Understanding consumer returning decision with the mediation of willingness to pay a case study of craft beer restaurants in vietnam

Understanding Consumer Returning Decision with the
Mediation of Willingness to Pay: A case study of Craftbeer Restaurants in Vietnam
Huyen Pham
Tien Nguyen
International University, Vietnam National University HCMC, Vietnam
Abstract
This research is aimed to explore and investigate the point of view of Vietnamese craft beer
consumers about what would make them willing to pay and return to a craft beer outlet. In a
growing consumer market with high demand, there are also a lot of competition. In such harsh
condition, retaining already existed customer relationship becomes crucial for businesses. The
findings showed that Access, Unique seeking, Hedonic, Social influence, and Willingness to pay
have positive and direct effect on Returning decision. Moreover, Access, Local connection,
Unique seeking, Hedonic, and Social influence have indirect effect on Returning decision
through the mediation of Willingness to pay. The relationship between these factors with
consumer intention to return was examined by partial least squares technique. Within the
context of Vietnamese craft beer restaurants, this research’s findings hopefully could provide
customer insight for the Food and Beverage sectors as well as provide recommendations for
craft beer restaurants to attract more customer as well as keep them repeatedly coming.
Keyword: Craft beer restaurant; willingness to pay; return intention.
JEL Code: L83

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1. Introduction
Vietnamese hospitality and tourism industry has developed rapidly in term of both size and
reputation in the region as well as the global market. Based on the statistics from the Ministry
of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in 2017, Vietnam welcomed 12 million outbound tourists and 62
million inbound tourists. This is a big year for our country tourism because the revenue from
this industry was 500,000 billion VND with the growth rate at an astonishing 27.5 percent
(General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2018).

Food and beverage (F&B) is a major field of Hospitality and Tourism industry and contribute up to
70 percent of the sector’s revenue, made up by restaurant and F&B related services. On October
11th, 2017 Vietnam Cuisine Culture Association (VCCA) (Pham Nguyen, 2017). VCCA currently has
over 300 members, including researchers, artisans, businessmen and business organizations
operating in the cuisine and tourism sector. In which 33 has been selected as executive board
members with Mr. Ky Nguyen Quoc – General manager of Viettravel as the chairman of the 20172022 tenure (An Nhien, 2017). The association’s mission is expected to contribute greatly to the
tourism industry due to the fact that 70 percent of the sector’s revenue is made up by restaurant
and F&B related services. When asked about the target of VCCA, Mr. Tuan Nguyen Van, Director
General of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, answered that developing cuisine culture
into an outstanding tourism product of Vietnam is really important, introducing Vietnamese food and
drink to international visitors is one of the main responsibility of the associations (Le, 2017). The
establishment of VCCA show the governmental strategy that focus on the development of F&B
services as the core for the tourism and hospitality industry in Vietnam, building the national brand
of Vietnam as a destination with the special food culture alongside with the nature beauty. This
strategy was also suggested by the father of modern marketing Phillip Kottler when he visited
Vietnam in 2007, which he stated that Vietnam should find a national brand and ‘kitchen of the
world’ could be suitable (Tuong Vi, 2011).

More and more Food and Beverage business has been opened and developed rapidly taking
up many different segments of the market from the street food to high standard fine-dining
restaurants, bars and wineries… With the great growing pace of the service industry as well as
the growing in the demand of customer, Vietnamese Food and Beverage market is booming.
Hence there are many potential opportunities for service operators to take.
Vietnamese nowadays spend more time to consume out of their home than before, there an
increasing trend in eating out. Compare to the quarter 3 of 2016, 2017 has witnessed the raise
of 9% in term of turn of visitors and an annually visit per capita raised from 144 to 147 turns
(Decision lab, 2017), the data was collected through the main seven channel of the F&B
services market such as fine dining, fast casual, canteen, street food, hotel, alcoholic places
and convenience stores.
Craft beer in Vietnam has been trending in recent years, even caught headwind on

