Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to empirically develop and validate a practical, consistent and specific scale to assess perceived service quality at the service encounter at quick-service restaurants (QSRs).Design/methodology/approachDevelopment and validation of the scale involved a five-stage process. Data were collected from 430 customers of a QSR belonging to an international brand located in Barcelona. Surveys were applied immediately after the service encounter, using the face-to-face method. The scale development procedure involved exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.FindingsThe results suggest a specific and parsimonious measurement scale, whose structure comprises 14 items in four dimensions. In contrast to previous studies, this study identified the appropriateness of splitting the interaction quality dimension into two single dimensions, one focusing on the interaction time and other on staff–customer interaction. Furthermore, these indicate that a speedy service, pleasant treatment and food quality are the most valued attributes in QSR.Practical implicationsThis scale is a useful instrument to administer and assure service quality standards within QSR management systems. Its practical approach and short survey length ease data collection, considering that customers spend short amounts of time in this type of restaurant. Furthermore, it could also be used by franchisors and restaurant operators as a tool to monitor continuing compliance with service quality standards.Originality/valueThe resulting scale introduces a novel four-factor structure with high goodness of fit to effectively measure customers' perceived service quality in QSRs, where the ease of use and speed of gathering client responses are a key factor for successful implementation.
Highlights
When consumers grab a coffee or a hamburger at an international quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain in any country around the world, they always expect to receive the same standard of service quality
The results show that confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) of the first-order model fits the data reasonably well, according to goodness-of-fit indices: Chi-square (χ2) 5 340,87, p-value 5 000; degree of freedom 5 74, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) 5 0.092; comparative fit index (CFI) 5 0.94; goodness of fit index (GFI) 5 0.88; standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) 5 0.047 and Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) 5 0.92, there is certainly room for their further improvement
Conclusions the importance of service quality has been extensively studied across many pure service and product-service contexts, previous research lacks specificity in the measurement of this construct in some particular contexts
Summary
When consumers grab a coffee or a hamburger at an international quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain in any country around the world, they always expect to receive the same standard of service quality. The QSR industry has achieved enormous growth in the last 10 years (Nguyen et al, 2018), and according to Mathe-Soulek et al (2015), almost a third of total restaurant sales correspond to QSR, making it a highly competitive industry. In this context, the annual survey conducted by the NPD Group shows that consumer spending in QSR reached almost three hundred billion US dollars in 2018 in the US market alone (Lock, 2019). The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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