Customer satisfaction at Taj Indian Restaurant

Background of the study

Customers’ expectations for value, in relation to price, also seem to be on the rise: people want more for their money. Customer satisfaction is at the heart of marketing. The ability to satisfy customer is vital for a number of reasons. For example, it has been shown that dissatisfied customers tend to complain to the establishment or seek redress from them more often to relieve cognitive dissonance and failed consumption experiences (Oliver, 1987; Nyer, 1999). If service providers do not properly address such behavior, it can have serious ramifications. Thus, quality plays a significant role in determining and influencing customer satisfaction [Aigbedo et al, 2004].

According to Oliver (1997, p.13) Satisfaction can be defined as ‘‘a judgement that a product, or service feature, or the product or service itself, provides a pleasurable level of consumption—related fulfilment, including levels of under or over fulfilment’’. Customer satisfaction has been noted as a major element ‘‘needed to create and sustain a competitive business’’ (Ueltschy, Laroche, Tamila, & Yannopoulos, 2002, p. 2). Customers will be satisfied if the services they receive are at least as good as they were supposed to be, ‘‘a consumer is considered satisfied when his weighted sum total of experiences shows a feeling of gratification when compared with his expectations. On the other hand, a consumer is considered dissatisfied when his actual experience shows a feeling of displeasure when compared with his expectation’’ (Choi & Chu, 2001, p. 280).

Service-based industries such as hotels and restaurants are spending a tremendous effort to measure and improve the service quality of their businesses [Madanoglu, 2004]. All of them share one thing in common, that is to provide customer satisfaction. Service satisfaction is a function of consumers’ experience and reactions to a provider’s behavior during the service encounter; it is a function of the service setting [Nicholls, 1998]. This study will be applied in the Singapore context to identify the quality factors of Taj Indian Restaurant that influence customer satisfaction.

Research Aims

The hypotheses tested on this study were:

H1: service quality is an antecedent of consumer satisfaction.

H2: the intention of returning to the hotel is influenced by service quality and consumer satisfaction.

H3: the intention of recommending the hotel is influenced by service quality and consumer satisfaction.

Literature Review

The hospitality industry is very sensible to word-of-mouth communications. A non-satisfied consumer tells his/her negative experience to 9 to 20 persons, and this will obviously influence the hotel’s image and subsequent efforts to attract new customers. A study conducted by Getty and Thomson (1994) in a hotel, concluded that the intention of recommending is more affected by the service quality level than by the expressed level of consumer satisfaction. A similar conclusion was achieved by Kandampully and Suhartanto (2000), also in a hotel environment, more specifically, that satisfaction is determinant on the consumer’s decision of returning and recommending the hotel

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Research design and Methodology

The study uses primary data that is collected through distributing questionnaires using closed ended questions. Secondary sources were explored first to assets past research conducted on customer satisfaction in the hotel industry. The next stage involved gathering information via qualitative methods from hotel goers. The process allowed us to identify and narrow down the key factors and the related items comprising the factors that were expected to explain customer satisfaction for the hotel industry.

The next step involved designing and pre-testing questionnaire that was administered to a convenient sample. The pre-test was instrument in assessing the strengths and weakness of the questionnaire and in ensuring that all pertinent variables were included. At this stage, several modifications were made to the instrument to remove ambiguities , to eliminate items that did not seem to fit the contact and to improve the flow of the questions. The final version

3.1. Population and Sample

The sample comprised of population who visit Taj Indian restaurant. The participants were randomly selected among customers who stayed in the hotel more than a week. In order to make more representative researcher ensured to include all features or characteristics exist in population. In the present study optimum sample size of 200 customers are selected from the Taj Indian restaurants.

Analysis of data interpretation and findings

3.2. Data Analysis.

The questionnaire asked respondents to evaluate the last full service hotel they had frequented. It included perceptual measures that were rated on five-point Likert scales. The design is consistent with prior studies on customer satisfaction and service quality. Each scale item was anchored at the numeral 1 with the verbal statement “strongly disagree” and at the numeral 5 with the verbal statement “strongly agree”. Multiple items were used to measure each construct so that their measurement properties could be evaluated on reliability and validity. The study adopts a statistic method of SPSS program version 15.0 (Singgih, 2007) to find out the effect of free variable to dependent variable. The variable equation gained from the regression calculation should be statistically tested. The regression finding can be used to predict the dependent variable.

Conclusion

Time scale

References

Madanoglu, M. 2004. Validating restaurant service quality dimensions. Journal of Foodservice Business Research, 7, 127-147