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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.

Queuing, a familiar element of most service delivery systems, has the potential for significantly affecting the customer′s overall satisfaction with the service encounter. A customer′s degree of satisfaction with waiting or with the service received in its entirety is dependent on the actual performance of the delivery system, the customer′s expectations regarding that performance and the customer′s perception of the service encounter. The actual operational performance of different queuing configurations has been previously addressed, as have the issues of managing customers′ expectations and perceptions regarding their queuing experiences. This earlier research has identified several factors which can affect a customer′s perception of waiting and consequently his or her satisfaction with that wait. Proposes a taxonomy based on the service manager′s ability to control the customer′s perception of the queuing experience. Defines which queuing factors can be controlled by the firm, which factors can partially be controlled by the firm and which factors are outside the firm′s control, and suggests tactics for managing queues for each category of factors.