THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WAITING IN A SERVICE QUEUE AND EVALUATIONS OF SERVICE QUALITY - A FIELD-THEORY PERSPECTIVE

Both empirical evidence and logic suggest that there is a strong negat ive correlation between waiting time and a customer's evaluation of th e quality of a service. The evaluation of service, in turn, is related strongly to customers' loyalty and other important outcomes. A concep tual model, based on field theory, is developed. The model integrates key variables derived from recent studies of consumer waiting behavior . Also incorporated are relevant constructs from the extant services l iterature, including the roles of the disconfirmation of consumers' wa it time expectations, prior service encounters, and the quality of the customer's encounter with the contact employee. Finally, data from ac tual consumers in a natural queueing context are used to test the theo retical framework. Analysis of the data, with the use of multiple regr ession, demonstrates a strong pattern of support for the field-theory- based hypotheses, confirming the important role of queue wait manageme nt in customer evaluations of service quality. (C) 1998 John Wiley & S ons, Inc.