Evaluating Service Quality of Korean Restaurants: A Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Approach

Abstract

Every service firm must find ways to attract new customers, retain existing customers, and remain competitive and profitable. As competition increases, delivering better service becomes more important. Service quality is considered as a vital aspect for the success of the firms. Restaurant cannot be separated from the service quality they have to deliver. The development of restaurant is supported with the reputation of the country where the food comes from. Recently, one of the most trending topic is Korean wave which affects the Korean cuisine. A fuzzy AHP was employed to evaluate the service quality. It is more preferable than traditional AHP which is criticized for its inability to handle the uncertainty of the decision maker's perception. Six attributes are used to evaluate five Korean restaurants in Semarang, Indonesia. The result shows that innovation is the most important attribute. It seems that decision makers viewed the food variation and new method service as main factors that the restaurants have to manage. This finding can provide the managers with valuable insights into the attribute that reflects customers' perceptions; also to position their service based on their competitors. Validating the scale in other culture-based restaurants is an interesting area to be pursued.