Revisiting the financing behavior of restaurant firms: The firm-size perspective

In International Journal of Hospitality Management, Jang and Ryu [Jang, S., Ryu, K., 2006. Cross-balance sheet interdependencies of restaurant firms: a canonical correlation analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 25 (1), 159–166] published a research article about the financing behavior of restaurant firms, using a canonical correlation analysis. Even though the study presents a general picture of financing in restaurant firms, the financing behaviors of firms of different sizes may differ because they often face different financing environments. Thus, this study re-examines restaurant firms and compares the results with Jang and Ryu [Jang, S., Ryu, K., 2006. Cross-balance sheet interdependencies of restaurant firms: a canonical correlation analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 25 (1), 159–166] to further enhance the understanding of the financing behaviors. The results show that, despite the differences in firm sizes, overall financing behaviors are similar to those reported by Jang and Ryu [Jang, S., Ryu, K., 2006. Cross-balance sheet interdependencies of restaurant firms: a canonical correlation analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management 25 (1), 159–166], although they also suggest that restaurant firms of different sizes do indeed exhibit some different cross-balance sheet interdependencies including relatively more reliance on accounts payable among small and medium firms and more use of long-term debts among large firms. Moreover, long-term assets related to stockholder equity more among large firms but related to supplier credit more among small and medium firms.     

Crisis-management practices in the restaurant industry

This study examines crisis-management practices in the Israeli restaurant industry. The study uses a questionnaire for evaluating the importance and usage of different practices for crisis management. The findings show that managers are generally consistent in crisis management and that they generally use the most important practices. The findings illustrate the significance of government support in external crises and suggest that improved competitiveness and cost-cutting activities are significant for combating business hardships. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and management of crises.     

Innovation,entrepreneurship, and restaurant performance: A higher-order structural model

Drawing on theories from hospitality, innovation, and entrepreneurship, this study examines a higher-order structural model investigating business innovation, the owners' entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), and human capital as drivers of restaurant performance. The theoretically derived model was tested on data from 198 café and restaurant owners in Australia. The PLS-SEM analysis found restaurant innovation activities and the owner's ESE to positively influence restaurant performance. Furthermore, the six ESE dimensions had varying effects on restaurant performance, with ‘Developing new product and market opportunities’ having the strongest effect. In contrast, the entrepreneur's ‘human capital’, representing their levels of business ownership experience and entrepreneurship/industry education, did not significantly affect restaurant performance. However, human capital indirectly affected performance through innovation and ESE. The findings of this study advance theories in restaurant entrepreneurship and performance and present important implications for industry authorities to develop a successful and sustainable restaurant sector.     

Estimating the impact of entertainment on the restaurant revenues of a Las Vegas hotel casino: An exploratory study

Considering the growing presence of non-gaming amenities in a mature casino market such as the Las Vegas Strip, this study examined the indirect contribution of showroom entertainment to casino-operated restaurant business volumes. Using the internal data of a Las Vegas hotel casino, this research found a statistically significant and positive relationship between daily showroom headcounts and food and beverage revenues. For each additional show attendee, daily food and beverage revenue increased $6.96. This finding suggests that casino executives should consider leveraging show traffic with additional revenue-enhancing venues such as restaurants.     

A cross-cultural comparison of fast food restaurant selection criteria between Korean and Filipino college students

Despite the globalization of the hospitality and tourism industry, present cross-cultural research is limited to examining consumer behaviors or perceptions on the products and services the industry provides. The current exploratory study between Korea and the Philippines investigates college students’ perceptions on the fast food restaurant selection criteria with respect to the attributes they feel are important. A conjoint analysis, proven as a statistical marketing research tool with strong predictive power of consumer choices among multi-attribute product alternatives, was utilized for the analysis of the data for the study, and the analysis revealed that both Koreans and Filipinos viewed Menu Price as the most important attribute. Next important attributes, in Korea, were followed by brand, food-related factors and service- and hygiene-related factors, while in the Philippines, they were food-related factors, service- and hygiene-related factors and brand. This type of study is requisite for globalization of the food service industry in developing effective marketing strategies and establishing operational strategies, by understanding the different components of the Asian food service industry relative to the US market.     

The interaction of major resources and their influence on waiting times in a multi-stage restaurant

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of major resources on multi-stage waiting times and their interactions on waiting times. The simulation study showed that each resource influenced waiting for different service stages and that interaction among the multi resources occurred. The results implied that the simultaneous increase in the levels of two resources had a synergistic effect on reducing waiting times for some stages. However, for some resources, the simultaneous increase in the resource levels did not help reduce waiting times when the increase in one resource type overwhelmed the other resource's function.     

