The role of people training and development in delivering service quality in UK based Thai restaurants

Oxford Brookes of Hospitality Management
Oxford Brookes University

THE ROLE OF PEOPLE TRAINING AND
DEVELOPMENT IN DELIVERING SERVICE
QUALITY IN UK BASED THAI RESTAURANTS

Trang Ngo Thi Quynh
Academic Year 2014- 2015

This dissertation is submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the Master’s
Degree in International Hotel and Tourism Management

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DECLARATION

This dissertation is the result of my own independent work. Where material other than
my own work has been used it is appropriately attributed and reference in the text.
I agree that this dissertation may be made available for reference and photocopying at
the discretion of the Head of School, who will only give permission for such reproduction
to the text which s/he considers fair and reasonable.
Trang Ngo Thi Quynh

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation is a result of my Master journey at Oxford School of Hospitality
Management. I would like to send thanks to all lecturers and professors who are part of
the School, for the passion and contribution for teaching and supporting students in their
academic and professional experiences.
I would like to thank Dr. Judie Gannon for all her help and guidance throughout my
project.
A significant “thank you” to owners and managers in eight Thai restaurants I interviewed
for their supports during the time I did my research.
Last, but not least, I spend my sincere thank for my family and my friends for their
support throughout all these years of studies.
Thank you very much.

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ABSTRACT
Literature review
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of people training and development in
delivering service quality in UK based Thai restaurants. The study focuses on small and
medium sized Thai restaurants in the UK, particularly in London, Oxford and Bath city.
These restaurants are independent, family- run business and brand Thai restaurants.
Design/ method/ approach
Based on a choice of phenomenon philosophy, the researcher conducted a small- scale
qualitative research with one observation and twelve interviews of owners and managers
in a sample of eight Thai restaurants. As applying a purposive sample technique, the
research carried out the study in chosen small and medium size Thai restaurants, both

run by families and brands in three cities such as London, Oxford and Bath. In terms of
interview, the researcher chose semi-structure interviews to explore the views of Thai
owners and management team on the impact of people training and development in the
delivery of service quality. These chosen interviewees hold positions such as operation,
business, training managers, assistant managers in chosen Thai restaurants. One nonparticipating observation was taken place at one specific restaurant site in Oxford to
observe how service was delivered by staffs.
Findings
This study will add to the existing knowledge by addressing the impact of people training
and development on deciding which dimension of service quality (technical or functional
level)
Research limitations
The study used qualitative research, semi-interviews, observation which leads to a
limitation of generalization and data validity.
Practical implications
Implications from the study could assist Thai restaurants, both run by families and
brands to benefit from how to conduct training method and content to influence staff
performance and customer perception of service quality
Originality/ value
This paper is the first study to explore the role of training and development in the
delivery of service quality in selection of Thai restaurants in the UK

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Keywords: Service quality, Ethnic restaurant, human resource development, people
training and development

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Table of Contents
Table 1: A summary of restaurants attributes to customer dining experience in full-service
restaurants
Table 2: Research design summary
Table 3: Constructing question content following the research objectives

Table 4: Time schedule interview
Table 5: Data order and display
Table 6: Cluster of data collection
Table 7: A summary of data cluster collected from interview and observation

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Table of figures:
Figure 1: A conceptual framework of the thesis
Figure 2: Model illustrating alternative philosophical approaches to research (Shepard et
al., 1993).

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale ………………………………………………………………….……………….11
2. The context of the study ………………………………………………………………..12
3. The significance of the study…………………………………….…..…………..…… 14
4. Aim and objective……………………………………………………………….………. 15
5. Scope ……………………………………………………………………..………………..15
6. The overall structure of the thesis ……………………………………………………15
7. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….…….17

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….…..18
2.1. Service……………………………………………..……………………………….……. 19
2.3. Service quality………………………………………………………………………….. 20
2.4. Customer satisfaction ……………………………………………………………….…21
2.5. Restaurant attributes to customer experiences………………………………….. 21
2.6. Restaurants attributes to customer dining experience in ethnic
restaurants……………………………………………………………………………………. 25
2.7. Delivery service quality through people …………………………………………..26
2.8. Human resource management approach ………………………………………..…27
2.8. Human resource management in service industry…………………………….… 31
9.

