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The literature investigating the role emotions play on patrons' casino gambling behavior within the theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework have primarily focused on anticipated emotions. However, anticipated emotions are more unstable compared to experienced emotions with predicting responses to behaviors that have a high degree of uncertainty in the outcomes such as casino gambling. This study investigates the role of experienced emotions within the TPB framework for predicting casino visitation intentions and attitudes via covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM). The results show that positive experienced emotions along with subjective norms and attitudes significantly influenced the casino visitation intentions. Additionally, while positive emotions significantly influenced casino visitation attitudes, negative emotions did not. Alternatively, negative emotions were positively correlated with casino visitation intentions. Moreover, the analysis also revealed that respondents from diverse backgrounds varied greatly in their responses of how their experienced emotions and cognitive determinants influenced their casino visitation intentions. Casino marketers can utilize the results to fine-tune their marketing initiatives for eliciting increased visitation among their patron databases.

Enhancing student competences in the classroom is essential for gaining employability skills and the development of hospitality employees, longevity in the industry, and consequently the service of...

This article examines what kind of competencies Russian hotel industry employers expect from hospitality master’s program graduates and compares them to current Russian academic standards. The main...

Within the competitive foodservice industry, the ability to accurately measure the meal process known as turn-time is critical to the success of the firms in the industry. This is traditionally done through linear techniques such as multiple least squares (aka linear regression) or analysis of variance (ANOVA). However, linear techniques have theoretical properties that can potentially lead to bias in measurements of time duration variables, while survival models were designed for that purpose. This study utilized simulated data of a dine-in restaurant to test and compare the ability of linear regression to five survival models (proportional hazard models) for predicting the duration of turn-time. The results from the simulated trials show that while some of the survival models held incremental improvements, linear regression performed adequately for predicting the duration of turn-time even when taking the biased predictions into account. For operators who are in their infancy of developing resta...

Given that hospitality students are the main prospective labor source in the industry, employees, academicians, and practitioners agree that improving competences is central to the education, training, and development of hospitality employees. The current study used a competency-based framework to investigate the simultaneous application of training in technical and emotional competences on hospitality undergraduates in a service management class (N = 50). Data were gathered using a pre- and posttest design at a southwestern university in the United States. Competences increased after training, which supports the notion of including emotional competence in hospitality curricula. The findings of this study provide support for existing knowledge about emotional competences and the importance of including emotional competences in the hospitality curriculum.

Color is one of the key visual dimensions of the environment that has an impact on behavior and emotions. The emotional effect of color is particularly important in the hospitality industry because emotions comprise a powerful affective component of customer satisfaction. However, to date, no empirical research on the role of color in shaping hotel guests’ perceptions has been conducted. The purpose of the current study was to understand the relationship between color attributes and the perception of a hotel room. The differences between two contrast hues (blue and red) with two levels for saturation and brightness were examined in an experimental study. The study adopts virtual reality techniques to provide a deep emersion of the participants in the manipulated hotel room’s design settings. The results indicated red hotel rooms were associated with the highest arousal levels among participants. However, participants enjoyed staying in blue hotel rooms more than in the red ones.

Purpose Practitioners and researchers are persistently trying to identify critical product/service attributes that generate greater customer satisfaction, which in turn yields multiple positive outcomes for the business. However, traditional measuring of attribute performance does not account for a non-linear nature of the relationship between attribute performance and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to apply an alternative method – penalty-reward contrast analysis (PRCA) grounded in Kano model – to a wine festival setting and to estimate the effects of each attribute on the overall satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The aim of the study is to use a self-administered survey distributed to attendees of a large wine festival in the USA, resulting in a sample of 250 festival attendees. Findings Personnel and entertainment were considered “must-be” or basic factors for wine festivals. Failing to deliver on these dimensions will lead to attendees’ frustration and is likely to outweigh positive impact of other factors. Wine was considered to be a linear, or performance, factor with symmetrical positive and negative impact on satisfaction. Food and facilities were non-significant in predicting customer satisfaction. Practical implications Given that most wine festivals operate with rather scarce resources in a competitive environment, using an approach that helps determine how limited resources are best deployed to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction is beneficial for the industry. The study provides new insights to wine festivals managers as to how drivers of satisfaction may vary according to attributes of both the festival and the attendees. Originality/value The study adopts the novel approach of the PRCA in its application to wine festivals, making the study unique and noteworthy. It brings new knowledge about quality components of wine festivals and adds support to the new evaluation tool.

