Assessing customers’ perception regarding service failure and recovery strategies and consumer future behavior in the restaurant industry ;Evidence from Mashhad, Iran

ABSTRACT: The main objective of this research is to conduct a study to analyse service failure categories and service recovery strategies used and future customer behaviorin the context of hotelrestaurants in Mashhad, Iran. Also to evaluate the impact of demographic characteristics of customers on service failure, service recovery and customer intention. The Thesis involves 300 respondents from Mashhad, Iran. The sampling unit is hotel restaurant customers and the data needed for the research purpose have been collected via structured questionnaires. The study found conclusive results on selected service failure and service recovery strategies in hotel restaurants. This study further looked into the impact of demographic characteristics of customers on service failure, service recovery strategies and customer intention in the context of developing economies. This study has important managerial implication as it facilitate the understandings of which importance of service failure category in relation to different demographic characteristics from customers‘ point of view. This paper is valuable as very little has been done in the Iranian context. It also creates a perspective for restaurant managers in developing countries to evaluate and monitor their performance in order to increase their profitability and customer satisfaction. Keywords: Hotel restaurant, service failure, service recovery, customer intention, demographic characteristics, developing countries. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………