Human resource management in SMEs in service industry Relationship
between human resource management and the delivery of service quality
…………………………………………………………………………………………..29

2.10 Training …………………………………………………………………………………..30
2.11. Training approach …………………………………………………………………..…33
2.12. Practice of training in SMEs …………………………………………………….….. 35

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2.13. Conceptual framework …………………………………………………………..……34
2.14. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..35
CHAPET 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….……..37
3.2. Research philosophy ……………………………………………………………….….37
3.3. Research approach and strategy……………………………………..………………39

3.3.1 Research approach ……………………………………………………………………39
3. 3.2 Research strategy……………………………………………………………………. 40
3.4. Research design…………………………………………………………………………40
3.5 Research sample…………………………………….………………………………….. 41
3.6. Data collection technique………………………………………………………………45
3.6.1 Observation……………………………………………………………………………. 45
3.6.2 In- depth interview………………………………………………………………….… 47
3.7 Analysis of data ………………………………………………………………………….50
3.8 Ethnics consideration …………………………………………………..………………55
3.9. Limitation of the research methodology…………………………………………… 55
3.10. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….…….. 55
Chapter 4: FINDINGS
4.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….… 56
4.2 Findings from interview …………………………….…………………………….….…57
4.3 Findings from observations ……………………………………………………………68
4.4 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..…69
Chapter 5: Discussion

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5.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 71
5.2 . Cluster 1: Restaurant attributes to customer experiences in Thai restaurants
…………………………………………………………………………………………..………..71

5.3. Cluster 2: The role of staff interaction in customer experience …………….….74
5.4. Cluster 3: Practice of training and development ……………………………….…77
5.5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………. 79
Chapter 6: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
6.1 Introduction……………………………………………….……………………………… 81

6.2 Accomplishing the aim of the thesis……………………………….………..………. 81
6.3. The unique of the study ……………………………………………………..…………82
6.4 Recommendations for further research …………………….……………………….83
6.5 Limitation …………………………………….……………………………..……………..83
6.6. Conclusion ………………………………….……………….……………..…………….84
REFERENCES
APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Observation guide
Appendix 2: Observation note
Appendix 3: invitation to join the interview
Appendix 4: Interviewee Engagement Participant Information Sheet
Appendix 5: A consent form
Appendix 6: Interview guide
Appendix 7: Interview transcript
Appendix 8: Example of data coding
Appendix 9: Basic design of case studies undertaken in the research
Appendix 10: Demographic data about Interviewees
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.

Rationale

Every success of an individual organization depends on its human resource. It is
absolutely appropriate in the restaurant sector (Tepeci, 2001) where there is a high level

