Introduction To Meal Experience

Introduction to Meal Experience

Meal experience is depicted as a sequence of events that occurs when customers eat out. Meal experience of the customer can be tangible and intangible in nature. There is no such tools to measure meal experience regarding where and when the meal experience occurs. Despite of the difficulties in defining meal experience; it is assumed that the meal experience initiates when customer checks in a restaurant and checks out (Davis, Lockwood, Pantelidis, & Alcott, 2008). Any experience or feeling that the customer might have when checking in and checking out from the restaurant are regarded as important factors to determine total meal experience.

As mentioned above the sequence of events or experience customer encounter

These different types of operation are designed for the needs people have at a particular time, rather than for the type of people they are. For example, a person may be a business customer during the week, but a member of a family at the weekend; they may want a quick lunch on one occasion, a snack while travelling on another and a meal with the family on another occasion. Additionally, the same person may wish to book a wedding or organize some other special occasion.

The main aim of food and beverage operations is to achieve customer satisfaction. In other words, to meet the customers’ needs. According to Lillicrap and Cousins (2010), the needs that customers might be seeking to satisfy

Captive markets

In non-captive markets the customer has a choice of eating out opportunities both in terms of the food and drink to be consumed and the type of operation they may wish to patronize. While it is true that certain types of catering operations might attract certain types of customer, this is by no means true all the time. The same customers may patronize a variety of different operations depending on the needs they have at a given time, for example, a romantic night out, a quick office lunch or a wedding function.

In semi-captive markets there is some restriction, for example travelling by air who have a choice of airline but once a choice is made, they are restricted to the food and drink offer. They may not have option to choose food and beverage operation; they may have to rely on airline.

In captive markets where the customer does not have a choice of operation, there is still a need for satisfaction. For example hospital patients or people in prison.

If people have decided to eat out then it follows that there has been a conscious choice to do this in preference to some other course of action. In other words, the foodservice operator has attracted the customer to buy their product as against some other product, for example theatre, cinema or simply staying at home. The reasons for eating out may be summarized under seven