Customer Loyalty With Fine Dining: The Moderating Role of Gender

Building customer loyalty is an important strategy for the success of fine-dining restaurants. Knowing individual customers’ differences, especially the distinction between male and female customers in service quality and image perception, as well as satisfaction and loyalty formation, is crucial to attract and retain customers. This study examined the structural relationships among food quality, staff service quality, image, customer satisfaction, and loyalty in the context of fine-dining restaurants with a special focus on gender’s moderating effects. The results showed that food quality and staff service quality both contributed to the customers’ satisfaction and perceived image of the restaurant. Restaurant image and customer satisfaction explained a large variance in customer loyalty. Gender moderated five out of the six proposed relationships, which supported gender’s moderating role in the context of fine-dining restaurants.