Walker (1995: 5) cited that “services are primarily intangible, cannot be separated from their provider or stored in an inventory, and their delivery tends to be inconsistent”. Furthermore, Walker (1995) described how service qualities can be decided upon by the customer through different quality analysis and posed three categories: ‘search qualities’ are those which the customer knows before any service exchange happens; ‘experience’ are the qualities of service experienced by the customer during the service encounter; and ‘credence qualities’ are the intangible qualities of service that customers find difficult to evaluate. Smith (1999, in Chan, Wan and Sin, 2006: 3) defined what actually causes the failure of a service, as perceived by the customer, is when the “service is delivered in a flawed, or deficient manner, resulting in the loss of social resources (e.g. status, esteem) for the customer”. However, this conclusion was somewhat limited and Chan, Wan and Sin (2006) built on Smith’s theory and added ‘non-delivery’ as a cause of service failure for the customer. Non-delivery is that which may result in the loss of economic resources, such as, money, or time for the customer.
Service quality research (Chan, Wan and Sin, 2006; Mohr and Bitner, 1995) has split service into two sections that can be identified by customers: the process of service delivery (the transfer of service from employee, social and psychological aspects, to the customer) and the service outcome (the physical/instrumental factors which relate to the
service that the customer has). The Chan et al (2006) study looked at how customers become dissatisfied with service and identified that customers can feel dissatisfaction through two ways. Firstly, social interactions can provide a favourable public self-image and this is linked with a customer’s perceived feeling of social self-worth and self- esteem (Ting-Toomey and Kurogi, 1998). So if a customer is ignored, feels threatened or is treated differently due to age, income, or gender (Prisble, 2000) this will lead to dissatisfaction through the social-interaction route. This idea of the social implications that a restaurant experience can have on its customers is summed up by Finkelstein (1989: 3):
“In our society, much of dining out has to do with self-presentation and the mediation of social relations, through images of what is currently valued, accepted and fashionable. The restaurant is regarded as a place where we experience excitement, pleasure and a sense of personal well-being…The images of wealth, happiness, luxury and pleasant social relations which are evoked within the restaurant are iconically represented through its ambience, décor, furnishings, lighting, tableware and so on. These are in turn dominated by fashion; there are distinct waves of style in dining out….Objects of décor become the representations of human emotions; they summarize the mood we expect to enjoy while dining out and as such they appear to be simultaneously the instruments which create desired emotions..”
In other circumstances, where an undesirable event occurs that affects the customer, such as, an item no longer being available on the menu, this is an incidence which is removed from the customer and can be classed as more situational. In each instance there will be customers who are more dissatisfied than others, for example, if a customer is particularly self-aware they may be more dissatisfied via the social- interaction route than others. Moreover, customers who believe in fate and luck will be predisposed to believe an unfavourable situational event was meant to be and may therefore, be less dissatisfied than customers who believe it to be the service provider’s responsibility (Ural, 2008). The disconfirmation model by Woodruff, Cadotte and
Jenkins (1983) (Figure 2-1) is one that has often been referred to as a method of understanding how a customer decided whether they felt positive, negative, or indifferent about the service experience they encountered.
Figure 2-1: Disconfirmation Model of Customer Satisfaction (Adapted from Woodruff, Cadotte and Jenkins, 1983)
Fisk (1981) looks at the resulting decisions on service in three stages: pre-consumption; consumption; and post-consumption. Initially, in the first stage no service has taken place and this is where the environment (being considered as a service aspect), or the service providers’ appearance is often considered by the customer. Walker (1995) referred to atmospherics at the first service consideration stage, as it may be an influence on customers prior to experiencing the core service. Studies cited by Walker (1995) have highlighted that decisions on service (atmospherics, personal, the environment) at this initial stage can influence the overall evaluation of the whole service encounter. This demonstrates that although no service had been provided to that point, the factors that could be considered, were very important to customers. Although first stage factors are not removed once the main, or ‘core service’ aspect occurs, the
Expected performance Perceived performance
Comparison
P>E P~E P<E
Positive Negative
disconfirmation disconfirmation
Satisfaction Neutral Dissatisfaction Confirmation
customers’ attention moves from these aspects to the actual service. These include whether the meal was hot when it arrived (if required), was it what was ordered and, so on. This stage is vital for a business to ensure customer satisfaction and perhaps it is the most difficult because as Czepiel, Soloman, Suprenant and Gutman (1985 in Walker 1995) comment, only minor problems with the core service can be overcome if the total service experience is to have a positive outcome. This may relate to the fact that in terms of service delivery, customers know what to expect – cooked food should be hot, members of staff should be courteous, whereas for the first stage, room colour, or layout may be different to expectations but can still bring a positive evaluation.
