Service orientation for contact employees in Korean casual-dining restaurants

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to validate Groves’ (Perceived service orientation of restaurant employees, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 1992) restaurant service orientation scale, to examine contact employees’ service orientation in Korean casual-dining restaurants, and to investigate the effect of employee characteristic variables on service orientation. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to waitpersons and bartenders working for a casual-dining chain in Seoul, Korea. Factor analysis indicated that Groves’ scale had four dimensions (organizational support, customer focus, service under pressure, and prior customer relationship) rather than three. The additional factor of prior customer relationship was determined to be a subdimension of the customer-focus factor. Age, gender, marriage, and education did not have significant impacts on service orientation. However, employees with a longer length of service and those in supervisory positions displayed a higher degree of service orientation. Lastly, employees in each unit of the chain displayed significant differences in service orientation.