Introduction

Restaurant related services are a huge market today, but it is also a competitive market. Thus, it is not easy to operate a successful restaurant particularly under such a competitive business environment. In this paper, the service quality of Home Inns Cafeteria in China will be investigated. This is important for the management to understand how the service quality of the cafeteria scores. A better understanding on the service quality of the cafeteria will enable the management to improve the services provided to the customers.

Research Rationale

As discussed above, to successfully operating a restaurant in the competitive business or industry landscape is nothing easy. As the barriers to entry into a restaurant business are relatively low, there are many new and emerging players, or existing restaurants are competing aggressively for customers. One of the critical success factors of a restaurant business is the service quality provided by the restaurant. This is because restaurant is essentially a servicing business, whereby people not only buy the food from a particular restaurant, but also based their purchasing decisions on how well they are served by the staffs, how well the food is prepared, the atmosphere of the restaurant as well as the way they are being served. However, the degree of service quality of Home Inns Cafeteria is not known, as no such research had been performed before. Thus, it is important that the service quality of Home Inns Cafeteria be investigated, so that the management understands the cafeteria performance from the service quality dimensions. With such understanding, then the management will be able to correct the weaknesses so that better services can be provided to the customers. As the services quality of the restaurant are improved, it is then possible for the cafeteria to enhance customers’ satisfaction and loyalty, which, in the long run, will have positive impacts to the cafeteria financial performance.

Research Objectives

In this research, the several objectives can be outlined as follow. Firstly, the research is performed to understand how the Home Inns Cafeteria score in terms of service quality provided to customers. Specifically, it is to be investigated how the customers perceive the service quality delivered by the cafeteria. The service quality will be investigated from four dimensions, namely food variety, food quality, ambience and interaction with cafeteria personnel. Secondly, the research aims to identify the ways to further improve the service quality of the cafeteria. This is possible as the service quality of the restaurant from the four dimensions can be identified, and the weaknesses of services quality in the restaurant can be improved.

Literature Review

The literature on service quality is extensive and indeed, vary depending on the context it is defined. Generally speaking, service qualities are often referred to the ways on managerial delivery of the services to customers or end users. However, with deeper investigation, it is not hard to discover that different researchers may adopt different definition of service quality. For example, service quality can be defined as the focused evaluation regarding customers’ perceptions in several dimensions of service, which include reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and other tangibles factors (Mohsin et. al., 2011). For some researchers, the issue of service quality even include the features of the products sold to the customers, as they perceive that the products will ultimately affect the customers satisfaction and experiences, and thus the products by itself is an element of service quality. From such kind of broader definition, services means the capabilities and competencies of the firm to transform the input materials to the value offerings delivered to the end users. Both the products, and services, are critical in affecting the services quality experienced by the end users, and must be taken into account for any firm that desire to enhance the service quality they deliver to the customers. The dimensions of services quality may differ. For example, in different industry or different nature of business, the different dimensions of service quality are emphasized or investigated. This is rational because in different types of businesses, the customers or consumers are being satisfied in different ways. As their needs or wants are fulfilled in different way, it is logical then to assume that the different set of dimensions of service quality will be influential towards customer satisfaction.

Nevertheless, the service quality is often linked to the concepts of customers’ needs, satisfaction and loyalty. In many of the literature, service quality is presumed as one of the key factors affecting the customers’ satisfactions and loyalty. Specifically, good services quality often means that the customers’ needs, demands, requirements as well as their expectations are met in a satisfactory or excellent manner (Nekoei-Moghadam et. al., 2011). Together with other factors (for example, pricing of the products, the fairness of the pricing and others) (Zeng et. al., 2011); service quality is often perceived as influential towards customers’ satisfactions for a business firm. That means service quality will ultimately affect the bottom line of an organization, as satisfied customers often can translate into higher revenue and better profitability of a company (Shahin, 2011). It is then not hard to understand why service quality is such an important issue widely researched and concentrated by the researchers and practitioners.