of customer-staff contact (Kotler et al., 1998). Many researchers (Hartline and Ferrell,
1996; Kelley and Hoffman, 1997; Parasuraman et al., 1985) have emphasized the
importance of service employees in creating and providing good service quality. As such,
positively perceived service quality is a reflection of how effectively service employees
perform and communicate with customers to meet their expectations (Hays and Hill,
2000; Sheng and Lin, 2004). Staff interactions with customers could be seen from
concern and civility (Windsted, 2000) or demonstration of listening and understanding by
employees (Chandon, Leo and Philippe, 1997). As a result, employee skills play a key
role in ensuring service quality (Farrel et al., 2001; Nick et al., 2005). In a sense, welltrained staffs with certain knowledge can help to offer good service quality ( R e e s ,
1995).
In the hospitality industry, service skills have been of great interest (Chand, 2010). This
industry has become one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK, nevertheless, there
are certain challenges in matching employee skills with the industry requirements
(Baum, 2006; Thomas et al., 2000). Seen from a report of The Hospitality Training
Foundation (2000), the hospitality all over Great Britain is in need of 7,736 vacancies in
July, 1999 which accounts for nearly 5 per cent of the industry demand (Prattten, 2003).
Staffs in hotels and restaurants, for instance, are short of knowledge and experiences in
certain operative level occupations, especially relating to customer service (Dewhurst et
al., 2007). One main reason for that shortage is due to a quality of human resource
(Pratten, 2003). Particularly in restaurants, most of full-time and part-time staffs are
students or young people. Reasons for their choice of joining hospitality job are in need
of money for tuition fee or looking a temporary job while studying or travelling (Lucas,
1995). They are seen an only available labour source that restauranteurs can easily
approach (Lucas and Ralson, 1997). Most of them do have experience in restaurants
and consider working in restaurants as a “transient” job in their career path (Kelliher and
Perrett, 2000).
Yet, nowadays, waiters and waitresses are requested to deliver a high level of skill and
knowledge in serving customers (Pratten, 2003). In such a competitive hospitality
industry, every service organization needs to focus on service quality for its competitive
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advantage over their competitors (Bhat, 2010). Service quality is essentially deciding an
ability of service providers to attract more customers (Backman and Veldkamp, 1995) as
it impacts greatly customer satisfaction and positive post-consumption behaviours such
(Olsen, 2002). On the other hand, delivering consistent and superior service is believed
to lead service business to success in terms of productivity enhancement, cost
reduction, increased customer loyalty and market share improvement (Albrecht and
Zemke, 1985; Berry et al., 1989; Leonard and Sasser, 1982; Parasuraman et al., 1988;
Ross and Shetty, 1985). Gaining and maintaining service quality, hence, is a strategic
target for all service firms (Behesti and Lollar, 2003) and so do restaurants, especially, in
the highly competitive restaurant industry (Ryu et al., 2012).
As a main remedy to deal with skill shortage, training is widely considered to be
beneficial to improve employee competencies (e.g. skills, attitudes and knowledge),
which enables them to provide higher service quality (Dewhurst et al., 2007). Training,
however, is not what most managers prioritise (Wilson et al., 1998). In fact, there is a
culture of training avoidance in many UK hospitality firms (Dewhurst et al., 2007).
Practically, restaurants and hotels provided lower levels of post-induction training than
other sectors. In particular, employers in small and medium size firms (SMEs) have less
training than large firms (Frazisetal., 2000; Hoque and Bacon, 2006; Kitching and
Blackburn, 2002; Small Business Service 2001; Storey, 1997). The tourism industry as
an example, has a reputation as being a poor trainer (Jameson, 2000) and much of the
training happens mainly due to legislative requirements (Keep and Mayhew, 1999).
Below 50 % of small hospitality firms are engaged in training (Thomas et al., 2000) and
85% of hospitality employers provide some training for some employees (Hospitality
Training Foundation, 1999).
Bearing in mind the importance skill staffs in providing service quality in the hospitality
sector, impacts of training in development human resource capability, the researcher, set
a clear aim for this study. It is to fill the existing research void by exploring the role of
people training and development in the delivery of service quality n UK ethnic restaurant

sector from owners’ and managers’ views. The study focuses on UK based Thai
restaurants.
2.

The context of the study

Nowadays, the widespread impact of globalization can be seen clearly from the global
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economy, society to culture aspects, consequently, the UK itself has turned into“a
gastronomic hub with a reputation rivaling those of its continental counterparts” (Wong
and Chung, 2003). Instead of cooking at home, more people demand for dining out
(Chang, 2013), which support hospitality to become the fourth largest industry in the UK
and an intensive competition in the restaurant industry particularly (Symons, 2013).
In UK food service industry, particularly, restaurants are a key driver for business growth
(Euromonitor, 2013) with £5.9 billion spent by foreign companies and people on dining
out services. 83% of this expenditure is spent in restaurants (Silva et al., 2013).
Alongside with UK restaurant industry development, ethnic restaurants increase rapidly
(Symons, 2013). This fast growth is driven mainly by an increase in UK immigrant and
“expatriate populations”, more exotic foods adopted by British people after their long
distance outbound travel to different parts of the world (Mintel, 2008). Besides, a
globalisation of the food market makes consumers’ tastes more and more cosmopolitan
(Leung, 2010). All these changes create a great demand of ethnic foods among UK
consumers (Edwards, 2013), which triggers for an increase in outlet number of ethnic
restaurants (Ebster and Guist, 2005).
An ethnic restaurant is defined as "a restaurant whose signboard or publicity clearly
promises the national or regional cuisine of another land" (Turgeon and Pastinelli, 2002:
252). This type of restaurants introduces exotic cuisines which are not familiar with local
customers (Ebster and Guist, 2004). Ethic food is cooked and served in a different way

