Customer Satisfaction of Fast Food Chains Essay

Therefore, this bailiwick suspects whether other all- cardinal(a) variables exist in unwavering nutrient diligence aimr style patterns to aver this solvent. This depicted object tries to combine variables that are related to fast nutrition sedulousness characteristics, such as custom frequency, perceived wrong and convenience, to propose an compound model of guest atonement and inscription in the fast pabulum assiduity, and lend oneself race inactivity as the mediator to discover the major(ip) factors that impact node satisfaction and homage in the fast feed sedulousness.This study has collected 594 effective questionnaires and use structural equation exemplar (SEM) to verify the various path relations of the study model. The study result found that in addition to being positively impacted by client satisfaction, node obedience depart be impacted by client kindred inaction more. In the alliance of client satisfaction and customer subjection, customer relationship inertia plays a key mediator.In addition, perceived price has a negative impact on customer satisfaction and relationship inertia. Convenience testament enhance customer satisfaction. utilisation frequency go out enhance customer relationship inertia. Finally, this study expects to straightforward deal the study result to the fast nutrition intentness as a reference for enhancing the customer dedication strategy. Key words Customer satisfaction, relationship inertia, customer devotion, convenience, perceived price.INTRODUCTION The enhancement of national income and the change of spending utilisations waste resulted in the rapid growth of the lollipopet scale in the good fabrication. In 2008, the middling ratio of the global renovation industry accounted for over 60% of the overall Gross National Product (GNP), the average ration for major developed countries reached over 70%, and at the same fourth dimension mainland China also reached 73. 2% (Central Intelligence Agency, 2009). Taking Taiwan as an example, the total turnover of pabulum retail was NT$261. billion in 2001, NT$302. 7 billion in 2006, and NT$321. 7 billion in 2009 (Ministry of scotch Affairs, R. O. C. , 2010). This hints that the business scale of nutriment retail has the gradual growth contract e precise year in Taiwan, and its market emulation allow for needfully become more intense. The fast sustenance industry is the representative food retailer type in various countries. The overall fast food market in the US is expected to grow in the approach years and get out cross the US$170 billion mark by 2010 (RNCOS, 2009). Corresponding author. E-mail m9019011chu. edu. tw Tel +886-2-28102292. Fax +886-2-2810-6688. Cheng et al. 5119 The fast food industry in Asias major countries, such as China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan washbasin also create a increaseion value over US$1 billion every year (Report buyer, 2009). However, occasionally, there will be some negative food safety events, such as the heat up oil containing arsenic, and the beef event (Taiwan risings, 2010), which will impact the image and cognitive process of the corporation.However, later the storm has passed, the sales per pulpance of fast food industry gouge all rise rapidly. This result, in addition to the response guidance of when the industry has a great crisis, is also a worthy geographic expedition issue of consumers buying mien in the fast food industry. For the run industry, the cost of developing a new customer is at least 5 to 9 times the cost to maintain an hoary customer (Raphel and Raphel, 1995).How to enhance customer satisfaction and customer loyalty will be the important factor that impacts the operating performance of the food retailer. Past studies indicate that customer loyalty will be positively impacted by customer satisfaction (Fornell, 1992 Gwinner et al. , 1998 HennigThurau et al. , 2002 Terblanche, 2006 Hsu, 2008). However, Bruhn and Grund (2000) pointed out that the factors that impact customer loyalty may have some other important factors which are non entangle in the consideration.Some scholars found that when customers benefit from the early(prenominal) times frequent exercise behavior, relationship inertia will be organise, and the past consumer behavior will be continued (Ouellette and Wood, 1998), and then there will be no strong motivation to look for substitute(a) plans (Colgate and Danaher, 2000), and the military wait on provider scum bag because maintain the real relationship with the customer (Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004). In the study of Carrasco et al. (2005), it also verified that in the consumption of food and service, consumers have the inertia behavior.In addition, consumers will have the garbual repeated barter for behavior due to convenient purchase or other factors (Heiens and Pleshko, 1997). When competitors offer a lower price, it will enhance the possibility of the customer changing the purchase behavior (Wathne et al. , 2001), and also undermine the consumers consumption inertia for the sure compevery. The study found that there are three issues existing in the studies of customer get behavior in the fast food industry (1) Why rump consumers rapidly return in such a short period of time after a fast food industry negative news outbreak, or even not be impacted at all.Therefore, regarding the factors that impact customer loyalty in the fast food industry, in addition to customer satisfaction, are there any other important impact factors? (2) The fast food industry is various from the general food retailer. It has the characteristics of being rapid, convenient, and having a low price however, the unremarkably seen customer satisfaction model (e. g. Ameri tin contribute Customer Satisfaction mogul European Customer Customer Satisfaction Index) cannot really present these characteristics. 