The relationship between waiting in a service queue and evaluations of service quality: A field theory perspective

Abstract

Both empirical evidence and logic suggest that there is a strong negative correlation between waiting time and a customer's evaluation of the quality of a service. The evaluation of service, in turn, is related strongly to customers' loyalty and other important outcomes. A conceptual model, based on field theory, is developed. The model integrates key variables derived from recent studies of consumer waiting behavior. Also incorporated are relevant constructs from the extant services literature, including the roles of the disconfirmation of consumers' wait time expectations, prior service encounters, and the quality of the customer's encounter with the contact employee. Finally, data from actual consumers in a natural queueing context are used to test the theoretical framework. Analysis of the data, with the use of multiple regression, demonstrates a strong pattern of support for the field‐theory‐based hypotheses, confirming the important role of queue wait management in customer evaluations of service quality. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Assessing the effect of Waiting Time Management Strategies on Waiting Time Satisfaction among Bank Customers in Ghana

“…In situations where the actual waiting period cannot be changed, it is critically important for financial service providers to formulate strategies to manage customer PWT in terms of filled time (Taylor, 1994(Taylor, , 1995Hui et al, 1997), service stage (Houston et al, 1998), uncertain waits (Taylor, 1994;Kumar and Krishnamurthy, 2008), unexplained waits (Hui and Tse, 1996), and fairness (Oberholzer-Gee, 2006;Voorhees et al, 2009). An organisation's waiting management (WTM) strategies are a set of waiting time fillers meant to reduce the consumer's PWT dissatisfaction.…”

Queue mining for delay prediction in multi-class service processes

“…The phenomena of delay has been a popular research subject in queueing theory, see [12]. The interest in delay prediction is motivated by psychological insights on the negative effect of waiting on customer satisfaction [13]. Field studies have found that seeing the line ahead moving and getting initial information on the expected delay, both have a positive effect on the waiting experience [14,15].…”

Waiting in line at a fashion store: psychological and emotional responses

“…Waiting negatively affects service quality evaluation (Antonides et al 2002;Houston et al 1998;Cho and Kim 2007) and reduces customer satisfaction with service (Davis and Vollmann 1990;Davis and Heineke 1998;Leclerc et al 1995). Furthermore, waiting induces negative emotions such as anger and uncertainty (Taylor 1994), which consequently mediate the relationship between service quality evaluation and customer satisfaction (Hui and Tse 1996;Houston et al 1998). …”

“…Research on industries such as medical services (Tansik and Routhieaux 1999;Yoon and Kim 2003), bank services (Chebat et al 1995;Houston et al 1998;Katz et al 1991), dining services (Davis and Heineke 1998;Davis and Vollmann 1990), and airline services (Taylor 1995) focused on how to reduce the negative impact of long waits.…”