL scale. This scale measures service quality by the degree of
discrepancy between customers’ normative expectations for the service and their
perceptions of the providers’ actual performances (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988). Five
dimensions are unsheathed as the main attributes of service quality across a variety of
services. These dimensions include tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance,
and empathy. Subsequent empirical works have applied the SERVQUAL instrument
to measure service quality in a variety of business settings (Bojanic and Rosen, 1994;
Fu and Parks, 2001; Furrer et al., 2000; Gounaris, 2005; Heung et al., 2000; Lassar et al.,
2000; Lee and Ulgado, 1997).
IJQSS Although the SERVQUAL instrument is employed enthusiastically, it has received
1,1 heavy criticism from both a theoretical and practical perspective. The issues questioned
include the use of gap scores, the overlap among five dimensions, poor predictive and
convergent validity, the ambiguous definition of the “expectation” construct, and
unstable dimensionality (Babakus and Boller, 1992; Carman, 1990; Peter et al., 1993; van
Dyke et al., 1999). By discarding the expectation portion in the SERVQUAL model,
80 Cronin and Taylor (1992) justify their SERVPERF or performance-only instrument in
place of the gap measurement approach. In addition, they provide empirical evidence
that the SERVPERF instrument outperforms the SERVQUAL scale across four
industries: fast food, dry cleaning, banks and pest control. The performance-only
measures are used and suggested by many scholars in various industries (Gilbert et al.,
2004; Keillor et al., 2004; Law et al., 2004; Parasuraman et al., 1994; van Dyke et al., 1997).
In addition to the research of Cronin and Taylor (1992) in fast food industry, Jain
and Gupta (2004) compare weighted and un-weighted versions of the SERVQUAL and
SERVPERF instruments by conducting a survey of FFR customers in India. They find
that the SERVPERF scale is more effective in explaining the service quality constructs
and variations in service quality scores within the restaurant industry. For the purpose
of this study, we are following Cronin and Taylor’s conceptual model and use
performance only to measure service quality.
Several previous studies suggest that modification of SERVPERF is necessary for
application to different service industries (Andaleeb and Conway, 2006; Carman, 1990;
Olorunniwo et al., 2006). This served as an impetus to investigate other influential
components of service quality within the fast-food industry. Specifically, we
investigated 60 customer reviews of FFR service at: www.my3cents.com. From
those reviews, we gleaned that most of the customers experiencing dissatisfactory
service were complaining about the poor resolution of their negative experience
rather than the service incidence itself. This supports the contention that most
customers can accept that service is not flawless and mistakes are tolerated if they
believe that the restaurant is concerned about resolution of the service problem. This is
consistent with prior findings in the literature (Bitner et al., 1990; Heskett et al., 1994;
McColl et al., 2005).
Failure itself does not necessarily lead to customer dissatisfaction; however, failure
to handle recoveries effectively can lead to lost customers and negative
word-of-mouth (Heskett et al., 1994; McColl et al., 2005). Moreover, the complete
resolution of a critical service failure can even provide positive word-of-mouth
endorsements and future repeat patronage (Leong and Kim, 2002). Therefore, in
addition to the five dimensions employed in the SERVPERF instrument, recovery was
included in this study as one of the potential dimensions of the perceived service
quality. It is defined as the ability to actively take responsive actions when the service
delivery goes wrong. Four items of recovery, as shown in Table I, were modified from
the mass service environment (Olorunniwo et al., 2006) to create our items for use in
the fast-food industry.