with the locality (Lego et al., 2002), which is seen a powerful appeal to local customers
who look for an "out-of-the-ordinary dining experience" (Boyce, 2007). Also, they play as
“cultural ambassadors” advertising not only ethnic food but culture to local customers
(Cobe, 2004; Wood and Munoz, 2007).
Regarding to ethnic food history in the UK, Chinese and Indian cuisines have become
dominant since the end of the 19th century with the first arrival of Chinese and Indian
immigrants (Mintel, 2008; Leung, 2010). Since the end of 1960’s, along with an
increasingly popularity of ethnic cuisines, recently, emerging cuisines such as Thai have
been introduced (Leung, 2010). An emergence of Thai foods has been positively
supported by a trend of eating healthier foods with less oil and more vegetables in the
UK (Eurmonitor, 2008). Further, despite being similar to Chinese and Indian cooking
style, Thai cuisines provide lighter and fresher alternatives (Mintel, 2007). Therefore, an
increasing demand for healthier foods in the UK has brought in a potential prospect for

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Thai food development in a market of differently healthier choices even though Chinese
and Indian cuisine has had longer establishment and greater market (Mintel, 2007).
Yet, Sriwongrat (2008) argues that, for a success, ethnic restaurants cannot only
complete on their authenticity of cuisine and ethnic atmosphere, especially when ethnic
food is getting increasingly popular. Indeed, although the main reasons why consumers
dine in ethnic foods are food different (Roseman, 2006), ethnic restaurants should also
focus on offering customers unforgettable and satisfied experience (Su, 2010). Adding to
this idea, Ryu et al., (2012) propose, no customers are willing to experience poor service
or dining environment just for high quality exotic food in ethnic restaurants. Today, they
are demanding for an excellent overall dining experience.

3.

Research aims, questions and objectives

To reach the aim of the study (exploring influence of people training and development in
the delivery of service quality in a selection of Thai restaurants in the UK), three
research questions underpinning the study are:
•

What are the factors that influence customer dining experience in Thai
restaurants?

•

How do restaurant owners and management team view the role of staff
interaction in providing service quality in Thai restaurants?

•

What is the impact of people training and development on the delivery of service
quality?

To find answers for these questions, the researchers set up six objectives within the
study. These are
1) To review the existing literature on definition of service, service quality,
restaurant attributes to customer experiences, customer satisfaction, factors
affecting the delivery of service quality
2) To examine the relationship between service quality management and human
resource management, specifically the impact of people training and
development on the delivery of service quality with particular reference to the
ethnic restaurant sector
3) To conduct primary data collection to explore owners and managers attitudes

towards factors influencing a provision of good service quality to customer

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4) To explore how restaurant owners and management team view the role of
people training and development in improving service quality delivered in
Thai restaurants
5) To analyse and discuss restaurant owners’ and management team’
perspectives on the impact of people and training practice in the delivery of
service quality in Thai restaurants against the established literature
6) To provide conclusions and formulate justified recommendations for owners
and managers of Thai ethnic restaurants on people training and development
to improve service quality in Thai restaurants, followed by a reflection of
limitations of the study
4.

The significance of the study

The study is significant and important for at least forth reasons. First, it helps fill the gap
in managers’ and owners’ awareness of training benefits, particularly in the delivery of
service quality. Second, it contributes to understanding of training practices in restaurant
organizations, ethic restaurants as an example. Third, as exploring perspective of
different owners and managers, a comparison can be made among these perspectives
and find out the common viewpoints toward the impact of people training and
development on service quality provision. The last but not least, the author expects to
recommend Thai restaurateurs in a way to improve service quality via human resource
practices in order to meet their customer's satisfaction in the area of the UK.
5.

Scope

The scope of the study focuses on Thai restaurants in London, Oxford and Bath in the
UK. Compared with other cities, these three cities are located in London/South East area
which covers a largest number of restaurants in the UK (45.9 % in 2002) as well as 30 %
of UK population (British Hospitality Association, 2002).According to Pia et al., (2010),
such urban big cities (i.e. London, Bath, Oxford) are where most ethnic minority groups
choose to live in. Further, these locations are land for inbound tourism and foreign
visitors who probably have great demand for ethnic cuisines.
6.

