Customer Satisfaction in the Restaurant Industry
Part I: Research Proposal
I-1. Research Background
In today’s competitive dynamic environment it is crucial to maintain existing customers and gain new ones. This goes for the restaurant industry as well, where not only the quality of the food plays a major role, but also the quality of the service itself. This has been recognized by the restaurant X which offers traditional Greek food. Due to increasing competition and decreased disposable income during recent year, the restaurant management decided to focus more on increasing the quality of their food and service in order to ensure high customer flow. Delivering quality at the constant pace guarantees competitive advantage, which leads to customer satisfaction and positive word of mouth, as well as repeated sales and customer loyalty. It is important to mention that every fourth purchase results in customer dissatisfaction but only 5% of those customers complain (Kotler et al.,1999). As a result restaurants needlessly loose customers without getting a real feedback from them. This is why it is necessary to do customer satisfaction survey to motivate the customers to share their opinion about the restaurant which will later be used to improve quality in areas of the restaurant management process that need it the most.
I-2. Problem Definition
Restaurant industry is becoming more and more competitive which makes it hard on single restaurants to stay in the business. Economic crisis during recent years has just made things worse by affecting disposable income and the ability for people to afford a meal outside of their home. In addition, people’s life-styles are changing, with people having less time for entertainment and leisure. In order to ensure customer loyalty and consequently increasing profits, many restaurants turned to understanding what causes customer satisfaction in their particular case
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