Moderating Role of Personal Characteristics in Forming Restaurant Customers' Behavioral Intentions: An Upscale Restaurant Setting

ABSTRACT This study attempted to investigate the relationships among overall service quality (OSQ), customer satisfaction (CS), and behavioral intentions (BI), such as repeat visit intention (RVI) and word-of-mouth intention (WOMI) by considering the moderating role of personal characteristics (gender and age) in an upscale restaurant setting. Structural equation analyses showed that OSQ was an antecedent of CS, and CS was a significant predictor of RVI and WOMI. In addition, metric invariance test revealed that the strength of the relationships among study constructs was, in general, strongly influenced by personal characteristics. Specifically, the CS-RVI link was stronger for women than for men, and the OSQ-CS-WOMI link was stronger for the high-age group than for the low-age group. However, the OSQ-CS-WOMI link was found to be equal across genders, and the influence of age on the CS-RVI link was identical across groups. The findings from this study will provide restaurant managers/marketers with a guideline for developing effective marketing/service strategies for customer retention.