The overall structure of the thesis

In order to achieve the aim of the research, this dissertation will consist six chapters
based on the objectives listed below:
Chapter 1: Introduction
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Starting with a background of UK hospitality, restaurant industry and a growth of ethnic
restaurants including Thai, the first chapter introduces the importance of service quality,
the role of skilled employee on customer perception of service quality. The following part
declares the necessity of people training and development to improve staff skill in a
context of less training practise in the hospitality due to unawareness of training benefits
among management team. From that, the research aim and objectives are established
together with mentioning a study scope focusing on UK based Thai restaurants. Last
parts of this chapter explain the format of the thesis and definitions of key terms used
within the study.
Chapter 2: Literature review
This chapter reviews literature on definitions of service, characteristic of service,

customer satisfaction, restaurant attributes to customer experiences, which leads to the
importance of service quality and the role of staff interaction in customer perception of
high quality service. The following part provides definition of HRM, SHRM, PM, training
and development. It addresses the important of HRM practices in the service industry,
training practices and available training approach to improve service quality
Chapter 4: Research methodology
Chapter 4 begins with a choice of phenomenology philosophy, qualitative research,
multi-case study, the research design with non-probability sample, observation and
interview technique is explained by discussing both advantages and disadvantages of
each deployed method. The section then observations and semi- structured interviews
are chosen to gain rich primary data. The latter is followed by the analysis of the sample
selection and process of the data collection and analysis. The last part of this chapter
includes discussion of methodology limitations that might have had effect on this
research.
Chapter 5: Research Findings and Discussion
This chapter provide the readers with key insights from interviews and observation about
how Thai restaurant owners and managers rank the importance of service quality and
the current practices of adopting people training and development in improving service
quality in Thai restaurants.
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Recommendation
The final part of this thesis, chapter 6 draws conclusions from the gathered primary data
analysis. This will add value to the industry in making the topic more transparent and
give best practices advice for restaurants owners and managers who are planning to
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implement people training and development in improving service quality. The latter is
followed by the discussion of this research's uniqueness and implications of findings for
academic audiences and practitioners in hospitality industry. Finally, this chapter
concludes with the discussion of the research limitation, followed by the identification of

the areas that need further research and development.
2. Main definitions
This part is to define ethnic Thai restaurants mentioned as the population in this thesis.
Based on the definition of ethnic restaurants by Easter and Guist (2004) and Turgeon
and Pastinelli (2002; 252), in this study, ethic Thai restaurants (or ethnically- themedThai
restaurants) are full-service restaurants serving Thai cuisines.
Goldman (1993) claims that the upscale restaurant segment provides different
restaurant concepts, of which an ethnic concept is one example. Features of an upscale
restaurant are introducing a full menu, full table service, high-quality food produced with
fresh ingredients, personalised service and décor. Common types of upscale restaurant
segment range from high-check, casual-dining and fine-dining restaurants (Goldman,
1993). For the purpose of this thesis, upscale ethnic restaurant population consists of
casual and fine dining units offering full service, a table service provided regarding Thai
themed restaurants.
For the size of restaurants, small and medium size restaurants are the focus of the
research. An identification of the restaurant size depends on the number of employees
each unit hires (Barrett and Buttigieg, 1999). According to The European Commission
(DTI, 2001) small businesses have 10–49 employees and medium-sized enterprises
employ 50–249 employees.
3. Conclusion
This chapter has presented the background of this study and outlines the research aim
and objectives. From this chapter, the readers should obtain the overall themes of the
study which will be taken into consideration in more details in the following chapters. The
next chapter, literature review, will provide more in- depth insights in terms of theories
related to ethic restaurant development, customer selection criteria of restaurants and
the importance of service quality. These literatures are to develop the foundation for the
primary data collection.

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Chapter 2: Literature review
1.

Introduction

The chapter reviews literature on service definition, characteristic of service, service
quality, customer satisfaction, restaurants attributes to customer experiences, a
provision of service quality through people. As coping with increasing customer
sophisticated demand and high competitive hospitality industry, every service company
should focus on improve their service quality delivered to customer. One of the main
factors affecting the delivery of service quality is skills, knowledge and attitude of service
employees. As a result, people training and development plays an important role in
creating learning experiences to improve employees' performance, in turn, helps
organization to gain business success. However, seen from literature review, there is a
lack of training practices among SMEs, specifically on restaurants industry. One of the
main reasons for that shortage is, high training cost and SMEs owners are not aware of
training value such as business improvement, human resource development. Even there
are some academic sources showing evidences of informal training conducted in small
business. However, it is necessary to have an academic framework of training practices
for small business where organizations are intensive-labour. Based on these arguments,
it is necessary to carry out more research to fill in the gap in terms of academic study as
well as practices aspects. By doing that, owners or managers should find the important
role of people training and development in delivering service quality in Thai restaurants.
2.

