HOW DISCONFIRMATION, PERCEPTION AND ACTUAL WAITING-TIMES IMPACT CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

The experience of waiting for service is often the first direct intera ction between customers and most service delivery processes. The liter ature on satisfaction with waiting has paralleled the literature on ge neral service satisfaction, in which the relative importance of actual performance, perceived performance, and the disconfirmation between e xpected performance and perceived performance has been the subject of much debate. This paper presents an empirical study of satisfaction wi th waiting for service in a fast food environment. The study demonstra tes that actual waiting time, perceived waiting time, and the disconfi rmation between expected waiting time and perceived waiting time are a ll related to satisfaction with the waiting experience. It further dem onstrates that the relative importance of each of these variables in p redicting satisfaction depends on the differences in the needs of the customers. The implications for both theory and practice are significa nt: the importance of the perception of the experience increases as th e importance of the satisfaction measure increases. More specifically, for customers who are concerned about time, the perception of the tim e spent waiting is a better predictor of satisfaction than the actual waiting time.