The Role of Service Quality in Enhancing Guest Loyalty in the Restaurant Industry- A Narrative Review

Service quality has emerged as a strategic necessity in the competitive landscape of the fast-food restaurant sector, enhancing guest loyalty and business viability. This paper aims to present a systematic narrative literature review of the boundaries of the years 2010 and 2025 about how the service quality dimensions promote guest loyalty by adopting the SERVQUAL model as the apparatus for analysis, in this regard, tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The review is grounded in 100 studies and deduces that the emotional and attitudinal antecedents of loyalty, which are more about empathy and assurance, are significant drivers of repeat visits as well as word-of-mouth advocacy. The review also identifies the increasing importance of digital transformation and AI-driven personalized customer experiences, CRM, and predictive analytics in enhancing responsiveness and engagement. Customer satisfaction, perceived value, and brand trust are also equally important mediating and/or moderating variables to convert service quality into loyalty performance. By bridging traditional service quality dimensions with capabilities afforded through technology, emotional driver, and social connections, the paper offers a conceptual framework for restaurant operators to use in designing customer-focused service systems that promote sustained loyalty in post-pandemic hospitality service delivery environments.