3) inertial behavior exists in the food purchas ing behavior (Carrasco et al. , 2005). However, there have been no scholars who have applied it to explore the relation between customer satisfaction and loyalty in the fast food industry. It can be seen that there is an important study gap that exists in the exploration of customer satisfaction and loyalty in the fast food industry therefore, it creates the designer for the study to explore this issue.The major study purpose of the study is to immix the related variables of fast food industry characteristics, such as consumption frequency, perceived price and convenience, and propose a customer satisfaction and loyalty integrated model for the fast food industry, and apply relationship inertia as the mediator to find out the major factor that impacted the customer satisfaction and loyalty in fast food industry, with the foreboding to provide it as a reference for the fast food industry in developing the improvement strategy of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.LITERATUR E REVIEW Customer satisfaction The primary task of a corporation is to create customer satisfaction. Profit is not the most important result after all, it is only the feedback after satisfying the customer (Drucker, 1954). As long as the customer is satisfied, the corporations profit will relatively increase. Along with the more and more intense market competition and the rise of consumer awareness, customer satisfaction has a significant impact on corporate profits, and it can provide the future day convergence or service quality of the corporation as a reference according the past consumption experience and assessment of customers.Therefore, customer satisfaction has become a recognized index which can be broadly applied in measuring customer consumption behavior. Customer satisfaction is regarded as customers can get more benefits than their cost (Liu and Yen, 2010). Different scholars definitions for customer satisfaction can be summarized as follows Oliver (1981) thinks that customer satisfaction is the comments made by the strike experience of product obtainment or consumption. Fornell (1992) pointed out that customer satisfaction is the overall quantity after a customer has purchased the product or used the service.It is the overall attitude created based on experience, which is the comparison of forward (expectation) and after (feeling) the customer received the service (product). If the actual feeling after receiving the service exceeded the expectation before receiving the service, then the customer will be satisfied if it is to the contrary, the customer will not be satisfied. 5120 Afr. J. Bus. Manage. In addition, Kotler (1997) thinks that customer satisfaction is a persons happiness or disappointment, which is formed by comparing his/her perceived product performance (or result) and his/her product expectation.To be more specific, satisfaction is the function of perceived performance and expectation. Lin (2007) pointed out that good service q uality will thusly satisfy the diversified demands of the customer, which meaning customer satisfaction is the overall assessment of products and services processed by customers according to the past experience. When the actual service result provided by the service provider is higher(prenominal)er than the customer service expectation, then the customer will be very satisfied if it is to the contrary, the customer will be very dissatisfied (Joewono and Kubota, 2007).In addition, Fornell et al. (1996) pointed out that the measurement of customer satisfaction can be divided into the overall satisfaction level of a customer on a corporation, the dissimilitude between expectation and actual feeling, and the difference between actual feeling and ideal perfect service (product). combination all of the above-mentioned scholars dissertations, customer satisfaction is the result of comparing customer expectation and experience. Therefore, the study will refer to the perspective and mea surement proportion of Fornell et al. (1996) as the basis for measuring food retailer satisfaction.Customer loyalty For the service industry, the cost of developing a new customer is at least 5 to 9 times the cost to maintain an old customer. If the customer loyalty can be increased 5% effectively, then 25-85% profit can be increased (Raphel and Raphel, 1995). Therefore, if the service industry wants to edit the expenditures on money and time cost, it shall focus on maintaining customers, not obtaining new customers (Oliver, 1999). It will shore a long-term or short-term profit by maintaining a long-term relationship with the customer, because maintaining long-term relationship refers to retention the customer and obtaining his/her loyalty (Ranaweera and Prabhu, 2003). It can be seen that the importance of customer loyalty establishment on the service industry operation cannot be understated. If the food service industry can keep the customer and make him/her a loyal customer, t hen it will also be able to bring long-term operating efficiency. Dick and Basu (1994) pointed out that customer loyalty can be divided into true loyalty, false loyalty, potential loyalty and no loyalty according to the strength level of the relationship between the individualized attitude and repurchase behavior.Schneider and Bowen (1999) pointed out that customer loyalty refers to a customers possible repurchase behavior, and willingness to become a member of the service institution. Neal (1999) thinks that customer loyalty is the performance of a consumer