Nostalgia In The Restaurant Industry: A Case Study

Exploring the role of nostalgia in the restaurant experience as well as the customer satisfaction and return patronage

Begüm Kızıldemir

ABSTRACT

During the last few years, marketing the nostalgic food items become a fashion all around the world. Consumers prefer to meet with an old friend that comes with a bunch of memories rather then being introduced to a new one with hundreds of substitutes. Since the junk food industry give such a good respond, it can not be wrong to expect the same positive feedback from the restaurant industry as well. From this point of view, this article proposes a conceptual model that explains the influence of nostalgia and nostalgic bonding in observing post-dining intentions.

INTRODUCTION

There

Unfortunately statistics indicate that eight out of ten new restaurant businesses fail within the first few years. Obviously there are myriad of minor reasons behind these collapses however underestimating the demographic factors, hiring wrong people and assigning them incompatible tasks, do not genuinely understanding the concept of guest, physical environment gaps, inadequate advertising, do not following the trends and finally do not having a satisfactory knowledge and having a poor concentration on profession itself can be counted as the primary reasons of failure within restaurant industry Jin, Lee, and Huffman (2012). In the hospitality literature there are various types of studies related with the nostalgia. But this study, disintegrates with an approach of predicting the future success of the restaurant that use nostalgic trends intensively almost like a brand image. Chen , Yeh, Huan (2013)

LITERATURE REVIEW The perceived satisfaction of the customer, determines eventual success of the restaurateur . And also the prominent factor of customer satisfaction shapes the consequence of restaurant experience. The three major factors that affect the final restaurant experience are called as brand image, customer loyalty and customer

The SERVQUAL approach identifies and measures the gap between customers ' expectations of service and the performance they actually receive. The model is built on the assumption that the smaller the gap, the better the quality of service provided. The SERVQUAL model has to some extent laid the foundations for quality service research; however, its definition of service quality is similar to that of customer satisfaction. Kivela, Inbakaran and Reece (1999) .SERVQUAL is the development of a 22-item instrument for assessing customer perceptions of service quality in service and retailing organizations Parasuman, Berry, Zeithaml (1988)It is important to make a distinction between service quality and satisfaction. Service quality is the consumer 's judgment about the product 's overall excellence or superiority, whereas satisfaction is related to specific transaction(s), that is, acquiring and using the product.’ Kivela, Inbakaran and Reece (1999)