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Total customer satisfaction is one of the most important strategic weapons of best‐practice hotel organizations. However, hotel organizations cannot achieve total customer satisfaction without gaining the knowledge of a hotel’s competitive position in the changing marketplace and realizing the opportunity of continuous service improvement. With this in mind, this paper develops a set of service benchmarks that help hotel managers monitor their service delivery process, identify performance gaps, and take corrective action. In particular, we propose dynamic benchmarking based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) that goes beyond traditional service performance measures. Based on the longitudinal surveys of customers who have stayed at first‐class hotels in Korea, this paper illustrates the usefulness of dynamic benchmarking for continuous service improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to help fast‐food restaurants successfully penetrate foreign markets and then strengthen their foothold in those markets by identifying cross‐cultural differences in the perceived service quality of fast‐food restaurants; and by examining how those differences affect the globalization of fast‐food restaurant franchises based in the USA and Korea.

This paper develops a set of target performance standards that helps fast‐food restaurants monitor their service delivery process, identify relative weaknesses, and take corrective actions for continuous service improvements in cross‐cultural settings using analytic hierarchy process and competitive gap analysis.

This study reveals that a service attribute considered most important to the fast‐food restaurant customers' impressions of service quality differs from one country (USA) to another (Korea). It was found that US customers valued taste of food most whereas Korean customers valued cleanliness most. Also, it was discovered that Koreans considered employee courtesy far more important for their service impression of service quality than Americans, while they were less concerned about food price than their US counterparts. Furthermore, Koreans tended to be more brand‐conscious than Americans and thus considered word‐of‐mouth reputation more seriously than Americans for restaurant selection.

The current study is limited to the evaluation of comparative service quality of fast‐food restaurants in only two countries (namely the USA and Korea). Thus, this study cannot be generalized to the restaurant customers' perceived service quality in other countries or cultural settings. Also, this paper focuses on the performance aspect of benchmarking rather than the strategic aspect of benchmarking.

Saturated with the US restaurant market selling fast‐serving and cheap meals, a growing number of US fast‐food restaurant franchises began to explore foreign markets to increase world‐wide customer bases. However, it is not easy for them to duplicate their domestic success in foreign soils due to different needs, tastes, and preferences of foreign customers. This paper helps the fast‐food restaurant franchises develop viable market penetration and localization strategies and then provides practical guidelines for enhancing their competitiveness in the emerging foreign markets.

This paper is one of the first to compare the service quality of fast‐food franchises in the USA to that of Korean fast‐food restaurant franchises from the cross‐cultural perspectives.

To help fast‐food restaurants enhance their competitiveness and then increase their market share, the purpose of this paper is to measure the service performances of fast‐food restaurant franchises in the USA and identify salient factors influencing the service performances of fast‐food restaurants over time.

This paper develops a set of benchmarks that helps fast‐food restaurants monitor their service‐delivery process, identify relative weaknesses, and take corrective actions for continuous service improvements using analytic hierarchy process and competitive gap analysis.

This study reveals that a service attribute considered most important to the fast‐food restaurant customers' impressions of service quality is taste of food. This preference has not been changed over time. Also, we found a pattern of the correlation between the overall level of customer satisfaction with the fast‐food restaurant and its word‐of‐mouth reputation. Furthermore, we discovered that the customers tended to be more favorable to easily accessible and national fast‐food restaurant franchises than less accessible, relatively new, and regional counterparts.

The current study is limited to the evaluation of comparative service quality in the USA. Thus, this study may not capture the national differences in the restaurant customers' perceived service quality.

For the last four decades, Americans' obsession with fast serving, cheap meals has made the fast‐food restaurant a mainstay in their daily life. As the appetite for fast food grows, every corner of the American Society has been infiltrated by fast‐food restaurants. With the increasing number of fast‐food restaurants competing in the market, their survival often rests on their ability to sustain high‐quality services and meet changing needs/preferences of customers. This paper provides practical guidelines for enhancing the competitiveness of the fast‐food restaurant franchise.

