Refining the relationship between attribute performance and customer satisfaction in the Chinese hospitality industry

Abstract

Customer satisfaction is determined by the performance of product attributes. This study conducted an analysis of hundreds of thousands of online customer reviews covering 1560 restaurants in Beijing, China, to examine the direct and combined effects of three important attributes (i.e. food taste, physical environment, and employee service) on customer satisfaction with restaurants. The regression model with two dummy variables was designed to test the combined effects of attribute performance. The results showed that the influence of an attribute performance on customer satisfaction was significantly moderated by the performance levels of other attributes and the importance of an attribute was different at different types of restaurants. To satisfy customers, restaurateurs ought to first identify the current performance of various restaurant attributes and accordingly make investment decisions on the attributes to achieve the highest level of satisfaction. This study represented the first attempt to examine the importance of an attribute at different types of restaurants since overall restaurant performance was a multi-dimensional construct consisting of several attributes.

Keywords:

• attribute performance
• customer satisfaction
• hospitality industry
• combined effects

Acknowledgements

This research was partially funded by the National Science Foundation of China (71101039), the Humanities and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (11YJC630292), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (HIT.HSS.201108), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2011M501017).