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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a popular, and even expected, strategy for promoting an organization’s public persona. CSR is particularly important in the casino industry since many customers associate the casino industry with negative images such as crime and drugs; therefore, casinos try to enhance their social image through CSR activities. This study investigated how casinos’ CSR activities (economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic) influenced customer loyalty (CL). Partial Least Squares (PLS)-structural equation modeling analysis was used to examine the hypotheses on a sample of 251 casino’s customer in the United States. Results of this study showed that the dimensions of philanthropic and legal responsibilities had varying effects on CL. In contrast, economic and ethical responsibilities didn’t significantly affect CL.

PurposeThe study aims to analyze guest comments on the Uber Eats food delivery app (FDA) in the USA during the April–June 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period. Three aspects influencing customer satisfaction with the FDA were evaluated in this study: (1) performance on the app, (2) product quality and (3) service quality.Design/methodology/approachOne thousand customer comments posted on the Uber Eats Google Play app from April 1 to June 30, 2020 were analyzed in this study. The text mining technique was applied to discover the hidden, but meaningful patterns from the unstructured text. Content analysis was applied to systematically analyze the text into organized categories and themes.FindingsAmong the three dimensions evaluated in this study, the most important dimension regarding customers' perceptions toward the FDA was the service quality dimension (40.02%), followed by the FDA's performance dimension (39.43%) and the product quality dimension (20.54%) was least important. Additionally, customers' perceptions towards the three dimensions were all unfavorable and there were more negative comments than the positive comments: FDAs (P/N = 0.728), product quality (P/N = 0.60) and service quality (P/N = 0.865).Originality/valuePrevious studies investigating FDAs assessed solely the performance of the app. However, customers' experience of a food delivery service is comprised of multiple components including the app, the restaurant and the delivery driver. To fill the void, this study evaluated a third-party app performance, product quality and service quality to capture the totality of customers' food delivery service experience.

Noise complaints in restaurants have been accelerating and unpleasant sounds erode customer satisfaction. Restaurant ambient noise, such as background and physical sounds influence customer satisfaction and effectively controlling the sound environment in restaurants is challenging, particularly situational sounds generated by customers. Situational sounds address how customers are influenced by other customers dining in the same restaurant and highlight a type of sound that cannot be easily managed by employees. Situational sounds can be loud conversation among fellow customers or misbehaving children. Concerns with situational sounds are less about how they impact customer satisfaction, and more about the way in which managers handle them. Thus, managers find a proactive service approach to be most effective when handling situational sounds in a restaurant. For example, strategically placing a large noisy group in a separate room or further away from other customers in the restaurant can mitigate the negative impact to other diners. The results of this study confirmed that background sounds, physical sounds, and managers' proactive customer service regarding situational sounds impact customer satisfaction. However, the interactive effects of background sounds, physical sounds, and managers' proactive customer service regarding situational sounds do not influence customer satisfaction. Based on the results, recommendations for restaurant managers are provided to decrease controllable unpleasant noises caused by background and physical sounds as well as strategies for effectively executing proactive customer service to handle situational sounds.

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