Abstract

Purpose: During COVID-19, consumers prefer social distancing or contactless activities for safety, and hygienic condition has become one of the most important factors in evaluating restaurants. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether offline/online word-of-mouth is affected by restaurant quality. Research design, data and methodology: The data were collected from 480 consumers who had experiences of visiting a restaurant in the past 90 days and analyzed with SPSS 28.0 and SmartPLS 4.0 programs. Results: Physical environment and menu had positively significant effects on brand love, while employee service and hygiene had no significance on brand love. Restaurant environment, menu, and hygiene had negatively significant effects on brand hate, but employee service had not significant impact on brand hate. Brand love had positively significant effects on offline and online word-of-mouth, and brand hate had negatively significant effects on offline and online word-of-mouth. Conclusions: First, restaurants need to develop a pleasant space where customers can have emotional experiences. Second, restaurants need to fulfill customers' desire for global food consumption. Third, restaurants should ensure hygiene and safety to prevent customers' brand hate. Lastly, restaurants need to establish offline/online word-of-mouth strategy to identify which restaurant quality attributes influence brand love/hate and offline/online word-of-mouth.