Development of Taband restaurant rating scale utilizing mixed methods

Abstract

Rating systems (RSs) are important for promotional efforts of service business and restaurants are not exceptions. However, current RSs are presumed to have some problems in transparency, objectivity, competence as well as in recognition. The purpose of this study is to design and develop a multidimensional restaurant rating scale, taking into account the shortcomings of elitist, democratic and academic/independent RSs. Using semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 12 restaurant experts and employing content analysis on the data, the Taband restaurant rating scale was developed. The reliability and validity of the scale was supported by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (655 participants as first data set) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (597 participants as second data set). The final version of the scale was composed of 42 items with 10 dimensions, and 20 new items were added to the restaurant rating literature via the present study.