The core stage is often the assessment of the ‘tangible’ which Johns and Kivela (2001) believed to be more influential than the intangible. In their study of customers experiencing a restaurant for the first time, the physical elements were used more often to describe a negative response to the experience whereas the intangible, such as the atmospherics were often used when discussing a positive experience by the customer. Furthermore, within the restaurant setting this stage is providing the food, which Johns and Howard (1998) considered to be important as it fulfils one of the basic human needs. In the final evaluation stage, aspects from stage one can begin to be reconsidered again along with post-service activities, such as, payment and where any actions to compensate for minor flaws in stage two are evaluated. Whatever conclusion is made on service, the last stage will define the whole service encounter – this may be linked with the rule of primacy and recency (Bowen and Morris, 1995).
Another dimension of customer service is ‘attribute value theory’ (Pizam and Ellis, 1999). This is how customers are believed to view a service, that is, viewing the dining out experience against a set of variables which are then attached with a level of
importance. From these measures customers can weigh up the overall experience. These variables can be split up by non-weighted/weighted compensatory models and non-compensatory models which may be further split into disjunctive and conjunctive models. Non-weighted compensatory models presume that trade-offs are made of one attribute for another to make a decision on the overall experience. Whereas the weighted compensatory model is the concept that customers add an importance rating to each attribute. Non-compensatory models (no trade-offs of attributes) which follow the conjunctive route adhere to the concept that as well as not having any attributes being able to be compensated, all measures have to reach a certain level as perceived acceptable by the customer in order for that attribute not to fail the whole experience. Non-compensatory models that are disjunctive only require certain key attributes to have minimum levels imposed on them by customers (Pizam and Ellis, 1999).
Swan and Combs (1976) produced an hypothesis based on ‘instrumental’ (performance of the physical product) and ‘expressive’ (psychological performance of the product) determinants, where both needed to be above, or equal to expectations in order for customer satisfaction to occur. Maddox (1981) implemented Swan and Combs study and found that if an ‘expressive’ attribute was not met, then satisfaction was reduced although not necessarily to the point of dissatisfaction. Hausknecht (1998, in Johnston, 1995) took the study further and rather simplistically linked emotions with what satisfies and dissatisfies. Not surprisingly, it was found that a common theme for expressions of joy, surprise and interest was associated with satisfaction, whereas anger, disgust and surprise were linked with dissatisfaction.
In order to gain positive customer affirmation, especially with service delivery, a business must go beyond what is expected or else customers can choose to be
indifferent to the event (Bitner, 1992). Unfortunately, as Walker (1995) demonstrated, although the peripheral aspects to service are crucial, the business efforts are not always noted by customers. Potentially, this occurs as there are so many areas of focus for a customer to notice, that even those where a business may be surpassing expectations, can go unrecognised by the customer. To avoid this, Walker (1995) suggested drawing attention to the situation so that the customer considers it when making their decision as to whether they were satisfied by the service.
As previously discussed, service encounter satisfaction has also been defined by the disconfirmation of the expectations paradigm (Churchill and Suprenant, 1982; Oliver, 1980; Oliver and DeSarbo 1988; Tse and Wilton, 1988). The disconfirmation paradigm suggests that customers decide if they are satisfied by comparing their received product and service with prior expectations, and each customer has individual expectations of the level of product, or service that they should receive. The sense of satisfaction by the customer is different from their overall attitude towards the service and Bitner, (1990) defined service satisfaction as the assessments made about individual transactions compared with attitude, which can be seen as being more general. Bitner’s (1990) research concluded that all individual service encounters need to be managed and controlled separately in order to enhance overall perceptions of service quality.
Staff explanations for service failures can diffuse dissatisfaction and symbolic cues of non-verbal messages, such as the physical appearance of staff, may increase service encounter opinions. Although it may be possible to put into place variables to please the customer it may also be the case that some customers will not conform and will still leave the restaurant experiencing dissatisfaction. For example, Clark and Wood (1998) reinforced the idea that tangible aspects will often be the deciding factors as to whether
a customer had a positive meal experience. However, different customers may interpret quality in very unpredictable ways due to previous experiences of critical incidents or cultural factors (Johns and Howard, 1998).
Although satisfaction may be demonstrated by the customer, Arnould and Deibler (1995) suggested that there was a deeper response (emotional) experienced by customers rather than simply ‘satisfied’, or ‘dissatisfied’. However, on average customers report experiencing little emotional response most of the time, although one area where emotional response increases is when the service provider offers extra attention and understanding towards the customer (Smith and Bolton, 2002).
It can be seen therefore, that service can be both measurable and intangible. Extensive research has been carried out looking at service in restaurants and models exist for implementing service under best practice conditions. A number of key issues regarding service have been raised by researchers and most notably service is important to this study as it demonstrates an element that customers may base expectations on.
Determining if service standards have been met is also a question that has often been considered through post-expectation research studies. A number of models, such as, disconfirmation theory and attribute value theory, which are judged through non- weighted and weighted models, have been designed. However, no one overall determining theory appears to apply to all restaurant scenarios, or encompasses all aspects of the restaurant experience, and so this area is still open to interpretation.