international media such as Wall Street Journal. Hence attracting investors to pour their capital
in to the new potential market (Tran, 2016). This could be witnessed by naked eyes as there are
many craft beer outlets and brewers could be found in urban areas, in Ho Chi Minh city (Bia
Craft Artisan ales, Pasture Street brewing co, Tê Tê brewing co, Heart of Darkness, Platinum
Premium beverages, etc), Nha Trang (26 beer food fun, Lousiane brewhouse, etc), Ha Noi
(iBerio Craft Beer Station, Peachy Craft Beer Pub, Craft Beer Pub, etc) and Da Nang (7 Bridges
Brewing tap room, Fatfish restaurant and bar lounge, etc).
All the dynamic movements in the Craft Beer sectors are due to the facts that consumer demand
is increasing rapidly in the past decade. In 2008, Vietnam ranked 8 th in term of beer consumption in
Asia, and in 2016, shockingly ranked 3 rd only behind the rich Japan and China with over 1 billion
population (Tran, 2017). In 2017 alone, Vietnamese beer drinker consumed 4 billion liters of beer
and per capita that is 43 liters and these number is not going to stop there. According to forecast of
Vietnam alcoholic beverage association, in


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2035 the total consumption shall exceed 5.5 billion liters and 52 liters per capita. There is great
potential for any business to develop and catch the chance from this opportunity in Vietnam
beer market (Nguyen, 2018).
According to an article published by Bloomberg in 2017, Vietnamese beer market expected
a huge rising in consumption in the 5 years period from 2016 to 2021. And in the mentioned
period, the market would see the competition between domestic and international suppliers
(Luu, Boudreau and Mai, 2017).
The Vietnamese beer consumer market growing at astonishing rate following by great
potential opportunities for investors and service providers to take. Many opportunities also
mean that there would be also challenges for the businesses as competition also increase. In a
market with so many competitor, retaining customer is vital for all business (Haywood, 1998).
In this research, the target is to investigate and understand the consumer point of view about

the craft beer services in Vietnam. What factors and how they affect consumer choice of craft
beer outlets.
The result of this research is expected to provide guideline and recommendation for the Craft
Beer restaurants, bar and pub operators to improve their services to attract new customer as well
retain the old one.

In this research, the aim is to identify the factors that influence craft beer consumer decision
to return to an outlet. Hence the research is designed to fulfil the following objectives:
To identify the factors that influence craft beer drinker willingness
to pay To identify the factors that influence craft beer drinker
returning decision

To give recommendation to already existed craft beer outlets as well as for investors who
wish to enter the market

2. Literature review
Craft-beer restaurant
There are many definitions about craft beer outlet, one definition claimed by Acitelli, T. and
Magee, T. (2017) that explain briefly about craft beer producers: Craft beer outlets include smalls,
independent owned businesses that stick to the traditional beer brewing techniques and recipes,
ingredients. And those are distanced from the larger regional and national producers as they often
used nontraditional or industrial techniques and recipes, produce and distribute their product on a
much vaster scale in term of quantity. Craft beer services providers were proven to have some
competitive advantages in attracting and retaining customer loyalty in comparison with the
industrial and commercial producers in the sector food and beverage (Murray and O’ Neill, 2012).
Craft beer businesses are able to contribute to their local region through many ways such as
promoting agriculture development, entrepreneurship, etc. (Kline and Murray, 2015).

Consumer Returning Decision
For many years, researchers have made attempt to understanding customer loyalty which

plays a vital role in business. One of the most obvious consequence of consumer loyalty, which
this paper is focus on is the Returning Decision of consumer or in other word the repeat
patronage. Repeat patronage could be explained as ongoing exchange through multiple
economic transactions in e output (Christopher et al. 2004).
Except for high traffic areas where ‘one-time only’ visits are vital, repeat patronage is the back
bone of all business (Haywood, 1998). It is crucial for service providers to retain already existing
customers as serving customers that are familiar which the service is cheaper than attract new ones
(Reichheld and Sasser, 1990), also the existing customers usually visit frequently and broaden their
base of purchase over time. Alongside with the value that come from the repeat consumers, the
repeat patronage also leads to the favorable word of mouth from customers (Halstead and Page,
1992) and help to recruit new customers (Nelson et al, 2010). As


