Two focus groups were con ducted. The populations were
undergraduate and graduate students. To qualify for the
focus group, a participant had to be a customer of a quickcasual restaurant within the past 3 months . Respon ses
from the focus groups helped to construct and refine the
questi onnaire. Parti cipants freely discus sed their criteria
for choo sing a quickcasual restaurant. In addition, a pilot
test was con ducted wi th actual customers at quick-casual
restaurants to ensure that the item s selected had acceptable
psychometric qualities with respect to the salient store
image most frequent ly associ ated with experiencing the
quick-c asual din ing segme nt.
A visitor’ s survey was conducted at franchi sed quick casual rest aurants with a diff erent brand name in a
Midw estern stat e. Thes e restaurant s do not offer full table
servic e, but promi ses higher quality of food, servi ce, and