2.2 Interrelationship among service quality, customer satisfaction and behavioral

intentions
The relationship among service quality, customer satisfaction and behavioral intensions
has received considerable attention in the marketing literature (Brady et al., 2001, 2002;
 Service quality
Constructs Indicators Sources
in restaurants
Tangibles Clean dining area
Well-dressed employees Cronin and Taylor (1992),
Using disposable gloves and hair Johns and Howard (1998) and
net Kara et al. (1995)
Seating availability 81
Parking availability
Reliability Providing service as promised Cronin and Taylor (1992)
Sympathetic and reassuring
Dependable
On-schedule service
Accurate charge
Assurance Trust employees Cronin and Taylor (1992)
Feel safe for financial transactions
Friendly employees
Knowledgeable employees
Responsiveness Telling exact service time Cronin and Taylor (1992)
Employees available to requests
Prompt service
Employees willing to help
Empathy Availability of utensils, etc. Cronin and Taylor (1992) and
Convenient operating hours Johns and Howard (1998)
Convenient locations
Completely packaged food
Recovery Employees quickly apologize for Olorunniwo et al. (2006)
mistakes
Cares about customer’s complaints
Skills and ability to deal with
complains
Employees empowered to provide
compensation
Food quality Fresh Johns and Howard (1998) and
Presentation Kivela et al. (1999)
Well cooked
A variety of food and beverage
Perceived value Competitive price for food Kim and Kim (2004) and
Competitive price for beverage Kara et al. (1995)
Value worthy of price
Customer satisfaction Satisfied with dining Olorunniwo et al. (2006)
Wise choice
Right thing
Enjoyable experience
Behavioral intentions Recommendation Boulding et al. (1993) and Table I.
Intention to dine here again Keillor et al. (2004) Sources of questionnaire
Saying good things about the FFR items

Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Meuter et al., 2000; Oliva et al., 1992; Olorunniwo and Hsu, 2006;
Olorunniwo et al., 2006; Zeithaml et al., 1996). Within this research area, numerous
empirical studies have reported the positive relationship between customer satisfaction
and behavioral intentions (Cronin et al., 2000; Kivela et al., 1999; Olorunniwo et al., 2006).
Consistent with the prior research, the first hypothesis in this study is that:
IJQSS H1. Customer satisfaction directly and positively influences behavioral intentions.
1,1 An ongoing debate in the marketing literature relates to the direction of the quality/
satisfaction causal relationship – whether customer satisfaction is an antecedent or
consequence of service quality (Andaleeb and Conway, 2006). One group of researchers
refers to service quality as a global evaluation of a particular service setting and
consistent with this theory service quality is the consequence of satisfaction incidents
82 over time (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988). The European and American customer
satisfaction indices models, however, suggest that service quality is a component of
satisfaction (Fornell et al., 1996). Bagozzi (1992) proposes that service quality evaluation
of a product or a service encounter leads to an emotive satisfaction assessment that in
turn drives behavioral intentions. Although there is no consensus in the literature on the
causal order of these two constructs, the converging opinion is that service quality
perceptions lead to customer satisfaction (Cronin et al., 2000). Building upon these
findings, we posit that service quality is the antecedent of customer satisfaction. As a
result, our second research hypothesis is:
H2. Service quality directly and positively influences consumer satisfaction.

2.3 Other factors of customer satisfaction in FFRs

In addition to service quality, several other determinants of customer satisfaction in
FFRs were examined because service is only one of the components of the offering for
FFRs (Andaleeb and Conway, 2006). Food quality is viewed related to satisfaction
within FFRs (Kivela et al., 1999; Law et al., 2004; Johns and Howard, 1998) and is tested
in this study. As a result, the third hypothesis is:
H3. Food quality directly and positively influences customer satisfaction.
The perceived value can also greatly influence customer satisfaction owing to its
ability to attract or repel customers (Fornell et al., 1996; Gilbert et al., 2004; Kara et al.,
1995; Lee and Ulgado, 1997; Monroe, 1989) and, as a consequence, it is viewed as
another determinant of customer satisfaction. The next hypothesis is:
H4. Perceived value directly and positively influences customer satisfaction.
All these hypotheses lead to the research model posited in this study and shown in
Figure 1.

3. Research methodology and data analysis

The FFR success model includes service quality, food quality, perceived value,
customer satisfaction and behavioral intensions. Most of 22 original items in the
SERVPERF scale were preserved and the other items used were all selected from prior
marketing and food studies (Table I). The items that measure empathy was modified
based on the prior findings (Andaleeb and Conway, 2006; Lee and Ulgado, 1997). Minor
customization in the wording was conducted for the other items in an effort to better fit
the FFRs context.
All items were rated by respondents on a seven-point Likert scale. Each item was
scaled from number 1 with the verbal statement “Strongly Disagree” to number 7 with
the verbal statement “Strongly Agree”. Each subject was asked to evaluate the FFR they
most recently visited. The proposed questionnaire was first reviewed by several
 Service Quality
Service quality
(SQ) in restaurants
H2

Customer Behavioral
Food Quality H3 H1 Intentions
Satisfaction
(FQ) (CS) (BI) 83

Perceived Value H4 Figure 1.

