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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of the TANGSERV (tangible quality) scale by examining the effect of tangible quality constructs on restaurant patrons' affect and behavioral intentions.

A model was proposed based on the literature of tangible quality in service, which posits that tangible quality leads to affective quality and they both have positive impact on customer re‐patronage intentions. Subsequently, an empirical study in Turkey's casual restaurants was conducted to test the aforementioned model.

The food and service construct and accessibility construct of tangible quality exhibited positive impact on the affect towards restaurants, which in turn influenced re‐patronage intention for restaurants. Affect was a strong mediator, facilitating the relationship between tangible quality and behavior.

Restaurant operators should focus their efforts on ensuring an interesting variety of food and drink offerings presented in interesting and unique ways. They should also ensure that the type of service delivered is consistent from one visit to the next. Cultivating positive feelings toward the brand name is a good approach to increasing re‐patronage intentions. In addition, careful consideration and research should be completed prior to selecting a restaurant location and provision of convenient parking.

The study helps restaurant managers select the most important tangible restaurant feature for consumers and guide the investment resources to address customer expectations.

Intangibility is one of the distinctive characteristics of service. However, the literature also highlights “tangibles” as one of the basic service quality dimensions. Investigates the importance of tangibles and intangibles in perceptions of service quality as assessed by both customers and service providers. Selects four service industries to reflect a range from high to low levels of tangible components and degree of intangibility in both service process and output. Based on 400 telephone interviews with consumers, shows that the level of tangible components has a positive impact on the perceived importance of the tangible dimension in service quality. However, the second phase of this research, involving a qualitative study with managers in the studied industries, shows that the tangibles dimension is relatively neglected in service industries with high tangible involvement. Presents a model of tangibility and intangibility to aid managers in understanding customers’ perceptions, and to stimulate further research.

Are there cases or contexts where certain groups of customers who are expected to place a considerable emphasis and importance on the tangible qualities of services end up attributing a greater weight to the intangible qualities? This paper attempts to exemplify the existence of such cases, and explain why such cases are, at times, paradoxical in nature, and how such cases could arise.

The paper employs a structural‐equation‐modeling approach to theorize about, and empirically examine, the tangible and intangible determinants of service quality. The model and the path developed in the paper also capture the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. Using AMOS, the empirical estimation of the model is carried out.

The central finding is that all intangible factors associated with service quality turn out to be unequivocally more important than the tangible ones in the Turkish non‐profit health‐care sector under investigation. In other words, intangible factors appear to play a statistically more significant role compared with tangible factors in determining the overall customer satisfaction and the quality of non‐profit health‐care services. Considering that, in developing countries, tangible factors are expected to be among the most scarce, and hence, most valuable ones, the relative unimportance of tangible factors constitutes a paradox to be explained and resolved.

This paper contributes to the literature by bringing to light a striking phenomenon which is largely unnoticed in the literature, namely that, in certain cases, there might exist a fundamental asymmetry and difference between the influences of tangible and intangible factors on service quality, and that difference in certain contexts, as in the case of the Turkish health‐care sector, constitutes a paradox to be explained. The paper demonstrates the possibility of such paradoxical cases and provides cultural and sector‐specific explanations for this seemingly puzzling phenomenon in question.

The zone‐of‐tolerance (ZOT) is an innovative concept that has attracted recent attention in the services marketing domain. The ZOT represents a range of service performance that a customer considers satisfactory, which recognizes multiple expectation standards, specifically adequate and desired expectations. This study aims to extend Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman's examination in 1996 of the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions across the ZOT by heeding Teas and DeCarlo's call in 2004 to examine the relationship for specific dimensions. The study also seeks to extend outcomes to include satisfaction and value.

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess measurement properties and regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses regarding the ZOT.

Consistent with several previous studies, two dimensions of service quality were identified: tangibles and process, the latter having a greater influence on satisfaction and loyalty. Contrary to expectations, the relationship between service quality and outcomes did not strengthen above or below the ZOT for any of these outcomes and was significantly weaker below the ZOT for satisfaction, loyalty and propensity to switch.

This study suggests a moderating role for the ZOT in the quality‐key outcomes relationship and implies that to maximize investments in service improvements, there should be a focus on increasing service quality beyond the adequate level, rather than seeking to develop a customer franchise by creating “delight.”

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediation impacts of core, relational and tangible service-quality features on the relationship between customer–frontline employee rapport and customer dependency in an emerging market context. The study examines the moderating effects of relationship age and frequency of customers’ physical visits.

Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling was used to analyse data from a survey of 290 financial services customers in Dhaka, Bangladesh using the convenience sampling technique.

