Evaluation of Consumers’ WTP for Service Recovery in Restaurants: Waiting Time Perspective

Abstract

Restaurant service quality assessment has generally focused on the dining service. However, restaurant service begins with waiting for the meal. When service failure occurs due to a long waiting time, restaurant managers should adopt appropriate service recovery measures to retain consumers and reduce loss. This approach would allow them to mitigate customer dissatisfaction and negative impressions. In this study, we explore the importance of pre-processing service in the context of possible restaurant service crises and construct a restaurant service recovery model for willingness to pay (WTP) through the contingent valuation method (CVM) to measure the effects before and after implementing service recovery. Overall, several psychological and tangible service recovery measures are provided to enhance people’s willingness to extend their waiting time. Within our study group, relatively young participants showed a high willingness to extend their waiting time. Furthermore, the opportunity cost of high-income people in the waiting process was relatively high. Compared with psychological service recovery programs, our results show that tangible service recovery programs prompt respondents to wait for an additional ~10 min. This paper offers support for restaurant managers to manage consumer relationships.