Influencing factors on restaurant customers’ revisit intention: The roles of emotions and switching barriers

This study was designed to examine the relationships among consumption emotions, customer satisfaction, switching barriers, and revisit intention. Four positive and negative categories of switching barriers (preference, switching costs, relational investment, and lack of alternatives) were identified through a qualitative approach. Using structural equation analysis, the proposed relationships were tested in a full-service restaurant setting. The results showed that multiple components of consumption emotions significantly affected customer satisfaction, and satisfaction mediated the effect of emotion factors on revisit intention. The findings from the tests for metric invariances also indicated that the strength of the relationship between satisfaction and revisit intention was different across high- and low-switching barrier groups. In particular, the satisfaction-revisit intention relationship was stronger in each low-switching barrier group than in each high-switching barrier group.