This study investigated the restaurant word-of-mouth communication structure.
Main constructs of the word-of-mouth process on purchasing decisions were identified
and their relationships were examined in a restaurant setting. Consequently, a restaurant
word-of-mouth model was proposed.
The main interests o f study are as follows: first, to identify the main factors of
restaurant word-of-mouth communication; second, to discover which word-of-mouth
factors directly affect the consumer’s restaurant product/service purchase decision; and
third, to find out the degree to which word-of-mouth factors determine the consumer’s
word-of-mouth search efforts for a restaurant. The study also looked at the mediating
effect of word-of-mouth search efforts on the purchase decision. In the end, the proposed
word-of-mouth model was compared to a general-services word-of-mouth model to
determine which model better explains the restaurant word-of-mouth communication
structure.