Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of dining experience
S. Ismail
Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
M.S. Mohd-Shah
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: Restaurant industry is a competitive business in Malaysia. Attracting new customers is
no longer guarantee profits. However, study on how to attract potential customers and sustain first visit
and regular customers is still limited. Therefore this study was conducted to identify how the antecedents
of satisfaction in dining experience can attract new customers and sustain the repeat customers. Data
of this qualitative case study were gathered mainly from the interviews and supported by close observa-
tion, participant observation and documentary evidence to provide strong and well-grounded findings
of the 6 Malay upscale family restaurants in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Findings of this study showed that
antecedents of dining experience has two major dimensions, which are previous experience of the repeat
customers and first time customer knowledge of the restaurant. Menu variety, delicious food, attractive
restaurant appearance and promotions were among satisfaction determinants for previous experience of
the repeat customers while convenient access and restaurant promotion programs are determinant satis-
faction for first time customer knowledge of the restaurant. This study suggested for the restaurateurs to
pay attention on antecedents of dining experience to attract the potential customer and to ensure the first
visit customers repeat their visit while the regular customers sustaining their visit.
Keywords
:
Customer satisfaction, antecedent experience, repeat customer, first visit, expectation
1 INTRODUCTION
with the expectation profit RM168 billion. The
expectation can be achieved due to many reasons.
Besides well known as a safe country to be visited
due to stability in political, plenty of preserved his-
torical places, finding of Fordes Online research that
been conducted towards 5,339 respondents from 97
countries crossed the world showed that Malaysia
was found as the 10th best country for hospitality,
the 8th best country (out of 18 Asia Pacific coun-
tries) for modern service provided and the 4th world
best country for shop-ping and Kuala Lumpur was
found as the 2nd best capital city in Asia Pacific
(Economy Investigation Unit, 2012).
Food service is one of the important elements in
tourism industry (Tourism Malaysia, 2013). In the
third quarter of 2010, the accommodation and res-
taurants sector contributed 5.1 percent to the Malay-
sian GDP. The percentage increased from 3.8 percent
compared to the similar period in 2009 (Department
of Statistics Malaysia Quarter Report, 2010). Sales
within the Malaysian food and beverage retail indus-
try were forecast to reach of US$15.69 billion in
2011 and are predicted to grow to US$21.17 billion
by 2015 (Exporter Guide, 2012).
Tourism industry has become second source of
income for Malaysia after manufacturing industry,
which contributed continuous positive growth and
sustained it position as the 9th most popular country
in the world for tourist destination since year 2009.
In the year of 2010, the profit was reported RM56.5
billion that involved 24.5 million tourists (The
United World of Tourism, UNWTO, 2012). The
number of profit increased to RM58.3 billion with
the involvement of more than 24.7 million tourists
in the year 2011. The first six months of year 2012,
number of tourist visited Malaysia was 11.6 million,
which increased by 2.4 percent compare to only 11.4
million for the same period of year 2011 (Tourism
Malaysia, 2012). The number is expected to reach
36 mil-lion from the year 2014 until 2020.
The increment of 4 percent tourist visiting Malay-
sia in 2012 has generated RM26.8 billion to the
national GDP compare to RM25.7 billion in year
2011. Under the Tourism Transformation Plan 2020,
the Globe Shopper Index reported that the number
of tourist visiting Malaysia is expected 36 million
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