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mentioned above, in a market with lots of competitors, finding a new customer to attract is not
only difficult but also sometimes be really expensive.
Willingness to Pay
Consumer Willingness to Pay (WTP) also being studied for decades alongside with customer
loyalty. WTP could be defined as the maximum amount a customer would trade for a product or
services (Horowitz and McConnell, 2003). Studies often refer WTP as a self-motivated
willingness to purchase a specific product in with a given price (Taylor and DiPietro, 2017;
Foster et al., 1997). This factor measure of how much an individual would like to trade off in
term of currency to acquire a product or to use a service.
WTP also had been assessed base on the price interval assigned to a product or service in
term of percentage or the actual amount of dollar required (Remar et al, 2016). In the case of
Craft-beer, most of which are crafted locally and sell directly to the consumer, WTP tend to be
increase as the consumers are able to purchase directly from the producer (Adam and Salois,
2010; Thilmary et al., 2008).

WTP also allow the service provider to know whether they are meeting the consumer
expectation, hence predict the revenue they would get from selling to the customer in later
visits (Taylor and DiPietro, 2017).
Netemeyer et al (2004) claimed that consumer Willingness to Pay is one of the strongest
predictors of consumer loyalty toward a brand, hence predict repeat patronage as well.
Willingness to pay was previously identified as an important component of customer loyalty
(Zeithaml et al, 1996).
H2.6 Willingness to Pay directly affect Returning Decision
Factor affecting WTP and Returning Decision
Access
Access can be defined as a concept presenting the fitting degree between the client (customers)
and the system (service providers) (Pechansky & Thomas, 1981). Also according to the mentioned
research, access could be divided into smaller components such as: Availability (Presenting
relationship between the volume and type of service offered by the providers and the actual volume
and type of service needed by the customers), Accessibility (The location of the supply and the
location of the customers, including times, transportation resources of the clients), Accommodation
(Presenting the organizing of resources to accept the clients and in return the clients perception of
the appropriateness of the organizing of resources), Affordability ( The relationship between the cost
of service and the income of the client) and finally Acceptability (The clients’ attitude toward the
service providers). Access could also be determined by the physical location, operating hours,
reservation system via online, phone or in person (Meuter et al, 2000; Seider et al., 2000).

Brown (1989) describe access into five dimensions: time (is it convenient for the
consumers), place (location of the outlet), acquisition, use and execution.
Murray and Kline (2015) in their study about the brand loyalty of craft beer consumers in
North Carolina, USA stated that access refers to the accessibility to the product and the product
distributors by measuring consumers’ ability to visit and purchase craft beer. In the finding of
Murray and Kline (2015), access have also been found to be the second highest factor that
affect Murray and Kline (2015), consumers’ loyalty toward a brewery only after the customer
satisfaction. Another study in the field of shopping and purchase behaviors also revealed that

access play an important role in influencing consumers’ loyalty behaviors such as visit
frequency and the amount of money spent (Moeller et al, 2009).
Overall convenience of the service has been reported to influence customers satisfaction
and positively related to repeat visit and spending (Seiders et al, 2005).
This implies that access has significant impact on the customer decision to return to a place
for using services.


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In this paper, access is focus on how convenient consumers feel about going to the craft
beer restaurant to use product and service.
H1.1 Access directly affect Willingness to Pay
H2.1 Access directly affect Returning Decision
H3.1 Access indirectly affect Returning Decision via its effect on Willingness to Pay
Connection to local community
In 1996, Shortridge introduce the concept of Neolocalism which could be understood as
deliberate seeking out and attachment to the local community. A study carried out by Flack in
1997 found out that there was an increasing desire for local experience of beer consumers and
lead to the wave of creating a sense of place by beer producers in the USA.
This local identity seeking had been used in other food product since long ago, there are
many food products that could be identify simply by their place of production such as cheese,
fruit, spices, etc. In the case of alcoholic beverages, the origin of the product is one of the most
important factors that affect consumer choice, there are many examples could be listed: for
liquors we have London dry gin from England, Scotch whiskey from Scotland, Cognac brandy
from France, or for wines such as Sherry from Spain, Bordeaux or Champagne from France. For
beer as in this research, there are famous geographic location for brewing beer such as
Belgium, Bavaria of Germany, Bohemia from Czech Republic, etc.
In the U.S this factor drove consumer decision to visit craft beer outlet (Schnell and Resse, 2003).

