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The experience of waiting for service is often the first direct interaction between customers and most service delivery processes. The literature on satisfaction with waiting has paralleled the literature on general service satisfaction, in which the relative importance of actual performance, perceived performance, and the disconfirmation between expected performance and perceived performance has been the subject of much debate. This paper presents an empirical study of satisfaction with waiting for service in a fast food environment. The study demonstrates that actual waiting time, perceived waiting time, and the disconfirmation between expected waiting time and perceived waiting time are all related to satisfaction with the waiting experience. It further demonstrates that the relative importance of each of these variables in predicting satisfaction depends on the differences in the needs of the customers. The implications for both theory and practice are significant: the importance of the perception of the experience increases as the importance of the satisfaction measure increases. More specifically, for customers who are concerned about time, the perception of the time spent waiting is a better predictor of satisfaction than the actual waiting time.

Suggests that while businesses have made great efforts to reduce the length of time customers wait for service, little attention has been paid to the actual experience of waiting. Argues that the final service encounter is crucial for reinforcing customers′ performance expectations. Suggests that the expectations and perceptions of customers influence their actual experience of waiting at the point of sale. Offers hints on improving customers′ waiting experiences.

Recognizing that crowding in a restaurant waiting area forms a first impression of service and sets service expectations, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of crowding in the effective control of the waiting environment. The study seeks to examine the impact of crowding on customers' emotions and approach‐avoidance responses and to examine the mediating role of emotion and the moderating role of desired privacy in the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses.

Using real‐scale, interactive virtual reality (VR) technology that allows high‐fidelity representations of real environments, the authors created a navigable, photo‐realistic three‐dimensional model of a restaurant waiting area. Through an experimental study which manipulated crowding levels in the VR restaurant, they surveyed the subjects' responses toward crowding conditions.

The study found significant effects of crowding on emotions including arousal and dominance, but not pleasure, and on approach‐avoidance responses. The impact of crowding on approach‐avoidance responses was more direct than indirect, without having emotion as a mediator. It was also found that the desire for privacy as a psychological trait moderated the relationship between crowding and affiliation.

The findings of this study offer restaurant managers insights toward the effective management of the pre‐process service environment during the waiting state that minimizes the negative consequences of waiting/crowding. This study provides three courses of management actions that can make unavoidable crowding in the restaurant waiting situation more enjoyable and comfortable.

By using VR simulation, this study adds a new approach for crowding studies. Theoretically, this study broadened the scope of crowding studies by adding a potential mediating variable, emotions, and a moderating variable, desired privacy, in examining the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses. Also, by focusing on a restaurant waiting area, the authors were able to explore the pre‐process service expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of capacity decisions regarding the number of servers/chefs and tables on identifying a change in the number of wait-related anxious customers, customer losses and customers served to meet the waiting time standards of an actual upscale restaurant.

The authors applied a simulation model to present the consequences of restaurant capacity decisions based on waiting time standards. Arena Simulation Software, licensed by Rockwell Automation, was used for modeling and identifying distributions of the data set provided by the restaurant. An experiment was designed for an upscale restaurant with existing five servers/chefs and 50 tables by changing these resources to measure the changes in customers' wait-related anxiety and other service performance indicators.

The results showed that an additional server/chef on weekends decreases the daily average number of anxious customers by nearly 33% and increases the daily average number of customers served by nearly 3% and has a little positive effect of decreasing customer losses. Table insertion for high- and low-requested seating areas had an only positive effect on decreasing customer losses.

In this study, the service capacity is dependent on waiting time, and it is addressed to study the relationship with customers' wait-related anxiety, which is a subjective metric. This study developed a point of view for identifying anxious customers whose waiting times are much longer than their cooking and delivery duration expectations regarding their meal preferences in the cooking stage and waiting experiences in the service entry.

This paper's aim is to determine whether shopping facilities in a waiting area influence customer behaviour and whether these behaviours positively influence their satisfaction and related sales of the displayed products.

The approach used was a field experiment. At two sites patient behaviours were directly observed before a reconstruction of waiting areas during two weeks; at both sites a two‐week follow‐up was performed after the reconstruction. The responses of patients were surveyed in a convenience sample in the same periods of weeks and the data on sales were collected with desk research.

In comparison with waiting areas that were almost empty, customers in a waiting area with shopping facilities had more interaction with the physical environment, experienced a shorter wait, were more satisfied with the prompt taking of orders, and spent more money.

Organizations seeking to positively influence patient behaviour during the wait should take into account the quality of facility design of waiting areas and, if well chosen, these facilities can also be used to positively influence satisfaction and sales.

This paper integrates theories from environmental psychology, marketing, and operations management in facility design to improve the properties of a waiting area, and by doing so, improve behaviour, satisfaction, and sales of customers. The study aims to inform marketers in the pharmacy shop sector allowing them to increase interaction with the shopping environment, improve customers' satisfaction, and raise customers' expenditures with facilities.

In retail settings, customer satisfaction is generally associated with a global evaluation of the store, i.e. the store image. Waiting for service is not part of the store image dimensions, but it does play an increasingly important role in the retail experience where waits are often inevitable. The present study seeeks to investigate how waiting for service at the checkout counter influences overall satisfaction, along with the store image.