(PV) FFR success model

knowledgeable faculty and experts in the field of service quality management. The next
step was to administer a pilot test to 30 doctoral students. Based on all the feedback,
several modifications were made to the items so that they better fit the FFR context.
Following that effort, the FFR success instrument with 40 conceptual items and
several demographic questions was administered via an online survey. The
respondents were college students in a large southwestern university in the USA.
The online survey format was used instead of the traditional paper survey because it is
cheaper, faster, and offers a flexible format. College students were selected as subjects
because of the ease in accessing them and because they dine at FFRs frequently, and
possess an intuitive understanding of service quality in FFRs.
A total of 305 responses were received, and 23 of them were determined to be
unusable. Of the 282 usable responses, 45.7 percent were completed by male
respondents. More than 55.7 percent of the respondents were between 21- and 25-years
old. This is in consistence with our use of college students as the sampling frame. All
the respondents surveyed had dined at a FFR in the last month, and around 60 percent
of respondents had dined in a FFR more than five times within about one month. Over
45 percent of the respondents have a monthly income less than $800. The detailed
demographic information is provided in Table II.

3.1 Reliability and validity assessment

Principle component analysis with a varimax rotation was employed to test the
discriminant and convergent validity of the instrument. Factor analysis was used for each
construct and then for the six dimensions of service quality together. All the items with a
loading less than 0.55 on any latent variable were deleted. The results of principal
components factor analysis in Table III present that most of the factor loadings are above
0.6 with cross loadings less than 0.4 after rotation. The 22 remaining items loaded into five
latent variables. The items that measure reliability and responsiveness were loaded
together and were named reliability/responsiveness in this research. All the four items to
measure the dimension recovery loaded together but there were some cross-loadings.
Overall, the exploratory factor analysis supports the validity of the service quality
instrument in the proposed FFR success model. Some of the discrepancies that we
experience were also consistent with previous criticisms of the SERVPERF scale such as
items not loading on their theoretical factors and items that cross-loading (Buttle, 1996;
van Dyke et al., 1999).
IJQSS
Characteristic Percentage
1,1
Dining frequency
0-5 times 41.1
6-10 times 31.6
11-15 times 13.8
84 More than 15 times 13.5
Gender
Male 45.7
Female 54.3
Age (years)
18-20 26.6
21-25 55.7
26-30 10.7
31-35 3.5
Over 35 3.5
Monthly income
Less than $400 22.7
$400 to less than $800 23.0
$800 to less than $1,200 25.5
$1,200 to less than $1,600 9.2
Table II. $1,600 to less than $2,000 6.4
Demographics of sample $2,000 or more 13.1

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to test unidimensionality (Gerbing

and Anderson, 1988). The LISREL 8.54 structural equation analysis package (Jöreskog
and Sörbom, 2003) was utilized to conduct the CFA. The primary outputs (Table IV)
show the relationships between the five main dimensions of service quality and their
associated items (Model A in Figure 3). The standardized loadings are higher than 0.80,
and the t-values are higher than 1.96, which supports the convergent validity of the
item measures (Olorunniwo et al., 2006). The goodness-of-fit indices of Model A, shown
in Table VII, support the acceptability of the measurement model (see the Appendix for
details).
Composite reliability rather than Cronbach’s a was used to assess reliability
because the latter may over- or underestimate the reliability coefficient especially when
multidimensional measures or pre-specified sets of items are used (Brunner and SÜß,
2005; Raykov and Grayson, 2003). The composite reliability scores for five service
quality dimensions, shown as diagonal elements in Table V, range from 0.80 to 0.94
and are all higher than the benchmark value of 0.70 (Olorunniwo et al., 2006).
The means and standard deviations of all latent variables were summarized for the
four major FFR chains in this study. Table VI shows the actual performance of these
FFRs in terms of service quality, food quality, customer satisfaction, etc. These results
are shown for the chains that had at least 30 respondents, and they indicate the relative
strength of each construct both within and between the four FFRs.
Discriminant validity is supported because all the composite reliability scores on
diagonal are higher than the off-diagonal correlation coefficients in Table V. In addition,
the 95 percent confidence interval of the inter-factor correlation between two latent
variables was further applied to assess the discriminant validity. Although some of the
correlation coefficients are high, their confidence intervals do not include the absolute
 Service quality
F2
F1 Reliability/ F3 F4 F5 in restaurants
Recovery responsiveness Assurance Empathy Tangibles