This paper is one of the first to compare the service quality of fast‐food franchises in the USA and develop dynamic service quality standards for fast‐food restaurant franchises using a longitudinal study.

To stay competitive, hotels need to develop a viable customer retention strategy. Since a key to the successful development of such a strategy rests with customer relationship management, hotels should identify the most profitable ways to build and maintain a loyal customer relationship. In an effort to help hotels understand their customers’ preferences and the ways to interact with the customers, we propose data mining techniques. Based on a case study of luxury hotels in South Korea, this paper demonstrates the usefulness and practicality of the proposed data mining techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to help airlines gain a better understanding of passengers’ service concerns, identify opportunities for continuous service improvement, and then develop service benchmarking standards that can be a yardstick for the airline’s competitiveness.

This paper develops a set of target performance standards that helps airlines monitor their service delivery process, identify relative weaknesses, and take corrective actions for continuous service improvements using exploratory data analysis and competitive gap analysis.

This study reveals that a service attribute considered most important to the airline customers’ impressions of service quality are air safety. This result reflects a growing concern over potential terrorism against airlines in the wake of the September 11 incident. The authors also found that proper baggage handling, competitive airfare, and on-time arrival/departure were next most important service attributes, whereas frequent flier and code-sharing programs were least important. Furthermore, the authors discovered that airline passengers’ perceived service quality influenced their choice of airlines. That is to say, airline service quality can be an important gauge of airline market share and revenue.

The current study is limited to the evaluation of comparative service quality of airlines in the USA. Thus, this study cannot be generalized to the airline passengers’ perceived service quality in other countries or different cultural settings. Also, this paper focuses on the performance aspect of benchmarking rather than the strategic aspect of benchmarking.

With rising costs of fuel, labor, maintenance, and security, many airlines are at a crossroads where they have to decide between succumbing to restructuring pressures in a form of mergers/acquisitions and reinventing their service offerings. One viable means of reinventing airline service offerings is to learn more about what airline passengers truly value and appreciate in terms of service offerings and then figure out what it takes to win the hearts of customers and then how the airline can differentiate its service offering from those of its competitors. With this in mind, this paper develops viable service improvement strategies for the airline that can enhance its competitiveness in the struggling airline industry.

This paper is one of a few attempts to identify a list of service attributes most important to airline service quality based on the actual survey of airline passengers, and then develop a benchmark standard of airlines in the USA from a customer (passenger) perspective.

This paper aims to develop a balanced scorecard for measuring the comparative efficiency of Korean luxury hotels and then set the benchmark of performance standards for Korean luxury hotels in the increasingly competitive hotel industry. It also aims to identify the root causes of inefficiencies and then propose ways to improve the competitiveness of Korean luxury hotels.

This paper proposes data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the comparative efficiency of six luxury hotel chains in Korea, relative to prior periods and their key competitors. In particular, this paper develops the Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (CCR) model that is designed to derive weights without being fixed in advance. Also, the results of the CCR model with constant returns to scale were compared to those of the Banker, Charnes and Cooper (BCC) model with decreasing returns to scale.

The paper finds that the declining efficiency within some Korean luxury hotels coincides with more aggressive government crackdowns on bad bank loans in the wake of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial crisis and the slow adaptation of some hotels into ongoing hotel industry restructuring. The deep discount in hotel room rates did not necessarily lead to increased room occupancy. The revenue increase is not significantly correlated with the enhanced profitability of Korean luxury hotels. The Korean hotel industry reached the stage of market maturity and therefore the mere expansion of the hotel capacity would not necessarily enhance the hotel's profitability.

This paper uncovers the financial weaknesses and strengths of the Korean luxury hotels and identifies challenges and opportunities for the Korean hotel industry. In addition, it helps Korean hotels formulate the future survival strategies by providing the detailed picture of where they stand in terms of competitiveness. This paper is one of the first attempts to utilise DEA to develop performance measures for hotels under the balanced scorecard framework. The proposed DEA can be easily modified or extended to similar settings in other hotels such as budget hotels or other countries such as USA and Japan.

