Anticipated guilt and pleasure in a healthy food consumption context

Recognizing the increasing importance of healthiness in food-related businesses, this study attempted to investigate the role of consumers’ affective responses in a healthy food consumption context. To achieve its objectives, this study incorporated anticipated emotional constructs in a decision-making model and investigated the relationships among perceived healthiness, anticipated guilt and pleasure, and behavioral intentions (e.g., purchase, spreading positive word-of-mouth, and recommending the food) in a quick service restaurant setting. The results of this study suggest that anticipated pleasure positively influenced behavioral intentions and mediated the relationship between perceived healthiness and behavioral intentions, whereas anticipated guilt did not influence behavioral intentions. Additionally, this study investigated the moderating role of dietary concerns in consumers’ decision-making processes and found that the low dietary concerns group was more susceptible to anticipated pleasure compared to the high dietary concerns group. Further findings and implications are provided in the main body of the paper.     

The effect of online restaurant menus on consumers’ purchase intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic

As COVID-19 escalated globally in 2020, mandated suspension of dine-in services was instilled to control virus transmission. Restaurants lost billions of dollars, millions experienced severe employment changes, and numerous small restaurants closed. For those remaining in business, converting to online food ordering was essential. Unique to the food ordering setting, this study extended the Stimulus-Organism-Response model to predict the purchase intentions of participants in an online food ordering context. Using structural equation modeling, this study discovered the indirect effects of the menu’s visual appeal and informativeness, and the perception of COVID-19 risks on consumer purchase intentions. This causal relationship was significantly mediated by consumers’ desire for food and their perceived convenience of online food ordering. Through providing theoretical and managerial implications for how to identify appropriate products, utilize content marketing effectively, and attract new customers, this study could assist restaurants in adapting to remaining competitive, even post COVID-19.     

Does offering an organic food menu help restaurants excel in competition? An examination of diners’ decision-making

This study aims to examine whether the presence of an organic food menu can positively influence diners’ decision-making. A 3 (restaurant segment: quick service vs. casual dining vs. fine dining) by 2 (price discrepancy between competing restaurants: small vs. large) scenario-based experiment was conducted with 405 U.S. consumers. MANCOVA results indicate that using organic ingredients offers a greater advantage for the quick-service segment regarding perceived food quality, attitudes towards the restaurant, and willingness to select, compared to casual and fine dining segments. The magnitude of a premium price of organic ingredients negatively influences such advantage in the process of consumers’ decision-making. When a large (vs. small) premium price is charged for using organic ingredients, customers’ preferences for the restaurant (over its rival) significantly drops to such an extent that customers are more willing to choose the competitor (i.e., rival restaurant with a conventional menu). Discussions and implications are further elaborated.     

Price premiums for organic menus at restaurants: What is an acceptable level?

This study identifies acceptable premium price levels that customers would be willing to pay for organic menu items at restaurants in the United States. Previous literature indicates that health-related and socio-demographic characteristics significantly influence consumers’ intentions to purchase organic food. To advance our understanding of how different consumers respond to changes in organic food prices, this study examines the moderating effects of the level of health consciousness (high versus low), gender (male versus female), and age (young versus old) on the relationship between premium price levels and purchasing intentions. In addition, this study further investigates acceptable premium price levels for different consumer segments at two types of restaurants (casual dining versus fine dining). The results of this study provide guidelines for menu design and strategies for restaurateurs to devise effective price premiums for organic menu options.     

Does size matter? Corporate social responsibility and firm performance in the restaurant industry

Despite an increasing number of hospitality studies on the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP), the literature has predominantly focused on the CSR–CFP relation without considering moderating factors. Consequently, the current study introduces firm size as a potential moderator on the CSR–CFP relationship. Performing a two-way fixed-effects model by firm and year with Newey-West standard errors, this study finds that firm size moderates the effect of positive CSR on CFP while it does not moderate the effect of negative CSR on CFP in the U.S. restaurant context.     

Restaurants and COVID-19: What are consumers’ risk perceptions about restaurant food and its packaging during the pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent U.S. in-restaurant dining restrictions deleteriously affected the restaurant industry. While dining restrictions were adopted to prevent human contact, evidence suggests that consumers may mistakenly perceive that restaurant \"food\" and its \"packaging\" are risky sources of COVID-19. To explore consumers' COVID-19 risk perceptions about food itself, restaurant food specifically, and restaurant food packaging, this study collected nationwide U.S. consumer survey data (n = 958) using an online consumer panel. Findings showed that: (1) consumers were less concerned about contracting COVID-19 from food in general than restaurant food and its packaging, with consumer restaurant concern highest for food served in restaurants, and lowest for hot/cooked restaurant food followed by restaurant food from carry-out; and (2) the risk perceptions of consumers varied with financial concern for food, gender, and being in a high-risk category of COVID-19. Implications for researchers, restauranteurs, government, and food safety professionals are discussed.     

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.     

To gift or not to gift: How providing a memento affects a restaurant magician’s tips

Tipping is an important source of income for many service workers, who would benefit from a better understanding of things they can do increase their customers’ tips. Among the many studies providing such knowledge are two studies reported by Strohmetz et al. (2002), who found that restaurant servers can increase their tips by leaving their customers with free candy at the completion of the dining experience. The current study tests how the “candy gift” effect generalizes for table magicians who leave their customers with a souvenir playing card. Data suggest that a table magician receives more frequent and larger tips when he gives the customer one of the cards from his deck as a memento. This finding suggests that gift effects on tipping are reliable and generalize beyond gifts of candy from waiters and waitresses. Apparently, workers in different areas of the service industry can use a variety of different gifts to create a need for their customers to reciprocate with larger tips.