CareComplnt 0.825
RecoverySkills 0.809
RecoveryCompensation 0.793 85
Apology 0.748
PrmptMtgProms 0.732
TimelyService 0.720
Promptness 0.689
Dependability 0.429 0.642
EmplyAvailability 0.409 0.614
AccurateCharge 0.606 0.435
EmplyWillingness 0.412 0.605 0.421
Trust 0.439 0.726
SafeTransaction 0.695
EmplyFriendly 0.437 0.660
EmplyKnowledgeable 0.405 0.599
ConvenientLocation 0.828
ConvenientHours 0.801
UtensilsAvailability 0.595 0.417
Parking 0.718
Seating 0.709
ClnDiningArea 0.431 0.621
WellDressedEmly 0.525 0.563
Mean 4.69 5.17 4.79 5.65 5.16
Standard deviation 1.45 1.24 1.35 1.32 1.23
Percentage of explained variance
(post-rotation total ¼ 77.64
percent) 19.02 18.86 14.98 13.19 11.58 Table III.
Factor loadings for
Notes: Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: varimax with Kaiser service quality in FFR
normalization. Rotation converged in six iterations success model

value of 1.0, which supports the discriminant validity of these constructs as well
(Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). Given their good measurement properties (reliability and
validity), the average score for each latent construct that comprised service quality was
employed in the hypothesis testing procedures. This is identical to the technique used by
Paswan et al. (1998) where the scale items were averaged to establish composite scores
for the purposes of hypotheses testing.
A second-order CFA was employed to examine the relationship among service
quality, its five main dimensions and all indicator variables. From the standardized
factor loadings shown in Figure 2, we could see that all the dimensions have a significant
and positive relationship with the latent variable service quality. Specifically, the path
coefficient of 0.83 between the added dimension recovery and service quality is
significant, which supports our modification of the SERVPERF instrument. All the
previously selected fit indices presented in Table VII (Model B) indicate that the
measurement model of service quality is deemed acceptable.
IJQSS
Construct and items Standardized solution t-valuea
1,1
Recovery
Apology 0.87 22.36
CareComplnt 0.92 _b
RecoverySkills 0.92 25.45
86 RecoveryCompensation 0.80 18.55
Reliability/responsiveness
PrmptMtgProms 0.82 18.65
Dependability 0.82 18.69
TimelyService 0.84 19.17
AccurateCharge 0.76 16.05
EmplyAvailability 0.88 _b
Promptness 0.87 20.94
EmplyWillingness 0.85 19.66
Assurance
Trust 0.83 18.61
SafeTransaction 0.82 17.99
EmplyFriendly 0.88 _b
EmplyKnowledgeable 0.82 17.98
Empathy
UtensilsAvailability 0.71 13.58
ConvenientHours 0.89 _b
ConvenientLocation 0.86 17.69
Tangibles
ClnDiningArea 0.82 _b
WellDressedEmly 0.76 13.33
Seating 0.68 11.65
Table IV. Parking 0.57 9.66
First-order CFA for the
FFR success Notes: at-values are from unstandardized solution. bt-values are unavailable because the loadings are
model – Model A fixed for scaling purposes

Reli/Res Recovery Empathy Assurance Tangibles

Reli/Res 0.94 a
Recovery 0.73 * 0.93 a
Table V. Empathy 0.68 * 0.53 * 0.86 a
Correlation matrix of Assurance 0.80 * 0.75 * 0.56 * 0.90 a
perceived service Tangibles 0.74 * 0.59 * 0.65 * 0.64 * 0.80 a
quality-FFR success
model Notes: aThe diagonal elements are composite reliability scores. Significance at *p , 0.01 level

