Structural Equation Model on Customer Expectations and Perception of Restaurants’ Service Quality Adapting a Modified DINESERV Approach

The study focused on assessing empirically on the developed version of the Modified DINESERV model. The purpose of the research is to assist restaurant owners and managers in measuring customers’ expectations and perceptions of service quality along the following dimensions: Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, and Empathy. The modified DINESERV model composed of 29 attributes was utilized in the formulation of the questionnaires. In the efforts to explore the multivariate relationship among the variables, structural equation modeling (SEM) using JAMOVI version 2.3.21 software was used to analyze the data from one hundred two (102) customers. The findings showed that the overall perceptions score was higher than expected, indicating that customers are satisfied with the service quality of services they received. The study included the results on demographic profile of respondents by which majority were aged 21-25 years (n=38), generally single (n=67) and female (n=62) who were mostly employed (n=49) and most of customers were students (n=30) of nearby Colleges and Universities. The findings of the study unveiled that there is a significant relationship among dimensions; tangibility (β=0.634), reliability (β=0.589), responsiveness (β=0.561), assurance (β=0.641), empathy (β=0.656) have a positive and direct effect on service quality and the value of customers’ expectations (β=0.711), the value of customers perceptions have a significant relationship with service quality (β=0.754).