Waitresses’ facial cosmetics and tipping: A field experiment

It had been found that cosmetics do improve female facial attractiveness when judgments were made based on photographs. However, these studies were conducted only on laboratory and field studies are scarce in the literature and none of them have tested the effect of customers’ behavior. An experiment was carried out in restaurant in order to verify if waitresses’ makeup is associated with an increase in patrons’ tipping behavior. Female waitresses with and without makeup were instructed to act in the same way than usual with their patrons. Results showed that the makeup condition was associated with a significant increase in tipping behavior of the male customers.     

Service in the restaurant industry: an American and Irish comparison of service failures and recovery strategies

The literature on service failure and recovery has to date tended to focus on American experiences or on single nation studies. As large numbers of service firms continue to seek opportunities in foreign markets, more effort needs to be directed at assessing cross-national similarities and differences so that appropriate strategies can be developed. This study compares the effects of failure and recovery strategies in the restaurant sector of two countries with very different dining traditions—the United States and Ireland. Analysis of over 700 personal interviews with restaurant customers shows that there is much commonality with regard to service failures but significant differences in recovery efforts. Especially noteworthy, however is that American customers are much more likely to expect such measures. In both countries, overcompensation methods do not appear to influence customer repeat patronage intentions, nor do they have significant influence on the rating of recovery effort. This last finding suggests that restaurants could and should use less expensive recovery methods.     

Turnaround strategy: A study of restaurant firms

This paper uses a case study approach to analyze the turnaround actions of two restaurant firms and compares them to the model of Robbins and Pearce [1992. Strategic Management Journal 9, 287–309]. The objective of this study is to scrutinize why these firms were unsuccessful in turning around and identify gaps between the firms’ actions and the empirical model of turnaround proposed by Robbins and Pearce. Two key turnaround measures, i.e., retrenchment and recovery are explored in detail and discussed in the context of the firms. The need for studying turnaround strategies is warranted as the number of hospitality firms that perish because of unsuccessful turnaround strategies is on the increase. Since turnaround strategies have not been pursued vigorously as a stream of research within the hospitality industry context, this approach would provide a framework for hospitality researchers to initiate similar future research efforts, which in turn would help the industry cope with turnaround.     

Implications of a long-term increase in oil prices for tourism

It is expected that global oil prices will increase in the future. Assessing the overall economic impacts on tourism is difficult, as oil price rises will be concomitant with global changes in other commodity prices, exchange rates, and incomes. A general equilibrium perspective is therefore presented in this paper. The model couples a global general equilibrium model with a purpose-built CGE model of New Zealand, which focuses on describing tourism supply and demand in some detail. The results indicate a decrease in real gross national disposable income of 1.7% for a doubling of oil price and a 9% reduction in the real value of tourism exports. As a result of segment-specific price increases and differing income and exchange rate effects and elasticities, the reduction in demand for tourism in New Zealand by 18 segments differs substantially. The greatest reduction in demand is observed for tourists from the United Kingdom.     

Does corporate growth really matter in the restaurant industry?

In this study, the authors hypothesize that growth strategies are not necessarily always performance-enhancing strategies that are sustainable. This is contrary to what industry managers tend to believe to be the outcome of growth strategies. Based on past research, a second hypothesis is developed that corporate liquidity impacts performance in a more positive way than growth strategies, and therefore, should be considered in the decision-making framework of firms before they launch into new products and/or markets. The interrelationship between corporate growth and liquidity is also tested, which further highlights the importance of pursuing corporate liquidity.     

How a crowded restaurant affects consumers’ attribution behavior

This study finds that when consumers perceive a restaurant as very crowded, they would attribute the high level of crowdedness to high food quality, good reputation and low food price that draw people to the restaurant. On the contrary, in the case of a quiet restaurant, the customer would associate the quietness with low food quality, high food price and poor reputation. The implication for restaurant managers is that they can manipulate the level of crowdedness in their restaurant to create a favorable impression of high food quality, low food price and good reputation.     

