The causal relationship between hotel restaurant brand attributes, customer brand personality, walk-in customer dining experience, satisfaction and post behaviour intention / Tuan Ahmad Tuan Ismail

Brands are becoming a dominant trend in all industries as building a strong brand
creates value for both the firm and the customer. The relationship between brands and
consumers is built once the customers get to know a brand, use its facilities and
experience it. The importance of brand is without an exception is also associated with
the restaurant industry. That's the reason why creating a strong brand is one of the
strategies used by many independent and hotel restaurant operations in attracting and
retaining customers for its performance and operational survival. Nevertheless,
despite the increasing interest in the concept of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand
image, brand competitiveness in general restaurant setting and its operational aspects,
there has been still very little research looking at the association of brands with the
hotel restaurant setting in" particular. In this sense, the influence of hotel restaurant
brands attributes together with the customer brand personality on the customers
dining experience, satisfaction and their post behavior intention has yet not
holistically been investigated. With this gap, the present study empirically
investigates the causal relationship between the five-star hotel restaurant brand
attributes, customer brand personality and the walk- in customer dining experience,
satisfaction and their post purchase behavior. In achieving the outcomes, a causal
research design using through a quantitative approach was used and the walk-in
customer who patronage of the selected five-star hotel restaurants in the Klang Valley
were chosen as a sample for this study. Through drop-off and collect approach
adopted for the administration, 482 usable questionnaires were successfully collected.
With the various statistical analyses ranging from frequency, descriptive, inferential
and the Multivariate Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) via AMOS (Analysis of
Moment Structures) is used to answer the objectives, research questions and
hypotheses. With that, some useful insights pertaining to the issues investigated was
significantly obtained. The results of the structural modelling revealed that the hotel
restaurant brand attributes (food quality, service quality and physical environment)
have a very slight influence on the walk-in customer post purchase behavior
compared to customer brand personality. The hotel restaurant brand attributes (food
quality, service quality and physical environment) and customer brand personality
however have a strong influence of the walk-in customer dining experience and their
dining experience at the five-star hotel restaurants also influences their level of
satisfaction as well as the post purchase behavior intention. It is interesting to note
that the intangible dining experience has an indirect effect on the relationship between
the customer brand personality and the walk-in customer satisfaction. As expected,
satisfaction is giving a mediating effect on the relationship between dining experience
and customer post purchase behavior. These optimistic indications carry varying
consequences and implications to the academic perspective and practical perspective
particularly pertains to the walk-in customers and hotel restaurant operational
management and those closely associated with this kind of business operation.