Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of Wi-Fi service on the millennial generation’s loyalty to restaurants. Additionally, this study examines the impact of Wi-Fi service on three different types of restaurants (coffee shops, fast-food restaurants and casual dining restaurants). Furthermore, this study examines the similarities and differences that exist cross-culturally between Americans and Koreans. Design/methodology/approach: A total number of 480 questionnaires were collected to empirically test the study model. A factor analysis that used a principal components analysis with varimax rotation was performed to condense the loyalty items into a few underlying constructs, and the Cronbach’s alpha was checked to test for reliability. A multiple regression analysis and t-test were performed to test the study hypotheses. Findings: The results show that Wi-Fi service has a significant impact on millennials’ loyalty behavior on all three types of restaurants in this study. However, the differences between Americans and Koreans on how they perceive the Wi-Fi services turned out to be significant only for coffee shops. Research limitations/implications: The authors used a non-probability convenience sampling method for data collection. The findings cannot be generalized to other types of restaurants, such as fine dining and luxury restaurants. Although the results indicate a positive relation between Wi-Fi usage and a customer’s loyalty, loyalty is a multifaceted concept where a variety of factors, such as frequency or convenience can have an impact. Practical implications: The findings should encourage marketers in the restaurant industry to use Wi-Fi as a value-added service for their customers. Originality/value: There are limited studies on how significant Wi-Fi service is for the hospitality industry, and in particular, for restaurants. This study builds on the scholarship of Cobanoglu et al. (2012) on the value of the customer loyalty by providing new insights into customers’ views on Wi-Fi service in the restaurant industry.

Amid Covid-19, restaurant customers have substantially turned to delivery services. Given that table service and ambience are absent in the delivery service mode, cue utilization for restaurant delivery could be different from that in dine-in consumption. Furthermore, increased hygiene and health concerns may lead to changes in cue utilization patterns after the pandemic. Therefore, we explored how restaurant type and its interactions with brand and review rating affected delivery sales and whether their sales effects changed according to the severity of infection risk. Fixed-effects estimation and marginal analysis were employed to investigate 579,858 observations from 193,286 restaurants in China between 2019 and the second quarter of 2020. The findings revealed that full-service and/or branded restaurants had higher delivery sales than other groups. Interaction effects between restaurant type and brand as well as restaurant type and review rating were also found. Theoretical and practical implications for effective cue utilization are discussed.

Purpose: The hygiene factor is always imperative when customers consider a certain restaurant, and the information contained in customer reviews can be an efficient approach to gauge a restaurant's hygiene during gaps in the official inspection. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether information obtained from online reviews could predict the upcoming hygiene rating, specifically, evaluating the impact of both qualitative and quantitative content of reviews on the restaurant hygiene rating.Design/methodology/approach: The quantitative research method with big data analytic techniques was applied in this study. In total, 127,656 pieces of data collected from 1,710 restaurants in four major cities in the USA were used in the analysis. Both quantitative factors (i.e. reviewer's numerical rating, days to review, readability, useful/funny/cool) and qualitative factors (i.e. eight emotional dimensions of textual reviews) were analyzed from the online customer reviews and considered in predicting the restaurant's hygiene rating.Findings: Six out of eight emotional dimensions including anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and trust were identified as having significant influences on the restaurant hygiene ratings. While three quantitative variables including days to review, readability and usefulness were identified with significant impacts on the dependent variable of restaurant hygiene rating.Originality/value: This study opens an avenue for innovative research that establishes a connection between customers' reviews and restaurants' inspection systems. The results allow restaurants to predict an impending hygiene inspection rating upon dynamic assessment of review content and aid in adjusting hygiene measures accordingly.