A comparative study of SERVQUAL and SERVPERF in measuring the fast food restaurants' service quality in Korea

There have been academic debates upon which measure is more desirable in measuring service quality between SERVQUAL and SERVPERF. In addition, Korean fast food industry is rapidly growing due to increasing income and globalization. Our study tried to contribute to both academic and practical issues. We compared SERVQUAL and SERVPERF measures to determine which one is superior to measure service quality in Korean fast food franchise. We collected data from two branch restaurants of one American global fast food franchise system. Regression analyses resulted in that SERVPERF outperformed SERVQUAL. Furthermore, we compared the goodness of fit of the two structural equation models of SERVQUAL and SERVPERF, respectively. The SERVPERF model showed a much better model fit than the SERVQUAL model did. Thus, we suggest that SERVPERF be used to measure service quality in Korean fast food industry.