What Influences Customers to Revisit Full-Service Restaurants in Malaysia?

Abstract

The full-service restaurant segment contributed significantly to the Malaysian restaurant industry in 2020. However, the full-service restaurant segment has been facing fierce competition from the other segments, such as cafes and bars, street stalls, fast food, self-service cafeterias, and home-based segments, particularly after the government’s announcement to loosen the COVID-19 restrictions. Therefore, this study intends to examine predictors of customer revisit intention towards full-service restaurants in Malaysia. The variables investigated in this study were food safety, price fairness, customer satisfaction, and customer revisit intention. This research followed a quantitative approach. Data were collected from 291 customers that had previously experienced dining in full-service restaurants in Malaysia through an online platform using a Google Form. The gathered information was entered into SPSS as coded data and subjected to partial least squares analysis with SmartPLS 3.0. The findings confirmed food safety and price fairness do not have any significant influence on customer revisit intention towards a full-service restaurant. On the other hand, the results of this study show that food safety and price fairness have a positive and significant influence on customer satisfaction. Also, customer satisfaction positively and significantly influences customers’ intentions to revisit. Finally, the analysis confirmed that customer satisfaction mediates the relationship between food safety and price fairness with customers’ revisit intentions towards full-service restaurants in Malaysia. Price fairness was found to have a greater influence than food safety on Malaysian consumers’ revisitation intentions towards full-service restaurants in Malaysia. Industrial players can improve customer revisit intentions for their restaurants using the research findings.