Effects of songs with prosocial lyrics on tipping behavior in a restaurant

Recent research has shown that exposure to songs with prosocial lyrics was associated with prosocial behavior and accessibility of prosocial thoughts. However theses studies were performed in a laboratory setting where participants were instructed to listening songs alone in a room. So the effect of prosocial songs in a natural setting, with several people in a room and with various ambient noises still remained in question. An experiment was carried out in a restaurant in order to test if listening or not, prosocial songs by patrons, was associated with variation in their tipping behavior. Results showed that prosocial songs were associated with a significant increase in tipping behavior.     

Enhancing service quality improvement strategies of fine-dining restaurants: New insights from integrating a two-phase decision-making model of IPGA and DEMATEL analysis

The traditional IPA model has been considered to be a decision-making tool for service quality management. However, the IPA model does not meet the assumptions of the service quality gap, and also cannot explore the connection between service quality attributes, which can easily lead to decision-making errors of service quality management. The purpose of this study is to apply the IPGA model and DEMATEL to explore the service quality improvement priority of fine-dining restaurants and the causal relationship between service quality attributes, and use it as the decision-making reference of service quality strategy planning and resource reorganizing for the restaurant industry with limited resources. The study applied the customers of 8 fine-dining restaurants in Taipei City as the study object, and there are 502 effective samples. The study result shows that the dimensions of reliability, responsiveness, and assurance are concentrated here, and are the restaurant service quality dimensions that most need to be improved from the customer perceptive. In addition, the total effect of reliability is the highest among all the service quality dimensions. Reliability and responsiveness, in addition to impacting each other, will impact assurance and empathy. According to the study result, through IPGA and DEMATEL, the service quality performance of fine-dining restaurants and the resource input priority can be grasped more objectively and accurately, which can be used as a reference for manager to plan the service quality improvement strategy.     

Tipping behaviour: a disconfirmation of expectation perspective

This study examines the effect of expectancy–disconfirmation on tipping behaviour. Findings of our study show that restaurant patrons determine how much tips to give based on the discrepancy between the actual and expected level of food and service quality, rather than the absolute level of food and service quality. That is, given a positive disconfirmation, customers would give more tips. On the other hand, under situations of negative disconfirmation, tip size would drop. Furthermore, we found that the impact of a negative expectancy–disconfirmation on tip size is larger than that of a positive expectancy–disconfirmation of the same magnitude.     

Senior citizens and their dining-out traits: Implications for restaurants

Continuing and rapid growth of the mature population in Taiwan has forced the restaurant industry to prepare for substantial social and demographic changes. This study used a telephone survey to elicit attributes important to the restaurant patronage behaviors of consumers aged 65 and older who lived independently. The variables examined include a battery of demographic and health-related variables, a series of motivation attributes, restaurant selection criteria, and measures of consumer's restaurant patronage behaviors. Two distinctive segments were identified; frequent and convenience restaurant patrons, and occasional and family restaurant patrons. The results of this study of mature consumer's restaurant patronage behavior have several implications for this increasingly important and prominent segment of the restaurant consumer marketplace.     

The influence of collectivism in restaurant selection: A sentence completion experiment

In a between-subjects experimental design, Korean-Americans and U.S. born non-Koreans were asked to watch a virtual tour of a restaurant and then complete the following sentence: “This restaurant is a good place to go when….” Findings indicate that the Korean-Americans were much more likely to finish the sentence with a collective phrase than the non-Koreans. Moreover, those Korean-Americans utilizing an integration pattern of acculturation were more prone to demonstrate a collective mindset in the sentence completion task than those employing an assimilation pattern of acculturation.     

An exploratory study examining information technology adoption and implementation in full-service restaurant firms

The purpose of the paper is to explore and compare the current use of information technology-related advances in chain and independent full-service restaurants, the factors that motivate managers of these types of restaurants to decide whether or not to implement such technology, and how these managers perceive the impact of technology on the firm. A case study analysis involving four San Francisco Bay Area full-service restaurants was conducted to examine the framework of full-service restaurants to implement new technology. Propositions are developed that purport the information technology adoption and implementation characteristics of full-service restaurant firms while elucidating the distinctiveness between chain and independent firms.     

Turnover's relationships with sales, tips and service across restaurants in a chain

This study used restaurant level data from a casual-dining restaurant chain in the Midwestern United States to examine turnover's relationships with sales, tips and service. Turnover was negatively correlated with sales and service among high-volume restaurants but not among low-volume restaurants. Interestingly, the opposite pattern was observed for turnovers’ relationship with tip percentages—turnover was negatively correlated with tip percentages among low-volume restaurants but not among high-volume restaurants. Plausible explanations for these findings are discussed along with their practical implications.