“A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Professional Doctorate

Degree in Business Administration (DBA)
Submitted by: Amr Moustafa Abdelaziz Ahmed
Under supervision of: Prof. Dr. Hayam Hassan Wahba
Professor of Finance and Investment
Vice Dean for Post-graduate Studies and Research -Faculty of Business – Ain Shams University Discussions The service is the process that consists of a series of intangible activities resulting from interactions offered by one party to another i.e. service providers to customers.
Food has a major impact in terms of how a patient recovers, and just how long they have to stay in a hospital. Measurement of service quality remains a priority of many healthcare organizations since it is often linked to patient satisfaction and loyalty. Patient feedback is required for the management to determine strengths and weaknesses points within the food production/service system. Foodservice operations have been one of the primary sources of COVID-19 transmission. During the COVID-19 era, people look for healthy foods and adopt behaviors to prevent virus transmission. The COVID-19 pandemic is a natural calamity and has put a huge burden on the healthcare systems due to the surge in the number of patients. It is thus expected that due to over demand the service quality expectations will change. Service quality is dependent upon five dimensions, which are (a) tangibles i.e. physical
facilities, equipment, and the personnel appearance; (b) reliability i.e. the company’s ability of performing the provided service in a precise way; (c) responsiveness i.e. the company’s eagerness in helping customers and providing prompt service; (d) assurance i.e. employees’ ability to inspire trust depending upon competence, credibility and security; and (e) empathy through providing a personalized attention to customers through communication, understanding and access to them. Therefore, providing high quality services to customers is a key issue for service organizations to build customers’ loyalty, create a sustainable competitive advantage, and achieve their profitability and survival.
Service quality is the cornerstone of any organization, which provides a competitive edge.
With globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic, the volume of healthcare industry has been growing rapidly, which makes it even more imperative for the organization to continuously im-prove the quality of the services they offer to their customers.

Carting services can be found in hospital facilities. The quality of food service is one of the most relevant items of quality perceived by customers. In health care especially private health care sectors, the satisfaction of patients is ultimately related to the provided service quality.
The researcher chose a random sample of 403 patients who accommodate in the investigated hospital during the period COVID-19 from the large-scale population at Saudi German Hospital Cairo with different demographical levels (gender, age, educational level) as a pilot study to pre-test the research plan. The five dimensions of service quality are studied which are (a) tangibles i.e. physical facilities, equipment, and the personnel appearance; (b) reliability i.e. the company’s ability of performing the provided service in a precise way; (c) responsiveness i.e. the company’s eagerness in helping customers and
providing prompt service; (d) assurance i.e. employees’ ability to inspire trust depending upon competence, credibility and security; and (e) empathy through providing a personalized. In addition to the dependent dimension which measures the catering service performance in Saudi German Hospital Cairo.
The researcher identified the research main aim to determine the impact of service quality dimensions on catering service performance during the period of COVID-19. To achieve the study aim some objectives have been set, realizing the extent of the hospital interests in tangibility services during the period of COVID-19, determining the reliability forms that the hospital is going to highlight during the period COVID-19, measuring the hospital catering employees’ responsiveness to the patients’ requirements during the period
COVID-19, identifying the hospital assurances provided to the patients about catering service performance during the period of COVID-19, ensuring that if the hospital catering employees appear empathy to the patient during providing the service during the period of COVID-19 or not, and addressing the patients’ perceptions for catering service performance
in the hospital during the period of COVID-19.
The study used the quanitative analysis by distributing (450) forms to patients, (431) forms have been received, and (28) forms have been excluded when the data is unloaded for incomplete completion, and the number of valid forms has reached (403), by 89.6%. They are very good rates in their field, so that it is possible to rely on the results obtained in testing the hypotheses of the study and drawing conclusions. feel confident on their services.
could be suggested model for the study that: Source: prepared by the researcher The results were in line with previous literature and fulfilled the objectives of the current study. The study found a positive direct effect of the independent variable (service quality dimensions) on the dependent variables (catering service performance); in addition to finding an effect for the demographic variables on service quality dimensions and catering
service performance.