Besides, the service quality of a particular organization can be investigated from many perspectives. For example, employees, customers, management, as well as the competitors all can have different perceptions on how well the service quality of a restaurant score. However, only the customers’ perceptions are truly meaningful (Ladhari et. al., 2011). After all, it is the customers’ experiences and perceptions on the services, which will determine their satisfaction level as well as intention to purchase again from the same organization (Siddiqi, 2011). Besides, improvement can only made by understanding the customer perceptions and experiences and taking corrective or proactive actions to better meet the customers’ needs and demands. It is simply not reasonable to investigate the perceptions of the staffs or the management and then to implement strategies to meet their perceptions, as ultimately, the revenue of any business is derived from the customers.

In the context of service quality related to a restaurant or cafeteria, there are several studies performed by some other researchers before. For example, Liang and Zhang (2009) had performed a study in investigating the service quality of student food service in Norwegian School of Business Administration and Economics. The authors also studied the customer satisfactions in the respective student food services. They found that the service qualities of the student food services are positively related to the customers’ satisfaction. Besides, Shaikh (2009) had also performed a research to study the impacts of service quality on customer satisfaction from several restaurants in Pakistan. The Serqual technique and Dineserv tool of improving the service quality of the restaurants under investigation are used. Based on the result findings obtained from the study, several recommendations are provided to further improve the service quality of the restaurants under investigation. Apart from that, Petruzzellis, D’Uggento and Romanazzi (2006) had also performed a similar study to understand the student satisfaction and quality of service in Italian universities. Specifically, the authors had performed a research in University of Bari to understand the student’s perceptions of services quality as well as their satisfaction related to the many cafeterias in the particular university.

As argued before, the different researchers may adopt different definition or dimensions to services quality. This is often true especially the researchers are investigating the service quality of different business. However, that is not the complete picture. In fact, a review of the study in investigating the services qualities of the restaurant businesses found that the different researchers may even adopt different dimensions of service qualities in their study. That is, even in a similar industry, different researchers will adopt different definition of service quality, and then use different set of research questionnaires to study the various dimensions or components of service quality in their respective studies. For example, Liang and Zhang (2009) define the service quality to be composed from four facets, which include: food variety, food quality, restaurant atmosphere as well as interaction with cafeteria personnel. On the other hand, researchers such as Shaikh (2009) define service quality as being composed of two parts, the first being the tangible component, while the second as the responsiveness components. Under the tangible component, services quality is further separated into several dimensions as: physical facilities, full range of menu, the pricing, the location of the restaurant, the environment of the dining place, the decoration in the restaurant, the healthiness of the food, the hygiene of the restaurant, the uniforms worn by the staffs, if the staffs are well-trained, the outlook for the restaurant, as well as the possibility of the customers to recommend it to others. The responsiveness component however, are divided into several dimensions as follow: advices on food services, timely services provided by staffs, the way complaints are being handled in the restaurant, the flexibility of the services, the politeness of the staffs, if the staffs are willing to listen to the customers, the communication process between the staffs and the customers, if the privacy of customers are respected, and if the services delivered as it was promised.

Methodology

Overview of Research Methodology

This is a study performed to investigate the service quality of Home Inns Cafeteria from customers’ perspectives. It is designed as a quantitative research design. The research design will adopt the questionnaires used by Liang & Zhang (2009) in their research in investigating the customer satisfaction and service quality of food cafeterias in Norwegian School of Business Administration and Economics. The set of questionnaires and research models used by Liang & Zhang (2009) are selected because the questionnaires used in their study is simple and yet comprehensive. The four dimensions of service quality defined by the researchers are perceived as comprehensive because they cover most of the elements that are important in determining the quality of services delivered to customer for a restaurant business. A review of the management in Home Inns Cafeteria revealed that these questions are useful to assist them to further understand how the cafeteria scores in the respective dimensions, and then can point to a proper direction on how the cafeteria can further enhance the services delivered to end users.