3.2 Model fit assessment

Given the support of strong internal and external validity in both first- and second-order
measurement models, structural modeling analysis enables us to examine the
hypothesized relationships. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed because
it is generally considered more suitable for the mathematical modeling that involves
complicated variable relationships. SEM allows analysis of both the measurement
 Service quality
All FFRs FFR1 FFR2 FFR3 FFR4
Variables Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD in restaurants
Tangibles 5.16 1.23 5.03 1.37 5.01 1.27 5.35 0.88 5.10 1.18
Recovery 4.69 1.45 4.82 1.53 4.83 1.31 4.73 1.18 4.43 1.26
Reliability/responsiveness 5.17 1.24 5.25 1.40 5.11 1.22 5.20 0.99 4.65 1.05
Empathy 5.65 1.32 5.61 1.41 5.93 1.23 5.70 1.44 5.56 1.23 87
Assurance 4.79 1.35 4.96 1.41 4.86 1.28 4.92 1.20 4.02 1.15
Food quality 5.28 1.31 5.34 1.42 5.48 1.29 5.27 1.20 4.63 1.14
Perceived value 5.21 1.38 5.12 1.42 5.37 1.23 5.42 1.15 4.86 1.31
Service quality 5.09 1.13 5.13 1.27 5.15 1.10 5.18 0.88 4.75 0.96 Table VI.
Customer satisfaction 5.20 1.48 5.32 1.55 5.21 1.42 5.56 1.16 4.72 1.53 Summary statistics for
Behavioral intentions 5.26 1.22 5.27 1.34 5.40 1.19 5.26 1.04 4.77 0.99 latent variables

model and the structural model. It cannot only address measurement errors but also
allows the examination of the factor analysis and hypothesis testing together (Gefen
et al., 2000). Model C in Figure 3 includes all the proposed relationships in this study.
For model evaluation emphasis was placed on x 2/df, standardized root mean square
residual (SRMR), adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI), normed fit index (NFI),
non-normed fit index (NNFI), CFI and parsimonious normed fit index (PNFI), reported
in Table VII (Model C). The x 2/df is 3.03, slightly higher than the cutoff value of 3.0.
The other indices support the model fit (AGFI higher than 0.80; PNFI higher than 0.75;
SRMR lower than 0.10; NFI, NNFI, CFI higher than 0.90). These emphasized indices
indicate the acceptability of this structural model.
All the parameter estimates between items and their associated latent variable, as
shown in Table VIII, are significant. H1 posits a direct and positive relationship
between customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions and is supported by a
significant path coefficient. H2, positing a direct and positive relationship between
perceived service quality and customer satisfaction, is statistically significant.
H3 investigates a direct and positive relationship between food quality and customer
satisfaction, and is statistically significant and supported. This result shows that the
improvement of food quality might yield higher level of customer satisfaction.
H4, modeling perceived value as one of the antecedents of customer satisfaction, is
rejected because of the non-significant t-value.

4. Conclusion and implications

This study posits and develops an instrument of service quality in the context of FFRs,
and examines the relationship among service quality, food quality, perceived value,
customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. The proposed FFR success model is
then calibrated using the data from an online survey completed by college students
that eat at FFRs.
Five significant dimensions of service quality identified are: tangibles,
reliability/responsiveness, empathy, assurance, and recovery. The results support our
modification of the SERVPERF model, with the addition of the “recovery” dimension in
the service quality instrument for FFRs. This is also consistent with prior work that
shows it is necessary to modify the SERVPERF model for a particular industry (Carman,
1990; Olorunniwo et al., 2006).
IJQSS
1,1
ClnDiningArea
0.82*
WellDressedEml
0.77*
88 Tangible
0.66* Seating

0.56*
Parking

PrmptMtgProms
0.87*
0.83*
Dependability
0.83*
TimelyService
0.83*
0.75* AccurateCharge
Reli/Resa
0.88* EmplyAvailibility
0.86*
Promptness
0.96* 0.83*
EmplyWillingness

SQ Trust
0.83*
0.91* SafeTransaction
0.83*
Assurance 0.88* EmplyFriendly
0.82*
EmplyKnledgeable
0.72*
EssentialAvail
0.71*
ConvenientHours
Empathy 0.88*
0.87* CvntLocation

0.83* Apology
0.87*
0.92* CareComplnt
Recovery
0.92*
RecoverySkills
0.80*
Compensation
Figure 2. a
Notes: Parameter estimates between five dimensions of service quality are omitted. Reli/Res = Reliability/
Second-order CFA for the Responsiveness. * Indicates significance at p < 0.01 level
FFR success model
(Model B)
 Tangibles 4 items Tangibles 4 items
Service quality
in restaurants
Reli/Resa 7 items Reli/Resa 7 items

Assurance 4 items Serv Qualb Assurance 4 items

Empathy 3 items Empathy 3 items

89

Recovery 4 items Recovery 4 items

Model A-First-order CFA for the FFR Model B-Second-Order CFA for the FFR
Success Model Success Model

Serv Qualb
with
Recovery

Food Customer Behavioral

Quality Satisfaction Intentions

PVc

Model C-Structural Model for the FFR Success Model Figure 3.