Objective: Active aging involves staying engaged in life in a number of ways, including maintaining independence, physical and mental fitness, and social engagement. This investigation highlights Active Aging for L.I.F.E., an intergenerational pilot health initiative developed and implemented in the state of Oklahoma. Subject and Methods: Program participants included college students 18 to 25 years of age (n = 20) and older adults older than 65 years (n = 23) who attended a 4-part speaker series focused on the domains of longevity, independence, fitness, and engagement and participated in a pre-/postsurvey. Results: College-aged students reported greater changes in their perception of an individual's role in the aging process than the older adults, and differences between genders were also identified. This pilot determined that attitudes about active aging can be changed through education for both college-aged students and older adults.

Considering the strong influence of social media on internet users, it is important to understand its role for hotel businesses, particularly the online aspect of lodging operations. Although several social media studies have been done, very few studies have focused on travelers’ needs and the specific gratifications they seek when using embedded social media channels on hotel websites, and how those channels would influence their purchasing behavior. The main purpose of the current research is to examine the effectiveness of embedded social media channels on hotel websites and their influence on traveler behavior. Applying the uses and gratifications (U&G) approach, we examined relationships among traveler gratifications, satisfaction, and purchase intentions by comparing user experience with hotel websites that used embedded social media channels to those without embedded social media channels. The results indicated that travelers exposed to the hotel website with embedded social media channels had higher levels of perceived informativeness, perceived enjoyment, and perceived social interaction that directly influenced traveler satisfaction. In the context of embedded social media channels, the gratification factors, such as perceived enjoyment and perceived social interaction, directly influenced traveler satisfaction and purchase intentions, and indirectly influenced purchase intentions through traveler satisfaction. Meanwhile, perceived informativeness did not influence purchase intentions directly in either sample, but it did influence purchase intentions indirectly through travelers’ satisfaction. Furthermore, for the group who used the hotel website without embedded social media channels, perceived social interaction was found to have no significant effect on travelers’ satisfaction and purchase intentions.

The current study addresses issues related to developing a set of critical quality attributes. The primary research objective was to address drawbacks of importance–performance method and develop a novel approach that identifies satisfaction drivers for unit-level quick service restaurant (QSR). The new approach is based on synthesis of qualitative, PRCA, and importance grid methods. Basic (taste, temperature, and accuracy), performance (friendliness) and excitement (cleanliness, speed, and ease of understanding) factors were identified for a QSR context. The current findings help to resolve the problem of performance optimization and identify an optimal set of QSR attributes to allocate resources. Taste, temperature, and accuracy must be ensured as top priority. Then, friendliness should also be ensured and only after that the resources should be allocated to cleanliness, speed, and ease of understanding. Generalizability of the findings is bounded by the fact that only one QSR chain was examined. Additionally, only a limited number of QSR attributes was examined.

Purpose The main purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of embedded social media channels and determine whether the embedded social media channels enhance the overall experience of travelers using the hotel Web sites. Design/methodology/approach A true-experimental, between-group and post-test-only design was used to address the primary research questions. Two privately accessible complete versions of the Web site (one with embedded social media channels and one without them) were designed for the experiment. The uses and gratifications approach was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Data were analyzed using ANOVA. Findings The results of this study revealed that embedded social media channels on the hotel Web site enhanced travelers’ social gratifications of perceived social interaction. Apart from these benefits for travelers seeking social gratifications, embedded social media channels did not enhance the overall experience (content and process gratifications) of travelers using the Web site. Practical implications In the case of embedded social media on hotel Web sites, this study suggests that hotel managers measure return on engagement to examine the effectiveness of embedded social media, instead of return on investment. Social implications The study revealed that the emergence of embedded social media channels and their integration on hotel Web sites will have significant influence on travelers who seek social gratifications. Originality/value The findings of this study offer new empirical evidence that embedded social media channels enhance only travelers’ perceived social interaction during their first visit to the hotel Web site.

