Attracting and sustaining customers through antecedent satisfaction of dining experience - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 406

Since restaurant industry has played an impor-
tant role in Malaysian economic growth, the indus-
try requires much attention and more awareness to
increase or maintain the economic growth particu-
larly. Thus, this study was conducted with the aim
to identify how the antecedents of satisfaction in
dining experience can attract new customers and
sustain the repeat customers. Three main research
objectives developed, which were to:
a) identify dimensions of dining experience
antecedents.
b) investigate how dining experience antecedents
attracting first time customers?
c) identify how dining experience antecedents sus-
taining repeat customers?

(Kivela et al., 2000). Customer satisfaction has
been recognised as essential factors leading to the
success of most service industries including res-
taurants. It can determine the restaurateur's profit
(Gustafsson and Johnson, 2004) by providing high
quality service (Stevens et al., 1995).

2.3 The need for sustainable customer satisfaction
management
Cumulative satisfaction is a fundamental indica-
tor of current and long run performance because
it directly affects customer loyalty and subsequent
business profitability. These are some of the rea-
sons why consumer and marketing researchers have
given more attention to cumulative satisfaction and
have such a great interest in the management of
customer satisfaction (Cronin and Taylor, 1992).

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The concept of satisfaction
Basically, there are two general conceptualisations
of satisfaction existing in the literature: transaction-
specific satisfaction and cumulative satisfaction. A
transaction-specific concept of satisfaction provides
valuable insights into a particular and short-run
product or service encounter. Hence, satisfaction as
a cumulative concept describes the customer's total
consumption experience with a product or service
(Anderson and Fornell, 1993) over more than one
experience. Therefore, the satisfaction goes beyond
an expected utility to encompass post-purchase
consumption utility. To sum up, the satisfaction
concept is not a transient perception of how happy
a customer is with a product or service at any given
point in time, but it is the customer's overall evalu-
ation of their purchase and consumption experi-
ences (Anderson and Sullivan, 1993).
Customer satisfaction based on this concept is
a fundamental indicator of current and long run
performance because it directly affects customer
loyalty and subsequent business profitability.
Therefore, consumer and marketing researchers
should give more attention to the management of
customer cumulative satisfaction (Cronin and Tay-
lor, 1992). Furthermore, those researchers had not
looked at the 'management' of satisfaction.

3 METHODOLOGY

This qualitative case study was conducted at six
up-scale Malay family restaurants in Johor Bahru,
Malaysia. Data were gathered mainly from in-
depth interviews with 108 different demographic
restaurant customers and 28 restaurant staff from
various positions. The data was also supported
by close observation, participant observation
and documentary evidence to provide strong and
well-grounded findings and establish validity of
the data. Theoretical, snowball, convenience and
purposive sampling techniques were used to deter-
mine the case, sample size and sample within the
case. Data was analysed using coding process that
assisted by NUDIST computer software.

4 RESULT

Finding of this study found that antecedent of din-
ing experience has two major dimensions, which
are previous experience of the repeat customers
and first time customer knowledge of the restau-
rant with it sub dimensions of convenient access
and restaurant promotion programs.

4.1 Dimensions of dining experience antecedents
First time customers get to know about the res-
taurants and are influenced to visit them because
of convenient access (strategic locations of the
restaurant to passers-by), word-of-mouth recom-
mendations from other customers and paid-for
promotion programmes such as the TV programme
and radio programme and non-paid promotion
programme such as distributing food samples at
shopping complexes.

2.2 The significance of customer satisfaction in
providing an understanding of the background
to the study
The phenomenon of customer satisfaction, based
on customer experience, was found to be of high
interest not only to researchers but also to mar-
keters (Cardozo, 1965). This has been reflected
in the constant growth of social science literature
on customer experience over the last four decades