Research Menthod Secret Recipe

1. LITERATURE REVIEW

Secret Recipe Cakes and Café (SR) in the café and bar segment have experienced increasingly stiff competition not only in the segment but the whole food industry. Hughes (2015), the vice president of Database Marketing Institute supported that in all industry, customer loyalty reduce the cost in serving, in return bring greater profits compared to newly acquired customers, thus, the relationship between customer satisfactions and the factors contributed customer loyalty have become worth researching. The objective of this research is to identify the factors influencing customer satisfaction and loyalty of SR to allow improvement made focusing on these factors.

Huam, Seng & others (2011) mentioned in their research over customer purchase intention in the fast food restaurant that customer satisfaction is a function of customer expectation depending on how customers perceiving to receive the goods and services in advance. SR does not categorized in fast food restaurant was however involved itself in the food industry which also depending on whether customer dining experience match on expectation perceived to satisfy the customer.

Soriano (2002) mentioned that service quality is a crucial factor of customer satisfaction, but there is no guarantee for customer loyalty because satisfied customer not always repurchase. It was supported by marketers in 90’s centuries who realized that satisfied customers not necessarily reuse the goods or services as mentioned by Soriano in 2002 (Hyun, 2010). 

Haghighi M., Dorosti A. & others (2012) have recently conducted a research in Iran and found that service quality have a positive impact on customer satisfaction, it shown the intimate relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty influence has greatly impact in food industry globally.

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The barometer of customer satisfaction was depending on the quality of services in the process and measured the number customers repeating on their purchase was mentioned in the research of Leon & Leslie (2006) in the fast food industry, it was proved later in their research that strong correlation between service quality in five dimensions as in the SERVPERF model and the customer satisfaction. These researches done in Malaysia on service quality shows positive impact to customer satisfaction believe that customers would in return word of mouth advertising as in term of the customer loyalty benefits and suitable for SR. According to some customers’ feedback SR do need improve their service quality by shortening the waiting time. It can be done by upgrading their technology ahead of their competitors, using electronics to make an order.

However, in the research of Andaleeb and Conway in 2006 concluded that not all dimension in these models are applicable because not all the dimensions for example on SERVQUAL and SERVEPERF as shown above play an important role in determining customer satisfaction in the restaurant industry (Muhammad A.R., Ahmad N. S. & others, 2012). It was also later found in year 2007 that SERQUAL model was not applicable in all country proven by Barlett & Han as it does not involve the food quality and price that perceived most in China. Thus, in order to benefit more on SR at where Malaysia is a multicultural country, there is need to further research on other factors that might bring positive impact to customer satisfaction.