Local connection also affects consumer WTP by making them feel they contribute to the society by
promoting local culture and tradition (Brehm et al, 2004) and bring social benefits (Perdue et al,
1996). Most of craft beer is locally crafted, this increase customer WTP as they are purchasing from
the direct producer and contribute to their local community (Adam and Salois, 2010). Flack (1997) in
his study, suggested that one reason why a drinker drink the local brewed beer is the sense of his
city’s pride. In the mentioned research of Flack, he also pointed out that some visitors to the region
also come seek for the local flavor at the brew pubs and restaurants.

It was proven that WTP tend to be as twice as much for locally produced when the shoppers
shopped with the producers instead of at a grocery store (Darby et al, 2008). Campbell and his
colleagues (2014) also found that WTP tends to be positively related with the origin of the food
when they are locally produced.
H1.2 Local connection directly affect Willingness to Pay
H2.2 Local connection directly affect Returning Decision
H3.2 Local connection affect Returning Decision via its effect on Willingness to Pay
Unique seeking
The consumer desire for unique consumer product or need for uniqueness for short is a
concept which state that consumers seek for products that are rare and also create a unique
self or social image (Ruvio et al, 2008). This concept has been studied in several fields such as
marketing, psychology and sociology (Oh et al,
2007). In the case of beer, craft beer outlet is one way for drinkers to break away from
common industrial beer and this have been used to see if unique beer is favored by consumer
(Murray and Kline, 2015).
Customer desire for unique consumer product or Unique seeking has been proven by
previous researchers as one of the most important affect brand loyalty, hence predict the
return of consumer to a service provider (Murray and Kline, 2015). Mitchell and Orwig (2002) in
their research found that the customer demand for unique product is one of the most
significant factor drove the consumer to craft beer restaurants, bars and pubs.
In another paper, the researchers proved that in an experience economy the high-quality
product and services are no longer be used to differentiate consumer choice, instead, the

uniqueness and variety are the main factors that attract customers and make them spend
money (Oh et al, 2007).


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The Unique aspect of the craft beer outlets also include that they offer a wide range of beer
choices to offer the consumers. In his research, Thompson (1996) claimed that consumers
would love to see a larger set of choices. Another research claimed that the uniqueness and
the variety of choices attract customers and encourage to pay in the business of wine, another
alcoholic drink (Olsen et al, 2015).People are often encouraged to try new things by their
motivation (Kraftchick et al, 2014) which lead to the increased in amount craft beer drinkers as
breweries offer unique and large variety of beers.
H1.3 Unique seeking directly affect Willingness to Pay
H2.3 Unique seeking directly affect Returning Decision
H3.3 Unique seeking affect Returning Decision via its effect on Willingness to Pay
Hedonic
Hedonic could be defined as the utility derived from feelings or affective states, such as
pleasure, fun and entertainment acquire through consumer experience (Wang and Fesenmaier,
2004). Another definition of hedonic stated that those facets of behavior that relate to
multisensory, fantasy and emotive from the consumption (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982).
These explanations are all leading to the conclusion that in the consumer view of a service
providers, there is a part that related to the consumer feeling of fun and entertainments.
Bruwer and Alant (2009) found that the main motivation for consumer to come to tasting
room were related to pleasure seeking, self-gratifying nature (hedonic) which could also be
found at craft beer outlet (Murray and Kline, 2015). This implied that the desire for
entertainment of the consumer could be an influencer that drive the consumer to return to an
outlet to seek again, for the entertainment that they have found the last time they visited.
Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) in their paper suggested that the consumption is mainly

