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working families with children (Atkins & Bowler,
2001), less or no time to prepare the meal at home
(Habib et al., 2011), higher disposable income,
standard of living and leisure activities (Mehta
& Maniam, 2002). Andaleeb & Conway, (2006)
revealed that the increasing number of working
women nowadays and time saving, eating healthy
foods in a good environment also contributes to
eating out habit (Ryu & Han, 2010). Warde &
Martens (1998) contended eating out at the restau-
rant with good ambience and atmosphere not only
creates different dining experience but developed
social interaction among the customers.
of sampling frame for casual dining restaurant's
customers. The target population was the casual-
type restaurant's customers who had dined at these
restaurants within the past three months from the
date the questionnaire is distributed. Klang Val-
ley was chosen as the location of the study since
the higher number of casual dining restaurants in
this area (Euromonitor International, 2012). There
were 384 respondents participated in this study and
this was based on that voluntary basis.
3.2
Research instrument design
A questionnaire was used as an instrument to
measure the variables of interest. Section A was
designed to access information about eating out at
casual dining restaurants such as frequency of din-
ing, reasons of dining out, total spending per visit.
In section B, respondents were asked to rank the
importance attributes when selecting a restaurant.
In this sense, respondents were asked to choose five
out of twenty four listed attributes and rank them
from one to five according to the level of impor-
tance. These attributes were adapted from Cullen
(2005) and Kivela, Reece & Inbakaran (1999). Sec-
tion C was created related to respondent's demo-
graphic profiles.
2.2
Attributes that influence restaurant selection
Customers may have different preferences and
expectation when choosing the type of restaurants
to dine (Kim & Moon, 2009). Customers may
prefer fast food restaurant because of the price,
convenience and quick service (Akbay, Tiryaki &
Gul, 2007; Farhana & Islam, 2011). In contrast,
they may put an interest toward casual dining res-
taurant due to it food quality, service availability
and atmosphere of the restaurant (Mattila, 2001;
Namkung & Jang, 2008; Ryu & Han, 2010).
Ample evidences that there are attributes influ-
ence customers' choices. Clark & Wood (1998)
found that quality of food, price, atmosphere and
speed of service were highly influence customers
in restaurant selection. Cullen (2005) revealed that
quality of food is the most preferred attribute when
customer decided to dine out for a social occasion
and location is the most influential decision when
they decided to eat out as substitution for cooking
at home. Auty (1992) conducted a study on differ-
ent occasion such as celebration, social occasion,
convenience and business meal. Even there are dif-
ferent preferences among customers on each occa-
sion, Auty's (1992) concluded that the types and
quality of food are the most preferred choice for
dining out in the restaurants. Quality of food is
actually a group of several elements. Namkung &
Jang (2007) categorised presentation, variety of
menu, healthy options, taste, freshness and tem-
perature into food quality elements. Joshi (2012)
however divided food quality into sub- elements
namely; menu variety, taste, presentation, healthy
food options and familiar food.
3.3
Data analysis
To access the top ranked attributes, descriptive
analysis was run using IBM SPSS Statistics version
21. The attributes were all count using weighted
calculation or total score method. Item that ranked
at the first place were given the highest value (5)
and the attributes that were in fifth place was given
lowest value (1). The rating was then multiplied
by the total responses received. The score of each
attribute was summed up to get a total weighted
score. Finally, the overall ranking was based on the
weighted score of each attributes where the high-
est score received by each attributes was at the top
ranking. The technique used to calculate the score
was based on the research done by Mersha and
Adlakha (1992).
4 RESULT
4.1
Demographic background
Table 1 showed the demographic profiles of
respondents. Respondents were in average of 29
years old (mean 29.20) and more than half (67.7%)
of them were female. Majority of the respond-
ents were Malay ethnic and 46.9 percent having
the undergraduate degree. More than half of the
respondents (62.2%) were currently working in
3 METHODOLOGY
3.1
Sampling design
In this study purposive sampling technique was used
to reach the casual dining restaurant's customers.
This technique was chosen because of unavailability
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