The Effects of Customer Quality Assessment on Satisfaction, Self-efficacy, and Loyalty in Franchised Coffee Shops

Purpose - To understand the assessment basis of customers’ coffee shop experience and give more practical advices to the franchised coffee shops which are poorly managed in the competitive market, this study identified factors to measure the quality of customer experience and explored the relationship between these factors and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Further, this study analyzed which role self-efficacy played in the structural relationship between the quality assessment factors, satisfaction and loyalty of franchised coffee shops. Research design, data, methodology - The data were collected from respondents who had visited franchised coffee shops within the previous month through online survey. The questionnaires were surveyed from February 11 to February 14, 2019. A total of 318 responses were collected after excluding four of incomplete or uncandid responses. A structural equation modeling approach was used to examine the proposed hypothesis and a confirmatory factor analysis was employed to verify the four dimensions of quality assessment. Results - The findings of this study are as follows. First, the three of quality assessment variables significantly influenced on satisfaction except environmental quality. Second, economic and service quality significantly influenced on self-efficacy but environmental and menu quality didn’t. Third, satisfaction significantly influenced on loyalty but not on self-efficacy. Fourth, self-efficacy significantly influenced on Loyalty. Conclusions - This study identified the four dimensions to assess the franchised coffee shop service – menu, environment, service and economic quality and verified these four dimensions are valid as indicators to measure the quality of customers’ coffee shop experience. Further, by empirically testing the structural relationships among these quality assessment dimensions, satisfaction, self-efficacy and loyalty, this study provided theoretical foundations to explore the relationship between customer and the franchised stores in restaurant businesses. For the industry, the study findings showed that customers highly appreciated menu and economic quality of the service rather than the stores’ interior. This indicate that the franchised coffee shops need to focus more on the basics of coffee such as taste and menu variety and economic value than the decoration of the store, which are often over-invested nowadays.