Models
Notes: a Reli/Res – Reliability/Responsiveness. b Serv Qual – Service Quality. c PV – Perceived Value

x2 df x 2/df p-value AGFI SRMR NFI NNFI CFI PNFI

Model A 505.97 199 2.54 0.00 0.80 0.058 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.84
Model B 511.63 204 2.51 0.00 0.80 0.061 0.97 0.98 0.98 0.84
Model C 436.86 145 3.03 0.00 0.82 0.063 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.83
Table VII.
Notes: Model A: first-order CFA for the FFR Success model; Model B: second-order CFA for the FFR Comparative
success model; Model C: structural model for the FFR Success model. Detailed information about these goodness-of-fit indices
models is shown in Figure 3 among models

Among these five dimensions, reliability/responsiveness, tangibles, assurance, and

recovery are slightly more important than empathy with standardized loadings higher
than 0.80. As part of the work, we also looked at the model fit with and without
recovery. The importance of recovery in FFRs was supported by the better model fit
obtained with its inclusion. This supports the importance of building a reliable
customer relationship, and responding to customer requests or complaints in a prompt
manner. Our results also suggest that FFRs should train employees in service recovery
standards and guidelines. It is also important to empower employees so that they can
compensate customers for service failure. For example, employees might be
IJQSS
Item Standardized solution t-valuea
1,1
Tangible ! ServQual 0.78 16.50
Reli/Res ! ServQual 0.91 22.03
Assurance ! ServQual 0.87 _b
Empathy ! ServQual 0.74 14.91
90 Recovery ! ServQual 0.80 16.96
Food1 ! FoodQual 0.82 _b
Food2 ! FoodQual 0.84 17.03
Food3 ! FoodQual 0.85 17.24
Food4 ! FoodQual 0.69 12.97
PV1 ! Perceived value 0.93 _b
PV2 ! Perceived value 0.86 19.95
PV3 ! Perceived value 0.80 17.44
CS1 ! CustomerSat 0.93 32.25
CS2 ! CustomerSat 0.96 _b
CS3 ! CustomerSat 0.94 34.14
CS4 ! CustomerSat 0.91 29.40
BI1 ! BehavioralInt 0.89 26.20
BI2 ! BehavioralInt 0.92 30.36
BI3 ! BehavioralInt 0.95 _b
ServQual ! CustomerSat 0.15 2.53
FoodQual ! CustomerSat 0.64 9.60
Perceived value ! CustomerSat 0.01 0.43
Table VIII. CustomerSat ! BehavioralInt 1.25 17.34
Structural modeling for
the FFR success Notes: at-values are from unstandardized solution. bt-values are unavailable because the loadings are
model – Model C fixed for scaling purposes

empowered to provide a price discount or coupons for a future visit to compensate

