How do foreigners perceive? Exploring foreign diners’ satisfaction with service quality of Chinese restaurants

ABSTRACT

China has received 138 million inbound trips in 2016. The purpose of travel may vary but these international travelers visit Chinese restaurants as an integral part of their travel experience. Our study tries to comprehend their dining experience and regional differences in service quality (SQ) perceptions. The findings indicate that food and process quality significantly influence satisfaction and behavioral intentions. More importantly, the results reveal that international travelers roving through all the six continents hold significantly different perceptions regarding SQ attributes of Chinese restaurants. Additionally, we found proficiency in Chinese language as a significant contributor in generating dissimilar perceptions.

KEYWORDS:

• Service quality
• customer satisfaction
• tourism marketing
• China
• Asia Pacific
• foreign travelers
• Chinese restaurants
• regional differences
• language proficiency
• dining experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research project is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China with Grant/Award Number: [grant number 71572056].