Objective: The ready-meal market has grown considerably in recent years. At the same time, a degradation of traditional cooking skills has been observed. Ready meals are often rich in energy, fat and sugar and lack vegetables; however, studies investigating associations between ready-meal consumption, overweight and cooking skills are lacking. The present study examines whether demographic factors, overweight, beliefs about the nutritional value and taste of ready meals and cooking skills are associated with ready-meal consumption.Design: Cross-sectional survey.Setting: Ready-meal consumption, weight status, cooking skills, beliefs about the taste and nutritional value of ready meals and demographic variables were assessed with self-administered questionnaires. Data were analysed with one-way ANOVA and multiple regression analysis.Subjects: A total of 1017 adults from the German-speaking part of Switzerland.Results: Men reported being more positive about ready meals and having fewer cooking skills compared with women. Overweight adults (BMI > 25 kg/m²) were more positive about nutrients and vitamins in ready meals compared with normal-weight adults. Ready-meal consumption was associated with cooking skills (β= −0·192), age (β=− 0·228), overweight (β= 0·129), nutritional value (β= −0·131), taste (β= −0·126), working status (β= 0·096) and gender (β= 0·084).Conclusions: Cooking skills were identified as a strong predictor of ready-meal consumption. The importance of cooking skills as a barrier to healthy eating should be explored, as it is plausible that cooking skills will further decrease in the future. Next, the study provided evidence for an association between ready-meal consumption and overweight. Further research should examine the importance of ready meals for the overweight epidemic.

Purpose – Customer satisfaction and image are important factors for service companies because of their impact on loyalty. Although much research has looked at the relationship of both of these factors individually, little is known about them when they are considered together. Furthermore, experience with the service or product has largely been neglected in this line of research. This paper aims to undertake a first step to fill this gap. Design/methodology/approach – This research, with data from one of Europe's most modern night-train companies, employs structural equation modelling to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings – Differentiating new customers from experienced ones, the results show that for new customers satisfaction is crucial whereas image plays a much smaller role in terms of loyalty. For experienced customers, however, the importance of satisfaction decreases whereas the impact of image increases. Research limitations/implications – Satisfaction and image were both measured by a single item. Although they show high face validity, the findings should be replicated using a multiple-item approach. Future research should also consider distinguishing between transaction-specific satisfaction and cumulative satisfaction. Practical implications – This paper concludes that customers' experience plays a decisive role in predicting loyalty. Managers should therefore be aware of the level of their customers' experience and may even consider developing different retention programmes tailored to the level of customers' experience. Originality/value – This research proposes an integrative model of satisfaction, image, and loyalty, and analyses the impact of experience within this model. It is pioneering work that empirically investigates the relationships between these constructs.