Customer satisfaction and loyalty towards restaurants in Thailand

Abstract

The restaurant is considered to be the most rapidly growing and highly competitive industry in Thailand. With low startup costs along with shifting customer behavior towards restaurant and cafes in dining out, entrepreneurs become attracted to this opportunity and begin to start up new cafe and restaurants. It is very important for the existing restaurant owners to understand their customer's perceived quality to keep their customers satisfied and loyal to the store and prevent them from switching to their competitors. Customer loyalty includes repurchase intention, traditional word of mouth, and social media sharing. Previous research showed attributes of customer's perceived quality in restaurant context which include: product quality, service quality, and physical environment quality. These attributes lead to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Studies also have proven that customer loyalty is a critical surviving tool for restaurants in Thailand as the market has now become highly competitive. In addition, it costs lower to maintain existing customers than attracting new ones. Social media become one of today's marketing tools which are beneficial for business owners as social media has high customer reach. As it is now a technological era, it is crucial for restaurant owners to study its indicator and their relationship for future business advantages. The objective of this research is to examine the key indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty by developing a conceptual model and investigate the relationship between perceived quality and customer satisfaction and loyalty in a restaurant setting. Data were collected from both a qualitative and quantitative approach through an online survey questionnaire and qualitative content analysis. Qualitative content analysis was used to understand the pattern of word of mouth of the restaurants' customers. An online survey questionnaire was conducted with a sample size of 300 respondents through convenience sampling. As customer began to shift their dining destination away from Bangkok and more willingly to travel to neighboring city on the weekends to spend time with their family and friends, this research was conducted on a newly opened restaurant, 'The Kottage Cafe', in Pathum Thani, Thailand, a neighboring city of Bangkok, since restaurants in neighboring city has become more popular nowadays. Findings suggested that all attributes had a positive relationship to behavioral intention and the physical environment dad the greatest impact. Product quality had the second impact on satisfaction, and service quality had a second impact to repurchase intention and word of mouth (both traditional and social media sharing). Restaurant owners need to clearly identify and understand their customer perceived quality in order to create high satisfaction, enhance revisit intention, and word of mouth.