customers in the event of a service failure. The effective resolution of service failure can
improve customers’ perceived service quality that, in turn, can positively influence
word-of-mouth and customer loyalty.
Moreover, our findings show that service quality is an important antecedent of
customer satisfaction. This finding reinforces the need for FFR owners and managers
to place an emphasis on the underlying dimensions of service quality, especially on
responsiveness/reliability and recovery strategies. The overwhelmingly direct effect of
customer satisfaction on behavioral intentions substantiates the need to constantly
monitor customers’ responses. Practically, FFRs could collect customer feedback about
the service they received in real time; furthermore, they could trace the customers in
accordance with their evaluations, particularly those complaining about the service
quality. This strategy enables FFRs to identify the issues they are confronting and take
corrective actions.
Two other hypothesized factors of customer satisfaction are examined. The
significant relationship between food quality and satisfaction supports the contention
that food characteristics are still influential factors when customers make their
decisions about the selection of FFRs. Consistent with this finding providing fresh,
tasty, and a variety of food and beverages remains an important criterion for satisfying
customers. This finding provides support for FFR managers to develop better
strategies to differentiate their services. For example, FFRs might find that offering
specialty market segment options such as low fat, low calorie, or low-carbohydrate Service quality
items increases their market appeal. Additionally, FFRs could prominently display in restaurants
calorie information for their menu items inside of their restaurants and/or on their web
site, to better address the concerns of the portion of FFR customers concerned with
these aspects of food quality.
Another proposed factor of customer satisfaction, perceived value, is not significant
in this study. This does not suggest perceived value is not important for satisfaction. 91
Rather, we believe that this characteristic is relatively homogenous among the
restaurants in this study and as a result perceived value does not exhibit significant
variation relative to the other factors. The FFRs in this study have comparatively
inexpensive food options and other factors such as quick response and recoverability
are more critical to the respondents’ decision process. This is not a critical issue in
evaluating FFRs service quality because an individual selecting a FFR is doing so in
comparison to other FFRs and not because they are deciding between a FFR and a fine
dining establishment.

5. Limitations and future research

It is essential to acknowledge the limitations of this study. First of all, the findings of
this research should be used cautiously in attempting to make generalizations. Our
research is based on the use of college students as our sample pool but this group is
relatively homogeneous. While students do constitute a large market for FFRs, broader
generalizability is desirable. A more varied set of respondents could be obtained via
on-site surveys. Despite the homogeneity of our subjects we still think they are
representative of an important FFR market segment and qualified to provide feedback
about their perception of FFR performance.
In addition, it is worthwhile to investigate the determinants of service quality in
FFRs across multi-national settings (e.g. different countries). Many FFRs have
extended their business reach to include global markets and the factors identified in
this study are potentially inconsistent across cultures even with college students. As a
result, a direct comparison of the service quality factors across different countries such
as the USA and China is of significant value to FFRs.

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Appendix. Reliability and validity assessment Service quality
In Table VII, several goodness-of-fit indices for this measurement model (Model A) are reported.
The x 2/df is 2.54 for Model A and supports the model fit because the value is lower than the in restaurants
suggested cutoff value 3.0 (Simon and Paper, 2007). An absolute fit index – SRMR was also
examined, and its value of 0.058 is lower than the cutoff value 0.10 that is required to conclude a
reasonable model fit when sample size is around 250 (Sivo et al., 2006). Although Chin and Todd
(1995) and Segars and Grover (1993) suggest that SRMR is preferably below a 0.05 cutoff, Sivo
et al. (2006) recommend this number be moderately increased with smaller sample sizes. The 95
AGFI of this model is right at the cutoff value of 0.80 (Gefen et al., 2000). The PNFI is 0.84, higher
than the benchmark 0.75 (Sivo et al., 2006). Other fit indices included for this measurement model
are the NFI, NNFI, and the comparative fit index. All their values are higher than the benchmark
0.90 (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988; Mulaik et al., 1989). Therefore, the fit indices support the
acceptability of the measurement model.

About the authors

Hong Qin is a doctoral candidate in Management Science in the Information Technology and
Decision Sciences Department, College of Business Administration, University of North Texas.
She has published in Quality Management Journal and the Decision Sciences Institute conference
proceedings, and has presented her research at the 2007 INFORMS Annual Meeting and the 2007
DSI Annual Meeting. Her research interests include service operations, quality control, product
line design, and production technology. She has taught the two course sequence in
undergraduate business statistics at the University of North Texas’ College of Business
Administration. The topics she has taught include descriptive analysis, hypothesis testing,
multiple regression, and quality control. Hong Qin is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: [email protected]
Victor R. Prybutok is a Regents Professor of Decision Sciences in the Information Technology
and Decision Sciences Department and Director of the Center for Quality and Productivity in the
College of Business Administration at the University of North Texas. He received, from Drexel
University, his BS with High Honors in 1974, an MS in Bio-Mathematics in 1976, an MS in
Environmental Health in 1980, and a PhD in Environmental Analysis and Applied Statistics in
1984. He is an ASQ certified quality engineer, certified quality auditor, certified quality manager,
and served as a Texas Quality Award Examiner in 1993. He has authored over 90 journal
articles, several book chapters, and more than 70 conference presentations in information
systems measurement, quality control, risk assessment, and applied statistics.

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