The study combines services marketing and waiting literature. Data were collected in various supermarkets in The Netherlands. A partial least squares regression technique is used to analyze the data.

The paper demonstrates an important and complementary role of the behavioural construct “negative response to the wait” in explaining overall customer satisfaction in a retail environment. The effect of customers' negative emotional response to the wait on satisfaction is partially mediated by store image, and explained variance in the dependent variable increases by 24 percent when the effect of the wait at the checkout is included.

Measuring customer satisfaction without taking into account the effects of various waits during the retail experience will produce incomplete results.

Moreover, a range of controllable factors influences the customer's wait. Intelligently managing these factors can mitigate negative effects on customer satisfaction, or even increase the overall evaluation of the service. Specific recommendations for service managers and a research agenda are provided.

The study combines service marketing and waiting literature to address the issue of waiting in line and tests the theory with real‐world data from a field study.

The purpose of this study is that service sectors sectors create queues intentionally as a promotional strategy. Potential buyers might become actual customers after witnessing and joining queues. However, the effectiveness of company promotional activities involving queues remains unclear. Despite the innovativeness of this marketing strategy, few companies have adopted this approach, owing to the lack of research on how waiting influences customer behaviors toward waiting in queues.

Therefore, this study identifies four factors of customer willingness to stand in a queue using questionnaire survey: company promotional activities, improvement of waiting environment, company’ reactions to the queue and customers’ perceptions regarding waiting time.

This study identifies causal relationships among the aforementioned factors. The results of this investigation reveal that a company’s promotional activities significantly and indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. Analytical results also show that a company’s queuing management can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment.

Based on the analytical results concerning causal relationships, improving the waiting environment is critical to affecting positively customers’ perceptions regarding waiting time. Queuing management can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. A company’s promotional activities can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. Customers who enjoy both the waiting environment and the promotional activities experience much shorter perceived waiting time.

Investigates the extent to which there is a gap between customers’ perception of waiting time compared with the actual waiting time and, whether this gap could be reduced. Maister originally identified eight propositions based around the idea that the perception of waiting lines are modified by a range of factors. Although other studies have discussed Maister’s propositions by identifying the level of management control and customers’ perceptions of waiting lines, rarely has the basic idea ‐ that perceived and actual wait times may be different ‐ been empirically tested. Reviews those studies which have compared actual waiting time with perceived waiting time, before going on to report on the first known UK study. The research involved an experimental study into two of Maister’s propositions involving 300 members of the general public. Tests a control group of 100 people queueing in a small retail food outlet to identify whether there is a significant difference between perceived and actual waiting times. Repeats the measurement on two further random samples of 100 people. Then discusses the implications of this study, and the earlier studies, with respect to a revision of Maister’s original eight propositions. Concludes with a review of how queue management may be carried out more effectively in relation to matching more closely actual and perceived waiting times.

Delay is an important issue for service providers. Indeed, previous studies have widely shown the negative effect of waiting time on consumer service satisfaction. However, being satisfied with the service seems to be insufficient for customers to remain loyal. Creating customer loyalty is even more crucial than just satisfying them. The paper aims to investigate how customers weigh up their service satisfaction and waiting time satisfaction in order to determine whether they will remain loyal or not.

A survey was conducted in the Belgian health care industry. The final sample includes 946 respondents. Regression analyses were performed and the Baron and Kenny method used to test moderator and mediator impacts of variables.

The results confirm that waiting time satisfaction is not only a service satisfaction determinant, but it also moderates the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship. Moreover, determinants of customer waiting time satisfaction include the perceived waiting time, the satisfaction with information provided in case of delays, and the satisfaction with the waiting environment. In addition, it is shown that waiting time satisfaction is a complete mediating variable in the perceived waiting time and service satisfaction link.

The paper suggests several implications about the waiting time impacts on service satisfaction and customer loyalty. They show the importance of this variable in the service process and explain how to improve it.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effect of waiting lines on customers’ decisions between using a self-service alternative and using a service employee. As self-service technologies are expensive and time-consuming to design and implement, service providers need to understand what drives customers to use them. Service operators have the most control over waiting lines and flexibility in expanding capacity, either by adding service employees or by adding self-service kiosks.

The study used online scenario-based surveys following a 4 (number of customers waiting for the self-service technology) × 4 (number of customers waiting for the service employee) design. A binary dependent variable was used to record participants’ choice of service delivery alternative.

Using logistic regression, the authors found that customers are increasingly motivated to use self-service technology as the waiting line for the service employee grows longer. This effect is influenced by perceived usefulness, anticipated quality of the self-service technology, need for interaction and technology anxiety.

This study should be replicated in a real-world setting where actual behavior, and not only intention, can be measured.

The study provides guidance on how service providers can design their service to take advantage of the motivating effect of waiting lines on usage of self-service technology.

The present study is the first to combine a scenario-based experiment with a binary dependent variable to isolate the impact of waiting lines on the choice between using a self-service technology and using a service employee. The use of the binary dependent variable overcomes the ambiguity of extrapolating from a continuous measure of intention to draw conclusions about behavior, a binary variable.