Dining occasions, service failures and customer complaint behaviours: an empirical assessment.

This study mainly aims to examine the moderating effect of restaurant dining occasions on service failures and customer complaints thereon. The contribution of this study is to use a scenario-based approach in restaurant settings. A total of 791 subjects participated in this study by using a between-subjects factorial design. The results showed that the ‘product defects’ group reported slightly stronger complaint behaviours than did the ‘reservation was handled incorrectly’ group when having a birthday dinner party with friends. Similarly, respondents in the ‘unfriendly service’ group reported slightly stronger complaint behaviours than respondents in the ‘reservation was handled incorrectly’ group. In business dinner situations, significant differences also were noted in three types of service failures. Respondents in the ‘product defects’ group reported stronger complaint behaviour responses than did the ‘reservation was handled incorrectly’ group. In a similar vein, respondents in the ‘product defects’ group reported stronger complaint behaviours than respondents in the ‘unfriendly service’ group. However, complaint behaviours were not found to be statistically significant for a family gathering dinner occasion. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.