Environment, food, or employee: Identifying factors in authentic dining experience influencing customer satisfaction

Abstract

An authentic dining experience offers a unique and exotic experience to the customers who come to ethnic restaurants. It could become a distinctive feature for ethnic restaurants that can differentiate them from other types of restaurants. Moreover, it is believed that by providing a real authentic dining experience, customers in ethnic restaurants would become more satisfied. The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors of the authentic dining experience that affect customer satisfaction in ethnic restaurants. The correlations between three dimensions of authentic dining experience (i.e., food concern, environmental concern, and employee concern) with customer satisfaction were analyzed. Questionnaires were given to 203 customers of the ethnic restaurants in Bandung, Indonesia. The data were then analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results show that, simultaneously, there is a significant correlation between the authentic dining experience to customer satisfaction. However, partially, food concern does not significantly influence customer satisfaction; this finding will be further described. Therefore, ethnic restaurants could spend more attention to their employee and environmental dimensions to increase their customers’ satisfaction toward authentic dining experience.