Results show that relational service-quality features had the largest mediation impact on the rapport–dependency relationship, followed by core and tangible service-quality features. Relationship age was not found to be a significant moderator for any relationship. However, the moderation effect of the frequency of customers’ physical visits to the service premises was significant, but only for the link between relational service-quality features and customer dependency and not for the other two types of service-quality features.

Data collected from several other emerging markets would provide more rigorous findings: this is recommended as an avenue for further research.

Practitioners can manipulate specific relational or tangible service-quality features to increase customer dependency on their firms, thus ensuring longer-term customer retention.

This study is the first one to examine the relative significance of the impacts of relational features vs tangible features of services on customer dependency in the emerging market context, with rapport serving as an antecedent.

Describes an investigation, in different types of services, of relationships between customers’ perception of service quality, and the importance which customers attach to elements of the service package. The scale for measuring service quality, SERVQUAL, which was discussed in Part 2 of this series, was used to assess both the quality and the importance of each of the dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The attributes of service operations (labour intensity, contact, interaction, customization, service recipient and nature of the service), which were defined in Part 1 of this series, were used to classify the sample. The influence of each of these attributes on quality perceptions was also assessed. The investigation was designed to answer two broad questions: the first about the differences in consumers’ quality perceptions between services, and the second dealing with the different relative importance which dimensions of services have in formulation of consumers’ perceptions of service quality. The survey analyses support a number of conclusions. Many corroborate the concepts and principles raised in earlier work and which were discussed earlier in this series. Some other tentative conclusions, which have not been expressly stated in other work, provide potential areas for further study and for possible verification.

Among the areas which need to be addressed in service quality research is the nature of consumer expectations across the range of intangibility. Previous research has compared consumers’ service quality expectations across services, but different groups of subjects were evaluated for each different service. The problem with using different subjects for each service is that the subject’s demographic characteristics may be responsible for the significant differences in expectations of quality. This research uses a controlled, repeated measures design where subjects were each asked to evaluate three services, varying in their degree of intangibility, over a ten week period. This made it possible to look at service quality expectations without risking the problem that demographics would account for most of the differences in the data. A classification matrix for services based strictly on the feature of intangibility is proposed. The managerial implications of this simplified classification scheme for services are discussed.

The aims of this paper are to examine the antecedent and mediation effects of core, relational and tangible service quality on rapport and customers' overall satisfaction.

A survey has been conducted on 212 bank customers to validate the conceptual model. Structural equation modeling is used by AMOS for data analysis.

Results show that relational service qualities have significant antecedent and mediation impact on the rapport-satisfaction relationship. Core quality has only antecedent influence on rapport, whereas none of the relationships is found significant in the case of tangible service quality.

The study has been conducted on one single country and focused on one type of services – banking services. Therefore, future research endeavors may consider different countries as well as a variety of services.

Providing individual attention to each customer and understanding their specific need are the most important steps required from service employees for building successful rapport with customers. Keeping promises and offering flawless services are also more significant for customers than the tangible features of a bank. Management should consider these issues to develop effective rapport because it has a direct and strong effect on customers' overall satisfaction.

The paper reveals the importance of relational service quality for developing customer rapport and satisfaction. It also identifies the antecedent role of core service quality for rapport.

The competitive nature of the hotel industry has given the impetus to practitioners and researchers to invest in Customer Retention strategies and research. Although numerous studies have investigated Customer Retention in the hotel industry, there is still uncertainty regarding Customer Retention in emerging markets. This study, therefore, adds to the existing knowledge by exploring Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey of 873 customers of 56 hotels in four regional capitals located in the southern part of Ghana. Findings indicate that service Tangible and Reliability indirectly relates hotel Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the five dimensions of service quality on customer satisfaction in the UK fast food market and to indicate which factors among the five dimensions have a main role in driving overall customer satisfaction.

Primary data in the form of 147 questionnaire responses were been collected from a variety of quick service fast food restaurants in the UK. Likert seven-point rating scales were used to structure the questionnaire. Data were collected from the customers at two KFC restaurants, two McDonald’s restaurants, and one Burger King Restaurant.

The results of the analysis indicate that tangibles, responsiveness and assurance play the most important role in driving customer satisfaction in the UK fast food industry, followed by reliability and empathy. Results of correlation and regression analysis show that physical attributes (tangible) of service quality are key to customer satisfaction. In a nutshell, the tangibles variable is the most important factor driving customer satisfaction in the context of the UK fast food market.

This research incorporates unique and original insights in relation to the British fast food restaurants market and the results constitute novel findings pertaining to the importance of physical facilities and attributes. This account of the relative importance of service quality dimensions in fast food restaurants in the UK adds value to the field. The findings of this research have contributed to a better understanding of the main factors that influence service quality and customer satisfaction and have implications from a managerial point of view in the highly competitive UK fast food and wider foodservice industry.