Purpose: During COVID-19, consumers prefer social distancing or contactless activities for safety, and hygienic condition has become one of the most important factors in evaluating restaurants. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether offline/online word-of-mouth is affected by restaurant quality. Research design, data and methodology: The data were collected from 480 consumers who had experiences of visiting a restaurant in the past 90 days and analyzed with SPSS 28.0 and SmartPLS 4.0 programs. Results: Physical environment and menu had positively significant effects on brand love, while employee service and hygiene had no significance on brand love. Restaurant environment, menu, and hygiene had negatively significant effects on brand hate, but employee service had not significant impact on brand hate. Brand love had positively significant effects on offline and online word-of-mouth, and brand hate had negatively significant effects on offline and online word-of-mouth. Conclusions: First, restaurants need to develop a pleasant space where customers can have emotional experiences. Second, restaurants need to fulfill customers' desire for global food consumption. Third, restaurants should ensure hygiene and safety to prevent customers' brand hate. Lastly, restaurants need to establish offline/online word-of-mouth strategy to identify which restaurant quality attributes influence brand love/hate and offline/online word-of-mouth.
Purpose: Most people are worried about contracting COVID-19, which in turn increases anxiety that they may have contracted COVID-19. Therefore, this study examines the effect of restaurant safety consisting of hygiene, store management, and countermeasure on trust, anxiety, satisfaction, and revisit intention. Research design, data and methodology: The data were collected from 537 consumers who had experiences of visiting a restaurant within the last 2 months and analyzed with SPSS 28.0 and SmartPLS 4.0 programs. Result: The hygiene, management, and countermeasure had a significant positive (+) effect on trust. Restaurant hygiene was found to have a significant negative (-) effect on anxiety, but countermeasure had a significant positive (+) effect on anxiety. Meanwhile, management did not appear to have a significant effect on anxiety. Trust was found to have a significant positive (+) effect on satisfaction and revisit intention. Anxiety was found to have a significant negative (-) effect on satisfaction but had no significant effect on revisit intention. Finally, satisfaction was found to have a significant positive (+) effect on revisit intention. Conclusions: As a result of the study, this study explained the safety of restaurants in the COVID-19 pandemic environment through the protective motivation theory.
Purpose: This study is designed to grasp how consumers' beliefs about the lunch box attributes such as healthiness, diversity, price, hygiene, and package eco-friendliness affect consumers' perceived value and purchasing behavior. Research design, data, and methodology: The data were collected from 615 respondents composed of men and women aged 20 to 59 who purchased lunch box products and were sampled using the quota sampling method. An online survey was conducted. The data were analyzed using the measurement model and structural equation model assessment with SPSS 24 and SmartPLS 4.0. Results: First, healthiness, diversity, hygiene, and the price had a significant positive effect on the perceived functional value of consumers, but package eco-friendliness did not significantly affect functional value. On the other hand, healthiness, diversity, price, and package eco-friendliness were found to have a positive impact on consumers' perceived emotional value, but hygiene was found to have no significant effect on emotional value. It was found that functional and emotional values significantly positively affected repurchase intention. Conclusions: This study confirmed that consumers' belief in the product attributes of franchise lunch boxes influenced consumers' perceived value, which thus formed the attitude of consumers and showed a relationship that affects repurchase intention. At the end of this paper, the managerial implications for the franchise lunch box brand, the limitations of this study, and future research directions were presented.
Purpose: As global interest in environmental issues increases, the demand for green products/services is increasing. Companies are establishing eco-friendly policies to meet the changing expectations of customers. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effect of eco-friendly behavior and third-party certification on trust, satisfaction, and loyalty as well as the mediating role of satisfaction based on SOR and signaling theory. Research design, data and methodology: This study collected data from 501 respondents who visited restaurant and analyzed using measurement model with SPSS 28.0 and SmartPLS 4. Results: First, restaurants' eco-friendly behavior and third-party certification (TPC) positively influenced trust while these did not influence satisfaction. Second, trust positively influenced satisfaction. Third, trust and satisfaction positively influenced loyalty. Fourth, TPC had stronger impact on trust and satisfaction compared to eco-friendly behavior in female group while TPC had stronger impact on trust in male group. Conclusions: This study emphasized the importance of TPC over eco-friendly behavior. Restaurants should maintain pro-environmental behaviors such as reducing single-use items while obtaining TPC such as ISO and LEED certifications to increase customer trust. It also found the importance of trust and satisfaction in securing loyal customers. Restaurants should make efforts to build bonds with customers through authentic marketing such as events that encourage customer participation.