Service

Definition
Defined by Looy et al. (2003:11), service is “any activity that one party can offer to

another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything”.
Another author defines services to be “deeds, processes and performances” (Zeithaml et
al., 2006: 4). Hints from these definitions indicate that services have a nature of more
processes than products.
Nature of Services
Widely accepted in marketing literature, major features of services are intangibility,
heterogeneity, perishability and inseparability of production and consumption (Shostack,
1977, 1982).

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Intangibility: Not like tangible products, services cannot be sensed in a way of being felt,
tasted or touched (Zeithaml et al., 2006:22). This core characteristic of services leads to
the fact that the evaluation of servicesh as to be done during or after a service being
purchased (Looy et al., 2003:12; Parasuramanet al., 1985).
Heterogeneity: Services are treated as performances that humans provide to customers,
thus there exists differences in services produced. It means, different employees can
offer varied services, therefore, ensuring a consistent level of service quality is not that
easy (Zeithaml et al., 2006).
Perishability: Not like physical product, services cannot be stored, inventoried. It means,
when services are produces, they need being consumed (Zeithaml et al., 2006).
Following to Looy et al. (2003), as services have to be consumed once they are made,
service providers should predict how much demand for services, which is normally
unpredictable.
Inseparability: According to Rathmell (1974), service providers and consumers cannot
be separated during a process services are being provided. It means, customers and
service employees interact with each other (Zeithaml, 1981).
Due to these main features, the evaluation of service quality is more challenging than
that of physical products (Shostack, 1982).

3.

Service quality

Service quality is an attitude of evaluating a provision of service in a long term (Looy et
al., 2003). In 1994, Rust and Oliver established a model to conceptualize service quality
with three indicators such as service environment, service outcome and customer–
employee interaction. Based on the work of Rust and Oliver (1994), Brady and Cronin
(2001) introduce another conceptualization of service quality including three factors (i.e.
physical environment quality, output quality and interaction quality). As such, quality of
physical environment is decided by atmosphere characteristics, decoration and design.
Output quality is tested by food quality, time for waiting. Interaction quality is evaluated
by attitude, behaviour and skill. According to Brady and Cronin (2001), these all factors
are main contributors to measure service quality.

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In hospitality industry, especially catering sector, nature of service quality is deemed to
be “individualized, intangible and subjective” (Johns and Howard, 1998).

Lots of

hospitality scholars have shown interests in how conceptualizing and measuring service
quality during the last decade (Nelson and Raymond, 2011).For example, argued by
Grönroos (1984), service quality can be classified into technical and functional quality.
Technical quality means what the customer is received such as food quality they are
provided in restaurants. Meanwhile, functional characteristic refers to psychological and
behavioural features which can be seen through interaction and atmosphere influencing
the delivery of service quality. Hospitality literature seems to care more about the

functional quality than the technical side of quality (Nelson and Raymond, 2011).
According to Grönroos (2001), service quality is not as easy to be evaluated as physical
products because the production and consumption of a service experience can be not
separated (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2003) and service evaluation is linked closely with
quality perception of service quality. Stated by Grönroos (2001), one way to evaluate
service quality is from customer perception. As followed, service quality is defined as the
degree of matching between customer before-purchasing expectations and their
perceptions of the service performance (Sureshchander et al., 2002). According to Ha
and Jang (2010), the degree of matching customer expectations and their actual
restaurant experiences leads to a status of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, which is
discussed in the next part of the chapter.
4.

Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is defined as an evaluative decision after purchase (Day, 1984).
This decision of evaluation is done when customers compare their actual experiences of
product/service consumption with their before-purchasing expectations (Oliver, 1980,
1989). If the actual performance exceeds expectations, customers will be satisfied; and if
the actual performance is worse than expected, customers will be dissatisfied (Ha and
Jang, 2010). Argued by Tse and Peter (1988), a level of dissatisfaction or satisfaction
influences an attitude toward the product or service and future behavioural intentions.It
means, if customers are happy with their consumption of certain products/services, they
could repeat their buying in the future (Carpenter, 2007). Seen in this perspective,
meeting customer satisfaction is very important for every hospitality organization if they
would like to have more returning customers. To make customer satisfied, according to
Grönroos (2001), service organizations need to understand what kind of service

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customers are in demand at which level of quality. Thanks to knowing what consumers
need, they could find a way to meet their expectation (Sureshchander et al., 2002).
Viewed from a performance-based approach, many previous studies (Lin, 2004; Mano
and Oliver, 1993; Westbrook and Oliver, 1991) have insisted that customer satisfaction
goes hand in hand with cognitive judgments and affective reactions. It means, customer
satisfaction is decided when customers consume products or experience performance of
service providers (Westbrook, 1987; Yi, 1990). In the restaurant sector, customers
evaluate their satisfaction by assessing their dining experiences based on how their
motivations or goals are fulfilled (Roseman, 1996).Supporting this idea, Oliver (1997)
claims that, the level of how dining experiences reach customers goals likely leads to
emotional states of being pleasure or unpleasant. In a field of psychology research,
customer emotional states depriving from consumption experience have a great effect
on customers’ satisfaction (Mano and Oliver, 1993; Oliver, 1993). It means, a customer’s
feeling status is impacted by the performance of service providers (Han and Jeong,
2013). Specifically in the restaurant context, interaction between customers and service
providers is considered as a factor influencing customers’ reaction (Namasivayam and
Mattila, 2007). Adding to this argument, Ha and Jang (2010) clarify customer reactions
could be reflected by their behavioural intentions in the future such as repurchase
intention, positive word-of-mouth intention and willingness to recommend. All these
reactions are a reflection of customer satisfaction (Ha and Jang, 2010). From this
perspective, it can be concluded that restaurants should pay attention to staff
performance and communication when they provide services (Zeithaml et al., 2006;
Solomon et al., 1985). By managing staff interaction in delivering service, they can
satisfy their customers and influence their post dinning behaviours such as
recommendation or willingness to pay more (Ladhari et al., 2008).
5.

Customer experiences in full- service restaurants

According to Carlback (2011), the food-service industry belongs to the economy of
experience. For success, every restaurant are interested in clarifying what factors
influence customer dining experiences and then establish business strategy to develop
these determined factors for further improvement of customer satisfaction and loyalty
(Monteiro, 2000). Indeed, customer experience is the crucial antecedent factor
influencing customer satisfaction then post-purchasing intention such as, word-of-mouth,
loyalty, complaining behaviour and price susceptibility (Sajeev and Mark, 2001; Su,
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2011). For example, in a study of word-of-mouth advertising influence, Plymire (1991)
indicates, most of customers (about 91 percent) who are not satisfied with restaurants
service will not come back and tell eight to ten others about their experiences. In ethnic
restaurants, Raymond and Tian (2002) believe that, customers tend to feel comfortable
when dinning at a new restaurant if they know their friends used to have a good time
there.
Restaurant experience goes hand in hand with the evaluation of restaurant
characteristics (Johns and Pine, 2002 and Park, 2004). Many scholars have studied
which attributes impact customer evaluation of restaurants. Table 1 represents
a summary of various factors affecting a restaurant experience identified in previous
studies.
Table 1: A summary of restaurants attributes to customer dining experience in fullservice restaurants
Authors

Empirical setting

Sample

Methodology

Main findings

Andaleeb and
C o n w a y

United States

Fine dining restaurants

119 Random and

Q u a l i t a t i v e
interviews and

Responsiveness, food quality, and
price were identified as the key

j u d g m e n t a l
sampling

regression analysis

restaurant attributes driving

226 Judgmental
sampling

R e g r e s s i o n
analysis

(2006)

Arora and
Singer (2006)

United States

Fine dining restaurants

customer satisfaction
Food quality and service impact
customersatisfaction, while food
quality, service and ambience and
menu price affect customer
perceptions of value

Clark and
Wood (1998)

UK

Unavailable

63 Convenience
sampling

Descriptive
statistics

Food list, food quality, food price,
atmosphere and speed of service
are the key factors deciding
customer selection of restaurants

Hyun (2009)

United States

Chain restaurants

208 Convenience
sampling

Structural equation
modelling

Value equity comprised of food
quality, service quality, price,
location and environment
significantly affected customer
equity

Jang et al.

