Critical Review of Service Quality Scales with a Focus on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty in Restaurants

Abstract

This study provides a critical review of the instruments developed for measuring service quality in restaurants. However, this study reviews the researches to examine the relationships between service quality, customer satisfaction (CS), and customer loyalty (CL) in restaurants. It is revealed that there are many attempts to develop instruments that aim to measure service quality in restaurants. SERVQUAL instrument, which measures service quality (SQ), has been used in many studies related to the tourism industry. However, the SERVQUAL is directly used as the basis of the SERVPERF and DINESERV instruments. Besides, since the GRSERV and CFFRSERV scales are based on DINESERV, the SERVQUAL plays an important role in the development of such scales. In addition to the instruments developed by modifying SERVQUAL, there are attempts to create different ones. In researches that develop a new SQ scale, the reasons underlying this need are stated as follows: 1) Some service quality components specific to restaurants and tourism sector not included in the current scales 2) Measuring the expectations and performance at the same time is not necessary 3) Current scales are insufficient for the unique types of restaurants, such as Fast Food, Upscale and Green Restaurants. CS and CL are the most common variables in the studies examining the SQ in restaurants. There is a divergence in the literature about whether service quality leads to satisfaction or satisfaction brings service quality. However, it can be said that there is a consensus that these two structures are in a very close relationship with each other. Another consensus in the literature is that CS and SQ are regarded as the determinants of CL. On the other hand, a considerable amount of research has been devoted to service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty, and it will be the case for future studies. However, the changes in business environments reveal the necessity of modification in the instruments that will pave the way to measure these concepts. A pandemic has recently affected the lives of businesses, and people and this new situation may require the addition of a new dimension to service quality instruments, like outbreak measures.

Outcomes of a trial of an age‐friendly dining initiative: Dining Co

“…The food, service, atmosphere, physical structure and social aspects of dining all contribute to customer loyalty. 3 Customer loyalty in turn supports increased sales, personnel satisfaction, and reduced overall costs for dining venues. In this increasingly large and important segment of the dining market addressing the wants and needs of older diners and incorporating their feedback into marketing and production processes is essential.…”

“…While it has been reported that restaurants are not accommodating to the decline in older people's physical and psychological function resulting in these being reluctant to dine out, 2 there is scarce research to guide the design of dining products and services that best fit the needs of mature consumers. 3 A rare recent study investigating this gap in the literature interviewed Malaysian people aged over 55 and identified eight factors that influence their restaurant dining choices: ageing deficits, life perspective, socialising, food, service, location, price and discounts, and recommendations from trusted sources. 4 Good food and service were the key drivers of older adults' intention to re-visit a dining venue.…”

“…They mostly measure customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and service quality as it is widely agreed that all three constructs should be used to measure the quality of a dining experience. 3 Historically, the 29-item DINESERV questionnaire, used to measure dining service-quality, did not assess food quality, one of the most important indicators in assessing the overall customers' experience of dining services. 6,7 Hence the Chinese Fast Food Restaurants Service Quality Scale (CFFRSERV) was developed based on a modified DINESERV scale with the addition of food quality assessment.…”

Modelling the priority attributes of customer loyalty in Philippine single-dish restaurants

“…Given the intensity of the competition and demanding consumers, a reasonable concern revolves around what restaurants can do to maintain customer loyalty. Knowing what the customers want and what makes them come back is essential for the restaurant managers in view of making operational improvements to the restaurant (Naylor and Greco, 2002; Uslu and Eren, 2020). Depending on an array of motivations, it is widely considered that customer satisfaction predicts customer loyalty (Cha and Borchgrevink, 2019; Uslu and Eren, 2020; Zhong and Moon, 2020).…”

“…Knowing what the customers want and what makes them come back is essential for the restaurant managers in view of making operational improvements to the restaurant (Naylor and Greco, 2002; Uslu and Eren, 2020). Depending on an array of motivations, it is widely considered that customer satisfaction predicts customer loyalty (Cha and Borchgrevink, 2019; Uslu and Eren, 2020; Zhong and Moon, 2020). As established in the domain literature, some of the identified factors of customer satisfaction in restaurants are perceived price, food, service quality and the quality of the physical environment (Zhong and Moon, 2020).…”