Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and perceived value in Malay restaurants
Z. Othman, M.S.M. Zahari & S.M. Radzi
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: Service delivery failures can close down restaurants, if attention is not paid to the prob-
lem. In a restaurant, the customer experience process failure if the employee is distracted and outcome
failure if the chosen menu item is not accessible. Knowing that failures will always happen, it is very
important that the restaurant makes rations for recovery of these unfavorable occurrences. In spite of
providing recovery in reaction of service delivery failures, customers' intention to re-patronize restaurants
is also predisposed by the perceived value of the restaurant customers. If customers are satisfied with the
service recovery, they may have intended to revisit or refer services to family and friends. This study seeks
to investigate factors of service delivery failure, perceived values and customers' behavioural intention in
Malay restaurants.
Keywords
:
Service delivery failure, perceived value, customer satisfaction, behavioural intention
1 INTRODUCTION
Nonetheless, in spite of the positive growth of
ethnic restaurants in Malaysia, Chinese and Indian
Hindu restaurants are more popular among their
own ethnic groups. These most probably due to the
Malays who represent a large Muslim population
are very strict regarding 'halal' and 'haram' of food
they consume. Thus, Malay customers are found to
be less keen to dine at these types of restaurants.
This is not to assume that all Chinese and Indian
Hindu restaurants are selling 'non-halal' food.
With this argument, Malay and Indian Muslim res-
taurants which are known as 'Mamak' restaurants
control large 'halal' market segment by attracting
most customers from various ethnic groups to
patronize in their restaurant. This, in turn, flour-
ishes the growth of both restaurants nationwide.
Of both the popularity and positive growth of
these two competing restaurants, 'Mamak' found
to be more popular and successful compared to
Malay restaurants (Zahari & Othman, 2008; Oth-
man, Zahari, Hashim & Ibrahim, 2009). Ramli
and Ahmad (2003) contended that the success
recipes of 'Mamak' restaurants in attracting new
customers were by delivering faster service to their
customers. Apart from that, Zahari and Othman
(2008) revealed that 'Mamak' restaurants were bet-
ter due to efficient and effective service delivery
delivered to their customers although offering fewer
varieties of foods. On the contrary, many Malay
restaurants are found struggling to attract and
retain customers, although selling numerous types
of foods to their customers. Zahari and Othman
Similar with other industry, restaurant industry in
Malaysia is filled in the past decade with diverse
kinds of restaurants mushrooming all over the
place spanning from fine dining, specialty, fast
food, casual, theme, ethnic restaurants and even
mixture of more than one category. Among all,
ethnic restaurants is noted of having huge growth
and development not only in the last 20 years but
more prominent in the early 90s (Othman, 2007).
The diversity of ethnic groups contributed to the
positive growth of this restaurant with a superb
blend of foods, service, ambience, design and col-
ourful range of cuisines (Talib, 2009).
There are three major ethnic groups that con-
stitute the integral construction of ethnic restau-
rants in Malaysia, namely Malay, Chinese and
Indian. The Malays are the majority shareholder
amount of sixty five percent of the population,
with Islam as the official religion, Chinese make
up for twenty percent who may be Buddhist or
Christian and the rest is ten percent Indian which
might be Hindu and Christian (Talib, 2009). The
remaining of the group pact comprised of various
indigenous and sizeable amounts of expatriate
(Talib, 2009). Restaurants such as Malay, Chi-
nese, Nyonya's, Kopitiam's, Indian and Mamak
Restaurants are well accepted as most of these
restaurants fuses cuisines from each ethnic group
and introducing a unique Malaysian gastronomic
heritage.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search