Abstract
Purpose - When it comes to first impressions of family restaurants, people basically think of the following factors: cozy, a refreshing space, indoor lighting, atmospheric music, the best-quality service through mutual interactions with employees, birthday events, follow-up customer management, brand image, and many others. Focusing on such family restaurants characteristics, with consumption experience and customer satisfaction determined as mediator variables, this study looks into the selection factors that affect customer loyalty when choosing a family restaurant. Subsequently, the study conducts an empirical analysis of these selection factors with the greatest influence. Research design, data, and methodology - This study analyzed 200 total surveys of family restaurant customers including college students, workers, housewives, and others. The survey was conducted over two weeks in May 2014. For statistical processing, SPSS 21 was used for factor analysis and reliability analysis as well as AMOS for structural equation analysis. In terms of a variable that would influence either consumption experience or customer satisfaction at the restaurants, the study introduced the concept of customer equity. The study designed a model based on a hypothesis developed using the following factors: customer encounter service value, customer convenience value, brand equity, relationship equity, and other factors defined as components of customer equity by Rust et al. (2000) determined as independent variables as well as with customer experience and customer satisfaction set as mediator variables. The hypothesis, after all, assumed that customer loyalty would be positively (+) influenced. Results - The analysis results from the study reported that brand value, customer encounter service value, and relationship value have positive (+) effects on consumption experience and customer satisfaction. However, as for customer convenience value, this turned out not to have a statistically significant influence on consumption experience and customer satisfaction. In regard to a relation between consumption experience and customer satisfaction, the results showed that the former affects the latter, and in terms of intervening variables, both of these appeared to have a positive (+) effect on customer loyalty. Conclusions - This study suggests that family restaurants should look for strategies that focus on how to promote customer relationships. For example, restaurants could try birthday events or discount events to achieve this goal. Since the study ended up realizing relatively low levels of suitability and statistical significance, the path of the study changed. After all, in order to increase suitability and statistical significance, the study had to eliminate factors such as service quality and others and for this reason the study was unable to conduct the analysis as initially planned. In addition, the data samples of the research were mainly gathered from students, which made it hard to say that the analysis was carried out on samples from every different group. Future research should analyze the characteristics of each group of customers for factors affecting customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the family restaurant chain.