As various industry adopted self-service kiosk (SSK) technology, the hospitality industry has implemented SSK in service procedure. However, what drives CS with SSKs has not been fully examined because the system is still new in the hotel industry. The purpose of this study was to identify how self-service kiosk (SSK) attributes like ease of use, speed of delivery, and monetary promotion affect customer satisfaction (CS) in hotel setting. The study also explored the association between CS and willingness to use an SSK in the future. The results of this study showed that ease of use and speed of delivery had a positive association with CS, but showed no significant relationship between monetary promotion and CS. In addition, CS was positively associated with the willingness to use SSKs in the future. The study contributes new knowledge about what drives CS with SSKs and, additionally, confirms the determinants needed to achieve successful CS with SSKs in hotel settings

Considering the large influence of social media on the restaurant chain industry, finding effective communication strategies to interact with customers is critically important. The purpose of the study was to investigate how restaurant chain’s CSR messages on social networking sites affect brand value and social distance. Data were collected from 403 social media users with a dining experience at a U.S. restaurant chain. A two-step structural equation model and a two by two between-subject experimental design were conducted for this study. The perception of CSR messages on SNS positively affects customer’s social distance and the restaurant’s brand credibility, and consequently enhance the brand equity. Restaurant chain’s concrete (vs. abstract) CSR messages on SNS has a positive influence on customers’ brand equity when their social distance is close (vs. distant). The study highlights the importance of shortening social distance to enhance brand equity when developing CSR messages on SNS.

This study applies psychological ownership theory (J. L. Pierce, T. Kostova, & K. Dirks, 2003) in an attempt to explain the complexity of factors influencing students’ satisfaction and commitments toward their programs. The proposed framework evaluates psychological ownership through the following antecedents: perceived control, sense of belonging, student involvement, and identification. The sample includes students from 4 hospitality programs in the United States and Canada. The relationships between psychological ownership and satisfaction and commitment are tested with structural equation modeling. The results provide new knowledge about affective and psychological factors that contribute to students’ satisfaction and commitment.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address issues of performance optimization through accounting for asymmetric responses of customer satisfaction to different types of product or service attributes: core, facilitating and “green” (eco‐friendly). The primary research inquiry was to explore how these attributes affect customer satisfaction and account for interactions among them in order to identify an optimal combination that would maximize customer satisfaction in lodging industry settings.Design/methodology/approach – An experimental design and a web‐based survey were used to collect data from a convenience sample of faculty and staff of two US universities. Univariate and regression analysis were two primary methods of data analysis.Findings – The findings confirmed non‐linear nature of customer satisfaction response and indicated that “green” attributes impact customer satisfaction similarly to facilitating attributes but differently from the core type of attributes in the context of lodging in...

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, 2017), over one billion tourists traveled the globe in 2016. In spite of this increase of travelers, airlines are faced with declining levels of customer service and quality of customer experience (American Customer Satisfaction Index [ACSI], 2012). Frontline service employees, like flight attendants, create a critical impression of the service which affects customer perceptions and satisfaction. Nevertheless, many unknowns exist about what creates such impression and how it can be improved. In particular, no study has investigated the effects of Competency-Based Training (CBT) on flight attendants' performance and consequently passengers' satisfaction. The goal of this research was to examine the effect of CBT on flight attendants' performance and consequently passengers' satisfaction. A group of 109 flight attendants was trained in four competences: managing stress, dealing with conflict situations, displaying human relations skills, and delivering quality customer service. Pre-and post-training measures of flight attendants' performance and customer satisfaction were taken. Random sampling was employed to administer questionnaires to passengers traveling between the Caribbean and North America. Bivariate analysis revealed that there was a positive association between flight attendant performance and customer satisfaction. However, flight attendant performance was not positively associated with CBT. Further analysis revealed that customer satisfaction is associated with CBT. Consequently, theoretical and practical implications were developed.

