The Influence of Quality of Physical Environment, Food and Service on Customer Trust, Customer Satisfaction, and Loyalty and Moderating Effect of Gender: an Empirical Study on Foreigners in South Korean Restaurant

Abstract

To explore the impact of restaurant service quality for foreigners in South Korea on customer satisfaction, customer trust, and loyalty from three dimensions: quality of physical environment, food quality, and service quality and the influence of perceived price on satisfaction and loyalty, a survey was conducted by collecting 202 valid questionnaires and Amos 23 was used to examine the relationships between variables. The results show that the quality of physical environment, food quality, and service quality have significant positive effects on customer trust, but only food quality has a significant effect on customer loyalty and all three have no significant effects on customer satisfaction. In addition, customer trust has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, but the effect of customer satisfaction on loyalty has not been verified in this study. At the same time, perceived price has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction, but no significant effect on customer loyalty. Then the study examined the moderating effect of gender by using the SEM multi-group analysis method, founding that there are no significant differences between male and female on the impact of the three dimensions of restaurant service quality on customer satisfaction, and no significant differences between male and female on the impact of perceived price on customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction on loyalty, meaning that gender’s moderating effects are not valid. These conclusions of this study are useful for restaurant operators to improve the quality of the physical environment, food quality and service quality, effectively improve customer trust, and thus customer satisfaction and loyalty.