The influence of experience on service expectations

States that expectations play an important part in service quality. Currently, the most widely adopted view of service quality results from customers’ expectations being met or exceeded. Surprisingly there is no clear consensus of what expectations actually are or what they do. There is only one widely applied way to measure them (SERVQUAL), an approach that is also widely criticized. Although the possible effect of many “controllable” factors on expectations has been alluded to, the effect of “uncontrollable” factors has not been thoroughly researched. Starts to redress the balance by defining expectations as a mixture of shoulds and wills; a cognitive melting‐pot of what should, ideally, happen and what will realistically happen the next time the service is visited. Uses a reliable measuring instrument to measure these two different expectations and the effect of consumers’ experience of the service on them. The results of the study demonstrate that experience of the service has a clear influence on expectations, at least within the context of the fast‐food industry.