Many social studies analyze attitude responses using the linear regression model. This model typically treats questionnaire data as continuous scales, although the data is merely ordinal. One type of regression model that is more appropriate to analyze rank-order responses is the Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) model. In addition to the use of regression, the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model has recently been applied in various studies. This paper delivered comparative descriptions of both the ANN and OLR models. The theoretical features and properties, which include parameters, variable selection, and model evaluation, followed by comparisons of the disadvantages and advantages of both models were analytically reviewed. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]

Customer retention has become a continuous focus of service organizations and is especially salient in the quick-service restaurant industry due to the short time with the consumer. Restaurant employees being part of the product play imperative role in keeping customers happy and coming back. However, there is no complete understanding of factors that make employees perform their best and satisfy customers. The aim of this article is to explore how employee involvement climate, a construct composed of power, information, rewards and knowledge, and supervisor undermining are related to customer perceptions of service quality. Additionally, the interaction between employee involvement climate and supervisor undermining is tested. Results suggest that a significant interaction exists between these two constructs and are key predictors in increasing or decreasing customer perceptions of service quality.

This exploratory study examines how managers in the Small and Independent Hotels (SIH) perceive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Qualitative methods were used to collect data. Ten in-depth interviews with hotel managers/owners were conducted, coded and interpreted. The results provide an in-depth perspective and comprehension of various aspects of social responsibility as perceived by the managers/owners of small hotels. The findings also indicate specific components of CSR in the context of small hotels that differ from the factors derived from larger corporations and other industries.

The objectives of this study were two-fold. First, this inquiry attempted to provide additional support to the studies conceptualizing the relationship between attribute-level performance and overall satisfaction as non-linear or asymmetric. Second, the study aimed to provide an explanation to the observed asymmetry, thus addressing the gap in the previous research in the area. Asymmetric response of customer satisfaction to different types of attribute performance was tested and interactions between attributes were examined as an explanation for the observed asymmetry. Results of the study confirmed the non-linear nature of the customer satisfaction function. Moderating effects of attribute type explained the asymmetrical relationships between attribute performance and customer satisfaction, thereby providing theoretical rationalization to the observed, but often ignored, phenomenon.

The primary objective of this study was to examine how perceived risk could be managed in the destination choice context. Relationships among risk perceptions, uncertainty (information quality), and price premium were explored by using ordinal logistic regression. Eight types of perceived risk were investigated: health/life risk, financial risk, personal satisfaction risk, social risk, time risk, technical risk, political risk, and terrorism risk. Findings showed that perceived risks were decreased by information quality but various patterns were identified for different types of perceived risk. Results additionally suggested that travelers were willing to pay extra for products and services if more safety and security are provided. Managerial implications for how the findings can be incorporated into risk management strategies are also presented in this paper.

A student-operated restaurant has to balance the achievement of its objectives as a profit generator and as a learning centre. This unique characteristic distinguishes a student-operated restaurant from other types of restaurant. This study aims to build a model to predict overall customer satisfaction in a student-operated restaurant. The input variables consist of 32 dining service attributes, which are derived from DINESERV factors. Data was collected using a close-ended questionnaire and was distributed using a convenience random sampling approach. A neural network model and a logistic regression model were built to predict overall customer satisfaction. The result shows that the best neural network model built in this study was the MLP neural network model with two hidden layers. The correct classification rate of this model was 80.65% and 69.81% for the training and testing data set. The top three important attributes that influence overall customer satisfaction are customer satisfaction toward service, responsive service and excellent service. In addition, the best logistic regression built in this study was a stepwise approach. This model had a correct classification rate at 73.39% and 69.17% for training and testing data set. The result of logistic regression shows that two significant dining attributes that influence overall customer satisfaction are customer satisfaction with service quality and food quality. Based on the correct classification rate, this study concludes that a neural network model has a better performance to predict overall customer satisfaction than a logistic regression model. However, a neural network model may not be the best model to determine the most significant input variable toward an output variable since it cannot be proven using a statistic method.