Study of Customer Loyalty and the Image of the Fine Dining Restaurant

Abstract

The specific objectives of the study were 1) to derive the dimensions of the image of the fine dining restaurant and the dimensions of customers' satisfaction towards it; 2) to examine how the image of a fine dining restaurant affects customers' decision to return to the restaurant in the future; 3) to examine how customer satisfaction affects customers' loyalty to a fine dining restaurant; 4) to examine whether customers with different demographics and dining behavior have different perceptions on service quality, image of fine dining restaurant, and customer loyalty; and, 5) to provide recommendations to the restaurant managers for increasing loyal customers. A cross-sectional descriptive research design was used for this study and a self-administrated closed-ended questionnaire was developed and distributed to 650 customers who had dined at a particular fine dining restaurant in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Multivariate analysis which included factor and regressions analysis were used in the study to examine the relative impact of customer satisfaction and the image of the restaurant on the loyalty dimensions. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was preformed to identify any significant mean difference between the satisfaction levels with the food and service quality and the image agreement level with the different demographic level and customers' dining behavior. The findings supported that the relationships among customers' image perceptions, customers' satisfaction, and restaurant loyalty determined the magnitude of their relative importance to a specific market by linking customer behavior to the restaurant loyalty. This emphasizes that the act of creating and maintaining a consistent image with overall satisfaction of a prime target market is crucial and this is more applicable for the upscale market segment, the operators should develop a high quality of food and service and should train their employees to provide a friendly and attentive service to customers all the time. Restaurants managers should be aware of the new product and add more varieties of drinks.