United States


517 Panel-survey

Factor analysis and

Food quality, authentic food,

(2012)

U p- s ca l e an d cas u al

sampling

Structural equation

restaurant environment are the

modelling

most important factors influencing
customer perception of value,

Korean restaurants

emotions and behavioural
intentions

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Authors

Empirical setting

Sample

Methodology

Main findings

Jang et al.

United States


424 Panel-survey

A N O VA

and

Identified common and unique

(2009)

Ethnic restaurants

sampling

i m p o r t a n t performance

attributes of six types of Asian
food. Importance of appearance,

analysis

health-related, uniqueness and
others differed across six Asian
restaurants

Kivela et al.
(2000)

Hong Kong

Theme/Ambience

861 Random
sampling

Factor analysis and
logistic regression

Restaurants

F o o d q u a l i t y, s e r v i c e a n d
uniqueness of the restaurant are
assigned more importance among
the nine attributes determining the
preference toward choosing a
restaurant

Qu (1997)

United States

Chinese restaurants

124 Systematic
sampling

Factor

and
regression analysis

Food and environment, service
and courtesy, price and value,
and location were related to
choice intention attributes. Food
and environment had the largest
impact on intentions to coming
back again

Shown in Table 1, what attributes to customer experience can be tangible things such as
food and layout (e.g. Clark and Wood, 1998) or intangible elements such as atmosphere
and staff friendliness (Jang et al., 2012). Differences among the attributes type is due to
various type of restaurant services (fine dining, fast food, or ethnic restaurants). In
hospitality industry, Reuland et al. (1985) claim, what contributes to a service experience
comes from a harmonious collection of the material product, the behaviour and attitude
of the employees and the environment. As argued by Clark and Wood (1999), food
quality, restaurant ambience and service are crucial variables affecting customer choice
of restaurants.
Food quality
The quality of certain food is reflected by tastes, cooking ingredients (Su, 2008); menu
variety (Wansink et al., 2005); good presentation (Rozin and Tuorila, 1993);

healthy

food options (Namkung and Jang, 2007), nutritional value (Howlett et al., 2009). Food
quality is considered to affect customer satisfaction and post-dinning behavioural
intention (Liu and Jang, 2009) in full- service segment (Sulek and Hensley, 2004) or in
authentic segment (George, 2001; Namkung and Jang, 2007). For example, authentic

food is favoured more than the decoration, music and uniforms in an authentic
restaurant setting (George, 2001). That is why food quality is seen as the main factor
driving customers to visit ethnic restaurants (Su, 2008). In addition, Jeong and Jang

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(2011) believe high-tasting food encourages customers to recommend in terms of wordof-mouth.
Restaurant atmosphere
Restaurant atmosphere refers to the surrounding quality made from music, lighting, color
and scent (Liu and Jang, 2009). In ethnic restaurant setting, physical environment is
considered as a key factor affecting customers’ positive evaluations of restaurant (Dube
and Renaghan, 2000, Lin and Mattila, 2010), their emotional responses (Ryu and Jang,
2007), which in turn affects customers’ post-dining behavioral intentions. Accordingly,
customers can decide to approach or avoid a particular environment due to their
evaluation of a restaurant experiences based on restaurant environment (Wall and Berry,
2007). Indeed, ethnic music and decoration can impact customers 'menu selection in
authentic Chinese restaurants (Ryu and Zhong, 2012). These authors suggest that when
a positive feel of physical environment likely make customers trust the restaurant service
and less suspect food quality.
Service

Regarding to the restaurant industry, Kotler et al. (1998) argues, customers have a high
level of contact with service employees while enjoying services, therefore, they assess
the service experiences based on the skills and performance of service providers. When
customers have a positive evaluation of employee interactions, they will have a long-run
perception of entire service quality (Czepiel, 1990). In another case, when customers
have a negative perception of restaurant atmosphere, impressive employee behaviour
could help improve consumers’ perception of dining experience (Wall and Berry, 2007).
Adding to this idea, Brooks (2000) believes how employees interact with customers

affects 40–80% of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Indeed, Nick (1998)
claims that, when customers see enthusiasm and capability to provide products/services
among employees, they will have a good perception of the service quality. From these
arguments, no doubt, employee interactions play a vital role in customer experiences in
terms of influencing customers’ perception of service quality (Cowell, 1989). Therefore,
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