As quality and profitability have become inseparable concepts, a growing number of service firms have considered quality their top priority in maintaining competitiveness. Commitment to service quality, however, is nothing more than lip service, unless management develops reliable service quality standards. Perhaps one of the best ways of developing such standards is to compare the firm’s service performance with that of the service leader and reassess its service performance continuously through competitive benchmarking. In an effort to establish practical guidelines for competitive benchmarking, proposes the use of an analytic hierarchy process and a competitive gap analysis. These methods can help the service manager to formulate viable service improvement strategies in the increasingly competitive service industry. Illustrates the usefulness of the proposed benchmarking methodology using the case of Korean luxury hotels.

With escalating competition in the hotel industry, a growing number of hotels have considered service quality their top priority in maintaining competitiveness. To maintain competitiveness, the hotel management often needs to develop reliable service quality standards. Perhaps one of the best ways of developing such standards is to compare the hotel’s service performance with that of the service leader and reassess its service performance continuously through competitive benchmarking. In an effort to establish practical guidelines for competitive benchmarking, proposes the use of an analytic hierarchy process and a competitive gap analysis. These methods can help the hotel manager formulate viable service improvement strategies in the increasingly competitive hotel industry. Illustrates the usefulness of the proposed benchmarking methodology using the case of Korean luxury hotels.

The purpose of this paper is to benchmark and measure the comparative efficiency of emergency medical services (EMS) in major US cities (populations greater than 100,000). In so doing, this paper aims to develop a benchmark that can be emulated by cities lagging in EMS efficiency. Also, it seeks to develop a profile of cities that are successful in providing highly efficient EMS as benchmarks.

Data envelopment analysis is used to measure the EMS efficiency of 127 selected large cities in the USA under the premise of a constant‐return to scales method of service delivery. In addition, to identify factors influencing the US cities' EMS efficiency and then to predict their efficiency scores, a Tobit regression analysis is employed, which tended to result in a smaller standard error, a smaller bias, and a smaller mean squared error than ordinary least squares.

This paper examines whether more densely settled and populated areas have greater efficiency in delivering EMS. After controlling variables such as weather and climate, income, population growth, the age of a residential home, and geographic size of a city in land area, It is found that more densely settled, geographically large, and high income cities show more efficient provision of EMS.

This paper is the first to develop in a comprehensive way EMS benchmark performance standards for municipal governments and elaborate on a host of factors which are associated with the success of EMS deliveries. By setting such standards and identifying factors affecting EMS efficiency, this paper helps municipal governments to continuously improve their EMS and develop more efficient public policy.

It is important for restaurants’ social networking sites (SNSs) to provide a flow experience because it encourages positive brand responses and attracts consumers. However, there is a paucity of research on SNS flow experience in the restaurant industry, and more importantly, most of the research is focused only on online behavior. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how SNS flow antecedents (skill, challenge, telepresence and time distortion) influence overall flow, SNS satisfaction and offline restaurant purchase intentions. In addition, this study examined the mediating role of SNS satisfaction between flow and offline purchase intentions.

An online survey was carried out to examine the patron’s flow experiences. 517 valid responses were analyzed to test hypotheses using structural equation model.

The results indicated that four antecedents of SNS flow positively influenced overall flow. Specifically, time distortion was the most influential antecedent. Overall flow positively influenced SNS satisfaction and offline purchase intentions. Furthermore, SNS satisfaction acted as a mediator between overall flow and offline purchase intentions.

The findings provide not only new insights for restaurant managers to implement SNS marketing but also several strategies to encourage consumer’s flow on restaurant SNS.

This study investigated the theoretical framework of flow experience more in depth than previous research as dealing with four dimensions of SNS flow antecedents: skill, challenge, telepresence and time distortion.