driven by the fun, amusement the consumer may find when using a product or service. This
indicated that the fun and amusement of using a product would influence the consumer
decision to pay for the product or not.
H1.4 Unique seeking directly affect Willingness to Pay
H2.4 Unique seeking directly affect Returning Decision
H3.4 Unique seeking affect Returning Decision via its effect on Willingness to Pay
Social influence
Another motivation for consumer to visit craft beer outlets found in the U.S is the influence
of subjective norm which also known as social influence. This could be defined as individuals’
belief regarding what others think that one should or should not do (Ajzen, 1991). This related
to one’s feeling of belonging to their surrounding society, as people tends to be affected by
what the others do. Spark (2007), proved that between social influence is directly related to the
wine consumer decision to pay a visit to wine producing region.
Studies previously conducted in the field of another alcoholic beverage that is wine show the
direct relation between social influence and the consumer individual intention to purchase wine
(Sparks, 2007; Van zanten, 2005). Taylor and DiPietro (2017), claimed that Subjective Norm or
Social Influence is a significant predictor of customer repeat patronage to Craft beer breweries
in North Virginia, USA.
H1.5 Social Influence directly affect Willingness to Pay
H2.5 Social Influence directly affect Returning Decision
H3.5 Social Influence affect Returning Decision via its effect on Willingness to Pay

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Figure 7.Research conceptual model
3. Methodology
Research approaches
Quantitative method is used to quantify the problem by transforming data into numerical
and later could be used in statistic analyze. The method is used to quantify attitudes, opinions

and other defined variables and help to generalize results for a much larger population size. By
following this approach, researchers are able to formulate facts or discover research patterns
(R. Korrapatti, 2012). One of the most obvious advantages of quantitative method is the ability
to generalize a larger population from a much smaller sample size (Holton and Burnett,1997).
In this study, as the sample size was expected to be large to generalize craft beer drinker in
Vietnam, quantitative would be used as the main approach to design structure, collect and
analyze data. Structed questionnaires with close-ended question would be used to collect data
from the target respondents.
Research sampling, sample size and data collection
Research sampling
This research is aimed to gain understanding craft beer consumers in Vietnam. The target
respondents of this study are consumers who at least once visited and used the services at
craft beer restaurant in Vietnam. Due to the location of the craft beer outlet, most of the
respondents are currently living in big cities in Vietnam such as Ho Chi Minh city, Hanoi, Nha
Trang, etc. Since the data is only collected for research purpose, all of the respondent personal
information would be keep for internal use.
Due to the limited time and resource, the data of this research was gathered by using
convenience sampling techniques. This technique is defined as the researchers would approach
any already available individual as a source of data and is a non-probability method (Cooper
and Schindler, 2006). Respondents are choosen for the research purpose if they meet certain
practicaly categories and availabe at a certain time, easy to be accessed and the willingness to
participated (Dörnyei, 2007) .As using convienience sampling, the target population also was
approach regardless of their purpose, gender, age, occupation and income, this approach was
proposed by Carvalho (1984).

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Sample size
McDaniel and Gates (2005) stated in their paper that the ideal for most research shall be

between 30 and 500 respondents. Meanwhile, Comfrey and Lee (1992) evaluated sample size
through multiple level from very poor to good, in which 200 is fair and 300 is good, in other
word a sample size between 200-300 is appropriate for a good research. Based on the
suggested ideal sample sizes from previous research, in this study over 300 surveys were
distributed and resulted in 263 valid respondents as many of the survey are incomplete as the
targeted respondents were interrupt by other factors.
Data collection
The data of this research was collected through the form of questionnaire which was
carfefully constructed with many closed ended questions.The survey would be distributed to
craft beer customer as they visited the craftbeer outlets to have a drink and use the services
there.
The data was collected at the craft beer outlet in Ho Chi Minh (Biacraft Artisan Ale, Pasteur
Street, Heart of Darkness, etc.) and Nha Trang (26 Beer Food Fun, Lousiane brewhouse).
4. Results
Descriptive analysis
In this research, around 300 questionnaires were distributed and 263 were valid and keep
for analysis, since some of the questionnaires collected were incomplete. The table below
summarizes the demographic information of the sample pool, which includes five dimensions
Gender, Age, Occupation, Monthly income and Visit frequency. Those statistics show the
characteristic of the sample pool about who they are. The information is summed up in the
table below:

Table 1. Summary of demographic information

Age

Occupancy

Income

Frequency


Reliability test
Indicator Reliability Test
In this test, the square of each indicator’s outer loading number would be examined. Those
indicators that have the result equal or greater than 0.4 would be accepted and kept for further
analysis, those fail to this test would be eliminated (Hulland, 1999)
The result showed that in 3 of the 35 indicators was disqualified. And the analysis is started
again with the remaining 32 items. The three eliminated was from Access, Local Connection
and Hedonic.
Internal consistency test
Then the internal consistency reliability is tested using the composite reliability number to
evaluate.
Analyzing the data set of this research, the result is shown in Table 2.

