This study was conducted to identify which service quality factors influence customers’satisfaction and revisiting of the fast food shops in Korea. The result of this study shows that food quality is the most important factor for the fast food shop ...
This study was conducted to identify which service quality factors influence customers’satisfaction and revisiting of the fast food shops in Korea. The result of this study shows that food quality is the most important factor for the fast food shop customers’satisfaction and revisiting intention.Food service industry has been dramatically increased for last ten years in Korea because of increasing income and the number of working women. Nowadays foreign style restaurants have been more popular than traditional Korean restaurants to Korean young people. Among foreign style restaurants, fast food shop has been grown for last ten years. Fast food industry belongs to service industry and service quality is very important to operate fast food shop. It is necessary that fast food shops improve service quality to get competitive advantages. Before improving service quality, it is very important to identify critical service quality factors influencing customers’satisfaction and intention of revisiting. Thus, this study conducted an empirical study to provide strategic suggestions for improving fast food shop customers’satisfaction and intention of revisiting.Based on the review of related literature, six service quality factors including PZB (1988)’s five service quality dimensions were selected in this study. They are tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and quality of foods. Among six service quality dimensions, tangibility was redefined as quality of shop and quality of foods because tangibility includes foods and all equipments, facilities of shop and everything of shop building. Thus, among six quality factors, quality of foods and quality of shop were used to measure tangible service quality factor. Reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy were utilized as the observational variables for intangible service quality factor. And it is necessary to develop items to measure the quality of foods. Five variables of taste, fresh materials, sanitation, shape, temperature were employed to measure the quality of foods. And then we designed a causal model to find out the service quality factors influencing customers’satisfaction and intention of revisiting in Korean KFC shops.According to the purpose of this study, we collected data from respondents who visited KFC shops in Seoul, Korea. Four KFC branches respectively at Kangnam and Incheon Airport, Seoul National University, Donamdong were selected for data collection respectively. Data collection process was conducted in February, 2002. We collected total 489 questionnaires from people visiting four KFC shops selected for collecting data in Seoul, Korea.After collecting data, the dimensionality of the six service quality factors were examined by means of a confirmatory factor analysis. Although Chi square is significant, GFI, AGFI, and RMR appear good. Thus, the result of CFA suggests that six quality dimensions were confirmed. And then a structural equations model analysis was conducted to identify which factors among six service quality factors influence customers’satisfaction and repurchase intention of the fast food franchisees in Korea. Although Chi square is significant, the values of GFI, AGFI, and RMR are appropriate. Thus, the fitness of model is fine. The results of the causal analysis show that food quality is the most important factor for the fast food shop customers’satisfaction and shop quality also influences customers’satisfaction. But they don’t influence the repurchase intention of the customers. In addition customers’satisfaction impacts the repurchase intention of customers. However, intangible service quality does not influence customers’satisfaction. The results of this study give a very important suggestion that geographical location and building values of shop, which are very expensive to maintain in Korea, do influence customers’satisfaction. And the taste of food is found as the most critical service quality factor for Korean fas