Restaurant marketing: selection and segmentation in Hong Kong

Jaksa Jack Kivela: Assistant Professor, Department of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Introdution

In pilot study interviews in various restaurants in Hong Kong, restaurateurs revealed that their restaurant's marketing strategies depend not only on the quality and style of food, but also on other attributes such as ambience or atmosphere created by the restaurant. Is it then plausible to suggest that restaurateurs should seek to differentiate their operations by attributes other than food quality and food type? Almanza et al. (1994), Barsky (1992), Bojanic and Rosen (1994), Dube et al. (1994), Finkelstein (1989), Johns et al. (1996), and Lowenstein (1995), think that this might be so. Finkelstein (1989) argues that the restaurateur has long accepted atmosphere as a feature of dining out, equal in importance and sometimes more important than the food itself [and that] the ambience of the restaurant has little to do with the consumption of foods but a great deal to do with the preparation of the diner's expectations and experiences and his/her subsequent responsiveness to the transactions of dining out... This argument is also strongly supported by Bitner's (1992) postulation of "servicescapes" and how these impact on customers' perceptions and dining satisfactions.

For restaurant marketers, this means that the business of providing and selling good food, may no longer be the most important part of the marketing strategy by which to attract potential customers, and keep regular customers returning. Furthermore, if marketing strategies of restaurants are to be underpinned by "style" type benefits, rather than the quality or type of food, a number of questions arise which need answering. For example:

1 do customers actually select restaurants on the basis of their unique ambience or style?

2 what choice variables for dining out do they consider when making a selection?

3 does the order of importance of these variables change according to the dining occasion, age, and income segment? Do these choice variables differ for different dining occasions and different restaurant types? and

4 does the order of importance of choice variable change once a choice set has been evoked by the customer?

Research findings as suggested by Bitner (1992), Finkelstein (1989) and Auty (1992) indicate that a restaurant's style could be a very important...