Model Design

As mentioned before, the research model will be adopted from Liang & Zhang (2009). Under his model, the service quality of a restaurant or cafeteria can be decomposed into four facets, which are: food variety (i.e., it is about the choices of foods served, and if the customers can obtain what they truly want from the menu), food quality (i.e., it is about how the foods are served, which include the appearance, the tastes of the foods, the ingredients sued, as well as the consistency of the quality of food being served), ambience (i.e., the environment of the cafeteria, that include if enough seat arrangement, the opening hours, the decoration, the noise level, as well as the cleanliness of the cafeteria), and interaction with cafeteria personnel (i.e., that include how the staffs from the cafeteria interact with the customers, the time took to serve the customer, if the staffs are friendly, or if the customers feel easy to talk to the staffs). For this, the specific questions used to investigate the four facets of service quality for a cafeteria will be presented in section below.

Questionnaire Design

In the questionnaires design, the questions are separated into four facets, where each of the facets is investigated by five questions. Each of the research questions investigate a particular aspects of service qualities related to the facets under researched. Each of the questions are designed as a 7 scale Likert-style question, ranging from 0 (i.e., strongly disagree) to 1 (i.e., strongly agree). The questions to be used are as follow:

Facet #1: Investigation on food variety offered by the cafeteria.

1. An adequate number of food choices are available.
2. The choices of foods available allow me to meet special dietary needs such as low fat or diabetes.
3. The choices of foods available allow me to meet my cultural and ethnic preferences.
4. Special meals and promotions are offered frequently.

Facet #2: Investigation on food quality offered by the cafeteria.

1. The quality of the food is good.
2. The appearance of the food is good.
3. The taste/ flavor of the food is good.
4. The quality of the ingredients used is good.
5. Foods are always the same quality.

Facet #3: Investigation on cafeteria’s ambience.

1. I always have a place to sit.
2. I am pleased with the opening hours.
3. I like the decorations in the cafeteria.
4. The seats are comfortable.
5. Noise level is OK.
6. Cleanliness is good.

Facet #4: Investigation on staffs’ interaction with cafeteria’s personnel.

1. The staffs are clean and neat.
2. The staffs are friendly.
3. I feel easy to talk with staff when I’m served.
4. The staff smile and greet me when I’m served.
5. The serving line moves fast.

Availability of Data

It is not an issue to gather primary data from the customers visiting the restaurant as the authors have family relationship with the manager and staffs working in Home Inns Cafeteria. The manager of the cafeteria is the uncle for the author, and he had agreed to assist in the research to be conducted in the cafeteria. In fact, he is pleased to help up as the research findings will be useful for him to further enhance the service quality of the cafeteria, which he perceive as an increasingly important element to compete in the competitive restaurant industry.

Sampling Methods

Questionnaires will be distributed to the research participants. All research participants must be the customers visiting to the cafeteria. Care will be taken so no two set of questionnaires can be filled by a same customer. All research participants are to be ensured that they are willing to participate in the research before they are instructed to fill the questionnaires. The research participants selected must be elder than 18 years old, as to ensure the research participants are matured enough to complete the questionnaires in an accurate manner. The data collection period will run a cross 1 month period. At the single month, random sampling will be used. Five customers visiting the cafeteria at lunch time will be selected, while another five customers will be selected during the dinner time. This means a total of 10 customers will be selected each day. After a period of 1 month, there will be a total of 300 set of completed research questions. All these will serve as the primary data for data analysis purposes in next chapter.

Ethical Issues

There are several ethical issues to be taken care in conducting the research. Firstly, it is crucial to obtain informed consent from the research participants. Secondly, it is critical for the researchers as well as the manager collecting the data to ensure the data remain confidential, and to avoid the leakages of information to other people not related to this study. Thirdly, the anonymity of the research participants must be ensured. The name of the customers will not be collected for this purpose.

Data Analysis Methods

SPSS will be used to analyze the data. The means of the score of each of the respective questions will be computed, and they will be ranked from the highest to the lowest. The questionnaires with the lowest rating are the weak points of the restaurant. That means, the particular dimensions of service quality should be further improve to increase the level of service quality delivered to the customers.

References & Bibliography

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