Journal of Tourism & Hospitality
Open Access

Abstract

Exploring New Predictors of Service Fairness in a Restaurant Situation

Yao-Yi Fu

  In the marketplace, consumers have fairness expectations regarding results or benefits they should receive in a service delivery situation. Bagozzi (1975) pointed out an issue regarding the consequences of inequity in marketing exchange. It is likely that unfair sales transactions will cause customers’ dissatisfaction. Consequently, this study proposes two new dimensions: customer-to-customer fairness and seller-to-seller fairness. Customer-to-customer fairness refers to consumers’ comparison of their benefits from a service transaction with that of other customers of the same business. Seller-to-seller fairness regards consumers’ comparison of different businesses of the same type. The purpose of this study is to develop and refine the measurement of fairness for the restaurant industry by including the five fairness dimensions and compare the influence of different service fairness dimensions on overall perceived fairness, perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intention. This study included an on-site survey at a table-service restaurant. A total of 397 useable questionnaires were collected. An important result of this study is that the two new proposed fairness dimensions: seller-to-seller and customer-to customer dimensions were found to have significant impacts on customers’ restaurant experience. This finding shows that these two dimensions need to be included when studying service fairness. The results also show that the five service fairness dimensions have different degrees of impact on overall perceived fairness, perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intention.