Latent variables
Access
Local connection
Uniqueness seeking
Hedonic
Social influence
Willingness to Pay
Returning Decision
In the result, all of the Composite Reliability values are greater than 0.7, hence all the latent
variables’ internal consistency is qualified (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988).
Validity test
Convergent validity test
After the reliability of the measurement items are checked. The validity of the whole model
also needed to be tested as well. Bagozzi and Yi (1988) argue that if the Average Variance

Extracted (AVE) of each latent variable are equal or greater than 0.5 then the Convergent
validity is ensured. In this study, all the AVE as show in table 3 show that the Convergent
validity is good.

Access
Local connection
Uniqueness seeking
Hedonic
Social influence
Willingness to Pay
Returning Decision
Discrimination validity test
The discrimination validity is checked by using the square root of AVE of each latent variable
(Fornell and Larcker, 1981) and then compare with the latent variable correlations.


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In this test, all the squares root of AVEs are greater than the correlation among variables.
The result means that all of the latent variables are qualified and are suitable for further
analysis in the research. All of the results are shown in Table 3.
Table 4. Discrimination Validity
Access
Access
Hedonic
Local
Return
Social
Unique

WTP

0.799062
0.5672
0.3807
0.5747
0.4309
0.5976
0.4994

Hypothesis testing
Factors affect Willingness to Pay
In this section, the researcher examined the level of affect the independent variables have
on the mediating variable, Willingness to Pay.
In the analysis result, the R2 value or coefficient determination is 0.452 or 45.2 percent,
which indicate that the independent variables are able to describe 45.2 percent out of 100
percent the variance of Willingness to Pay. The remaining 54.8 percent require further research
with other factors to fully understand consumer Willingness to Pay.

Table 5. Direct effects on WTP

Hypothesis

Path

H1.1

Access -> Will

H1.2

Local Connecti

H1.3

Unique Seekin

H1.4

Hedonic -> Wi

H1.5

Social Influenc

* p < 0.1

After hypothesis testing for Willingness to Pay, the result draws out the conclusion about the
relationship of WTP with the independent variables that affect it. There are four factors that
significantly affect WTP which are Access, Local Connection, Unique Seeking and Hedonic. In
other word, changes of these factors would lead to parallel changes in WTP through their path
coefficient, hence Hedonic has the strongest influence with the path coefficient equals 0.276,
following by Unique seeking with β = 0.160, Local Connection (β = 0.155) and Access (β =
0.144). Social Influence was proved to have insignificant impact on WTP, hence hypothesis
H1.5 is rejected.

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Factors affect Returning Decision

Table 6. Direct effect on Returning Decision
Hypothesis

H2.1
H2.2
H2.3
H2.4
H2.5
H2.6
* p < 0.1

There were five factors directly and positively affect Returning Decision including
Willingness to Pay (β = 0.363), Hedonic (β = 0.201), Unique seeking (β = 0.146), Access (β =
0.109), and Social influence (β = 0.101).
Table 7. Indirect effects on Returning Decision
Hypothesis

H3.1

H3.2

H3.3

H3.4

H3.5
* p < 0.1

Using the significant level of 0.05 for the T-statistic test, the result in Table 7 above show
that there are four factors indirectly affect Returning Decision via the mediators WTP. Social

influence shows significant effect on Returning Decision through WTP with the significant level
of 0.1 as T value reached 1.711
The other four variables all have significant indirect effect on Returning Decision. The
strongest influencer is Hedonic with coefficient equals 0.1, follow up by Unique seeking with β
= 0.058, Local connection with β = 0.056 and finally Access with β = 0.052.
Table 8. Total effect on Returning Decision
Variable
Access
Local connection
Unique seeking


