What Drives Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Happiness in Fast-Food Restaurants in China? Perceived Price, Service Quality, Food Quality, Physical Environment Quality, and the Moderating Role of Gender.

Yongping Zhong,Hee Cheol Moon

doi:10.3390/foods9040460

Abstract

The fast-food service industry has been growing rapidly across China over the last few decades. In accordance with the rising consumption level in the country, Chinese customers care increasingly about their food choices. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that can influence customer satisfaction, loyalty, and happiness, with a particular focus on the moderating role of gender. Data were collected through an online survey completed by customers who visited Western fast-food restaurants (KFC, McDonalds, etc.) in China. The structural equation model was applied to test 12 hypotheses. Results showed that perceived price, food, service, and physical environment quality positively affected customer satisfaction. Perceived price can significantly influence customers’ judgement of the quality dimensions of a restaurant. Moreover, customer satisfaction and happiness can lead to a sense of loyalty. Happiness functions as a mediator between satisfaction and loyalty. Nonetheless, our findings indicated that customers’ perceptions of food quality based on price and satisfaction levels based on service quality differ significantly between the genders, which demonstrated that gender moderation exists in food consumption. This study will contribute to a better understanding of managerial and theoretical perspectives, which will be beneficial for subsequent research.

Highlights

China, a huge emerging market with great potential, has been growing very fast since joining the WTO (World Trade Organization) in the early 2000s
Partial least squares (PLS) were used with a 5000-subsample bootstrapping procedure, which was suggested by Hair et al (2016) [81]
The findings for Hypothesis 5 (H5), Hypothesis 6 (H6), and Hypothesis 7 (H7) demonstrated that perceived price had positive effects on quality

Summary

Introduction

A huge emerging market with great potential, has been growing very fast since joining the WTO (World Trade Organization) in the early 2000s. Western fast-food chains are expanding rapidly, and eating in a Western fast food restaurant has become a trend among the younger generations [1]. Western fast-food giants are facing challenges from local restaurants that have expanded dramatically across. With the improvement in living conditions, Chinese customers care increasingly about what, how, and where they eat, so competition between Western companies and local companies is inevitable. In order to compete with local food restaurants and generate greater profit, Western fast-food companies must pay more attention to price, service quality, food quality, and physical environment. Of these four factors, price is the most critically influential.

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