Where Does Trust and Service Quality Reputation Come From?

The term ‘business reputation’ has certainly moved into the spotlight recently. However, most studies conducted on business reputation have focused on large or multinational enterprises. Within a potentially very large topic, this research concentrates on the perception of the reputation of Taiwanese small enterprises, namely small Chinese restaurants. The motivation for this study stems from the notions about business reputation from customers’ points of view. In addition, significant frameworks reflect conceptual and empirical work which focuses on servicescape, social responsibility, trust and service quality, all of which are relatively common in Western countries. Existing studies which concentrate on Chinese societies are rather more limited and need to be expanded. The purpose of this paper is to fill in some of this research gap by discussing some of the above models in the Chinese cultural society of Taiwan. The results correspond to previous studies conducted, such as the strong relationship between servicescape and service quality, and servicescape being positively connected to trust. The role of trust is critically important in small Chinese restaurants.