still choosing the same product or service after comparing it with other competitors products with the premise that the competitive product can be easily purchased, and it will go through the four stages of perceived loyalty, emotional loyalty, intentional loyalty and action loyalty (Oliver, 1999). In the measurement of customer loyalty, Zeithaml et al. 1996) pointed out that the measurement items of customer loyalty in custome r behavior intention include repurchase after the price has increased (price tolerance), priority purchase and recommendation. Fornell et al. (1996) thinks that customer loyalty can be measured by the repurchase will and customer price tolerance. Gronholdt et al. (2000) pointed out that customer loyalty be constructed by the four measurement indexes of the repurchase will, the will of recommending the company or gull to others, price tolerance and cross-purchase will of the customer.Finally, the study mainly refers to the perspectives of Fornell et al. (1996) and Zeithaml et al. (1996) and the service characteristics of the food retailer to summarize the measurement mode of customer loyalty in the behavior dimension of the four measurement indexes, which are repurchase will, recommending to others, price tolerance and priority repurchase. Relationship inertia Relationship inertia is a fixed consumption pattern.With all consumption, customers will purchase the same product because of habit, without the need to spend energy or time to think in addition much during the decision making process (Assael, 1998). The reason for this type of consumer purchasing the same brand or purchasing the same product repeatedly is that they feel comfortable due to not having to make new choices. When purchasing the same brand again, it can save time, and by being known with the brand, there will be no sense of difference, and also can reduce the perceived risk (Bloemer and Kasper, 1994).Dick and Basu (1994) pointed out that the false loyalty in customer loyalty has the characteristic of low preference attitude, and high repeat purchase rate, and inertia is a kind of false loyalty performance. In addition, Oliver (1999) pointed out that after the consumer decides to be on the relationship inertia track of action loyalty with a brand, then the previous assessment, psychometric test and elimination in the consumption process can be removed, therefore, relationship inertia is th e performance of action loyalty.Colgate and Danaher (2000) proposed that relationship inertia is the basis of homosexual nature. When the customer is used to a specific thing, he/she will not have the motive that is too strong to look for alternatives plans, which means habit is an automatic behavioral tendency responding to a persons past development (Limayem and Hirt, 2003). In other words, inertia is a specific future behavioral intension a person usually does and also Cheng et al. 5121 shows, which allows the current behavior to continue. Therefore people will continue and repeatedly do things in the way they are used to.Inertia is guided by rapid, easy, and the least attention grabbing perceived process, and can be a twin processed with other activities, which does not have further thought or rational analysis on their behavior, and is just based on the habit (Ouellette and Wood, 1998 Gefen, 2003). After combining the aforementioned perspectives and the characteristics of foo d retail, the study defines the relationship inertia of the fast food industry customer as customers very much form a dependent and characteristic relationship with a specific food or service quality with their own habit factor.They will not have a motive that is too strong to look for alternative food service. Gremler (1995) defined relationship inertia as the inertial behavior during repeat purchase of consumers avoiding decision making and having high-repeatable visits. Therefore, If there are no other reasons, the original store service will still be chosen, Unless Im not satisfied, the original store service will still be chosen, and It is most unlikely for me to buy at in the store are used to measure relationship inertia.Carrasco et al. (2005) applied Panel data to view whether the customers consumption behavior has inertia, and found that indeed there is inertia behavior for consumers in the food and service consumption. From the abovementioned studies, the study refers to the perspectives of many scholars (Gremler, 1995 Gefen, 2003 Carrasco et al. , 2005) and combines them with the consumer characteristics of the fast food industry, and derived five items to measure the customer relationship inertia of the fast food industry.The items are respectively the fast food store visit inertia, familiarity, impression, will of continuous selection and will of enjoying to consume in this store. characteristics. It can be known from the abovementioned scholars perspectives that past frequency is often applied in measuring customer behavior intention, and to further recognize consumer future behavior intention. With the frequency exploration of the abovementioned scholars, the study will apply the store consumption frequency at a specific time to measure the food consumption frequency.Perceived price Since the operating environment of the service industry changes rapidly, service industry suppliers often apply the method of reducing service quality to corresp ond to the dilemma of little profit, which therefore results in the lose-lose predicament of consumers and suppliers. From the consumer perspective, price is the amount which needs to be stipendiary for the consumer to obtain the product (Hawkins et al. , 1983), or the price that the consumer must give up or sacrifice to obtain a product (Zeithaml, 1998).