Hedonic
Social influence*
Willingness to Pay
* p < 0.1

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Table 8 above shows the significant effect of all the variables proposed in this research
model. Among the independent variables, Hedonic is the strongest predictor of Returning
Decision with the coefficient at 0.301 nearly reaching the coefficient of the mediator WTP. The
second strongest influencer is Unique Seeking, with the total coefficient reaching 0.204. The
third one is Access with 0.161 coefficient. The factor Local Connection has been proven to have
no significant direct effect on Returning Decision, which result in this variable only indirectly
affect through its effect on WTP with the coefficient at 0.056. The last independent variable,
Social Influence was proven to have significant effect on Returning Decision at the significant
level of 0.1, both direct and indirect with coefficient at 0.147.
As the mediator variable, Willingness to Pay has strong influence on Returning Decision. The

effect of WTP is contributed by the independent variables that influence WTP itself, hence
creating indirect impact on Returning Decision.

Figure 8. PLS results
5. Conclusion and Recommendations
According to the result of this study, Willingness to Pay could be predicted through five
factors which are Access, Local Connection, Unique Seeking, Hedonic and Social Influence. In
these factors, Social Influence and Access was found to be the two weakest predictors of them.
This could show that the craft beer consumer willingness to pay for a beer is mainly driven by
the internal desire of the consumer rather than the surrounding environment influence. As it
was proven that the entertainment, fun relax and uniqueness (Hedonic and Unique Seeking) of
the craft beer attract consumer most. In conclusion, craft beer customers tend to purchase
following their feeling when using the services.
In the context of consumer Returning Decision, there were both effects from independent
variables as well as indirect effects through the mediator WTP. As proposed, the mediator WTP
plays an important part in predicting Returning Decision. In other word, consumers who have
high willingness to pay for a beer at craft beer outlets are more likely to return to have another
one in the future. This was the result of the influence of the independent factors on the
mediating variable WTP, hence indirectly affect the dependent variable Returning Decision. As
mentioned above, the effects of variables related to internal motivation such as Hedonic and
Unique Seeking are strongest, hence the indirect effects of these two are also the highest. The
other direct influencer of Returning Decision could be listed out are Access, Unique Seeking,
Hedonic and


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Social Influence. Once again, the same thing was proven that consumers of craft beer are
mainly driven by their internal motivation as Unique Seeking and Hedonic still the strongest

predictors. Access and Social Influence possess weaker influence on the decision of craft beer
drinkers. There was only one factors that did not show any significant direct effect on Returning
Decision, which is Local Connection. This could be explained as beer in Vietnam was introduced
by westerner colonists and still somehow considered as a product of foreign culture. Moreover,
most of craft beer outlet in Vietnam tend to be influence by some identified brewing styles,
which most originated from European countries.
The result of this research proved that the relationship between independent variables
(Access, Local Connection, Unique Seeking, Hedonic and Social Influence), the mediator
(Willingness to Pay) and the dependent variable (Returning Decision) is significant. The sample
pool of this research contains 263 valid samples collected from craft beer restaurant in Ho Chi
Minh city, Nha Trang. This study is aimed to improve the efficiency of the existing craft beer
outlets as well as a benchmark for those who wished to enter this potential market. Moreover,
the result could also be used to predict consumer decision in other field of Food and Beverage
services sectors.
The findings from this study could be valuable for the operators of craft beer restaurants,
bars and pubs to understand what attract customers toward their business. Which feature is
the most important for a consumer when choosing a craft beer outlet and why the consumer
committed to one. Applying these findings in the business, hopefully a win-win situation could
be achieved as the service providers could understand what the consumer need and try to
meet that need. In other word, the consumers could find what they look for and the businesses
could attract more customers as well as retain old ones.
As proven earlier in this paper, Willingness to Pay plays a vital role in the consumer
Returning Decision, hence improving WTP would bring lots of benefit to the craft beer
businesses.
The two strongest predictors of Willingness to Pay are Hedonic and Unique Seeking. This
implies that consumer Willingness to Pay is closely related to the internal feelings. According to
the answer that the correspondents gave, we can see that craft beer drinkers value the
elements of tasting new and unique beers, as it both satisfy their needs for entertainments and
uniqueness. In response, craft beer outlets should develop new beers and try to add typical
ingredients to create unique taste. In the context of Hedonic, most of the respondent also value

