Developing strategies for improving the service quality of casual-dining restaurants: New insights from integrating IPGA and QFD analysis

Abstract

This study aimed to integrate importance-performance and gap analysis (IPGA) with the quality function deployment (QFD) model in order to determine the critical service quality attributes, and to develop their improvement programs and improvement priority for casual-dining restaurants. This study selected the customers of 18 casual-dining restaurants as the subjects, and 1002 valid questionnaires were returned. The results of IPGA analysis showed that reliability and responsiveness were located in the area of ‘Concentrate here’, which were the service quality dimensions most in demand for urgent improvement of casual-restaurants. A total of six critical service quality attributes were found. This study developed seven improvement programs based on the six critical service quality attributes and experts' focus group interviews. The QFD method was used to determine the priority of seven improvement programs. The results provided new insights into casual-dining restaurants to develop service quality improvements strategies in order to significantly improve restaurants service quality under limited resources.

Keywords:

• service quality
• casual-dining restaurant
• IPGA
• QFD

Acknowledgement

The authors thanks for the support by the National Science Council of Taiwan under grant number NSC 98-2410-H-216-001.