The Effect of Waiting Time and Crowding on Service

Abstract

Service evaluation represents an important topic o fresearch for both academics and practitioners. It includes concepts such as service quality, customer satisfaction,and behavioral intentions regarding future use of the service and word-of-mouth. A number of researchers have explored the nature of service evaluation, its ante-cedents, and consequences. However, another relatedarea , the impact of situational factors on service evalua-tion, has received relatively less attention. Yet , situ-ational factors often tum out to be the deciding influenceon service evaluation at any given time . For example,waiting time (Dabholkar 1991, 1996; Pruyn and Smidts1998; Taylor 1994) is often critical in determining howconsumers evaluate the service.A growing trend in service delivery is the use oftechnology as an integral part of the process. At the sametime , consumers are becoming increasingly comfortableabout performing many services for themselves. Com-bining the technology aspect with self-service is creatinga whole class of service delivery, i.e ., technology-basedself-service (Dabholkar 1994). Examples include auto-mated teller machines , automated airline ticketing, auto-mated car rental, in-room hotel check-out via television,brokerage software, self-scanning at retail stores, and on-line services or accessing information on the Internet.