the factors of relax and spending time with friends and family, so the craft beer business
should create the suitable environment for relaxing and spending time with friends. This means
the music needs to be not to loud, so that the customer could talk with their friends. There
should also be some space between tables so that customers can feel comfortable chatting
with friends and family.
Another predictor of WTP is Local Connection, which according to this study shows that craft
beer drinkers in Vietnam are willing to pay for a local brewed beer. Hence the craft beer
operators could take advantage of this factors in advertising their businesses and products.
In this research, the respondents were mainly approached in restaurants located in the city
center, so that the answer for the access aspect, respondents mostly agreed that the outlets
located in the city center areas convenience for them. The operating time and service delivery
system of the outlets also please the consumer.

Social Influence was proven to have influence on consumer WTP. But in comparison to other
factors, Social Influence plays a smaller part. Craft beer restaurants should also take care of
their service quality beside advertising their outlet on social media. As it may cause customer
dissatisfaction and lead to bad social image and bad comment if the quality does not match
with the image advertised on Social media.
In the context of Returning Decision, there are four independent factors were proven to have
significant effect and the mediator WTP which was mentioned above also significantly affect. In
order to improve consumer Returning Decision, the craft beer business managers should take
care all these five predictors.


The mediator Willingness to Pay is the strongest predictor of consumer intention to return to craft
beer outlets. Then if a business is able to increase consumer WTP, it could attract consumer to
return multiple times.

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In the section above, the way to improve WTP was discussed, so in this part, this could be
skipped and other predictors would be discussed more carefully.
Aside from Willingness to Pay, there are four other predictors of Returning Decision, which
are Access, Unique Seeking, Hedonic and Social Influence. In these four, Unique Seeking and
Hedonic proved themselves to be stronger than the other two and once again repeat the point
of view that craft beer drinkers are more sensitive to the factors that related to emotion. In
order to increase the consumer intention to return to craft beer outlet, the business operator
should take care of these two. Continuously renewing and expanding the choice of beers is a
must for all the restaurants, so that consumers would never be bored with the offered beers
and always maintain the intention to come back for more and more taste of unique and new
beer again and again. Furthermore, many drinkers come to craft beer outlets to enjoy the
atmosphere and spend time with friends and family, so the elements of suitable environment,
space, music, lightning are also important to the business.
The others two factors, Access and Social Influence, show weaker effects on Returning
Decision. But they should not be ignored either. Similar to the earlier part, Access also show
that in order to draw consumers return to a craft beer restaurant, the location shall be near the
city center areas, the operating hours shall be extended to until late at night. And the system
of delivering services, such as reservation, parking, staffs, etc should be convenience for the
guest.
The last factor, Social Influence only showed minor effect toward Returning Decision, but
service operators could not overlook this factor. The influence may come from many sources
such as the recommendations from their friends and family, online advertisement, reviews from
other service users, etc. To maximize the effect of this factor, craft beer services operators
should combine using the power of social media advertising and inactive advertising through
satisfying the guest while they are at the restaurant in exchange for the favorable word of
mouth and recommendation.
For future research about Vietnamese craft beer market, this study’s findings could provide
some clue as stepping stones for other researchers. But there are some limitations that could
be improved.

The first thing is the data collection. In this research, respondents are mostly approached in
Ho Chi Minh city and Nha Trang. Future research should extend the sample pool and also
collect from different location from the two mentioned cites to reflect the Vietnamese
consumer point of view in general more precisely.
The next problem is that the sample size of this research mainly consisted of young people.
Further research, if possible, should try to reach other group of consumers of this type of
services, such at the middle age group. To achieve this, other from the trending and modern
craft beer restaurants, researchers could search for more traditional and old fashioned one,
more Vietnamese styled ones.
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