The Impact of Food Quality on Customers Experience in Egyptian Restaurants: The Mediating Effect of Food Critics

Abstract

Over the past few years, food critics have become the new influencers in the restaurants industry. Their reviews affect people in choosing where to eat and what to order and how worthy a restaurant is before visiting it. This research aims to investigate how food critics impact the restaurants' seeking towards improving the food quality and to explore the factors that influence consumers’ experience after reading food critics' reviews. A questionnaire form was developed and directed to a sample of restaurants’ customers, of which 386 electronic questionnaires were valid to analyse. The structure modelling equation and path analysis were used to analyse the relationship between the variables. The results indicated that the effect of food quality on customers’ experience in the presence of food critics’ reviews is higher than the direct effect of food quality on customers’ experience, which means that food critics’ reviews help increase the effect of food quality on customers’ experience. Based upon the findings, it is recommended to invite the celebrities and influencers in food reviews who have many followers to try the restaurant's food and transfer their experience to their followers as a new marketing method.