Customer experience has become an increasingly important construct in service research and management. Restaurant and hospitality management make no exception: restaurant experience has gained a vast amount of scholarly attention during the past decade. Prior research has addressed restaurant experience through perception of restaurant attributes, such as food quality, service, and restaurant environment, i.e. uncovering what restaurants are like, and linking those perceptions with key outcome measures. However, only limited attention has been placed on understanding what kind of value customers eventually perceive (economic, functional, emotional, symbolic) as a result of those attributes. Understanding what type of value customers perceive, however, determines their preference formation and future behavioral intentions, and provides important insight for managing customer experiences. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to introduce a customer value perspective to restaurant experience that connects the quality attributes to value perceptions, as well as the behavioral intentions representing the outcomes of the restaurant experience.

Data from a large quantitative survey (n=1533) is used to verify the proposed integrative model of restaurant experience. The dynamics of the model are further explored by using the model to contrast two different restaurant contexts that prior literature has addressed as different in nature: dining and lunch restaurant experiences.

The study introduces an integrative model for analysing the antecedents, outcomes, and implications of restaurant experiences. It extends prior research by incorporating economic, functional, emotional, and symbolic customer value dimensions as key constructs in understanding restaurant experiences.