Customers Loyalty Towards Chinese Restaurant

Literature Review

Specialty restaurants are restaurants who specialised in certain dishes and which is their trademark as well for their restaurant. There are lots of specialty restaurants and through my observation lots of it serves traditional dishes in accordance to their culture and offers an extensive variety of traditional and exotic dishes. To name a few of those specialty restaurants are Chinese Restaurant, Chicken Rice Restaurant, Indian Muslim Restaurant and lots more.

As the owner of a Chinese Restaurant, is developing strong relationships with your customers important so that they will be loyal to you instead of trying your competition? What little things can you do to gain the loyalty of your customers?

As most restaurants are becoming more mature and competition is aggressive, customer loyalty and retention are vital for success. Customer loyalty is a main factor of long-term financial performance of the restaurant operators. Increased loyalty can substantially increase profits in the service industry restaurants, in particular (Reichheld 1996, Gremler and Brown 1999, Tsaur et al. 2002). A study carried out by Reichheld and Sesser (1990) indicated that a five per cent increase in customer retention led to a 25 to 125 per cent increase in nine service industry groups. Kivela et al., (2000) argue that restaurant managers need to recognise their dependence on repeat customers. Loyal customers provide predictability, security and prosperity for those involved in the business.

Customer loyalty is all about attracting the right customer, getting them to buy, buy often, buy in higher quantities and bring you even more customers. Besides that, loyalty is the feeling that a customer has at a brand (Dennis L. Duffy, 2003). However, that is not how you build customer loyalty. It focuses more on building customer loyalty by treating people or our customers how they want to be treated. It is by keeping touch with customer using email marketing, thank you cards and more. By doing this way, the customers will feel that our restaurants are appreciating them because of their frequent visits to our restaurant.

In addition, as to build strong customer loyalty, we also should show that we really care by knowing what they like, and what they dislike. In this case, customers' evaluations of the service quality are critical to service firms that aim to improve their marketing strategies (Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Jain and Gupta, 2004; Ofir and Simonson, 2001).

There are multiple approaches to customer loyalty. Theories of behavioural loyalty were dominating until 1970 considering loyalty as the function of the share of total purchases

(Cunningham 1956:118; Farley 1964:9), function of buying frequency or buying pattern (Tucker 1964: 32; Sheth 1968: 398) or function of buying probability (Harary et al. 1962; McConnell 1968:14; Wernerfelt 1991: 231). So, that is why the factors of customer's loyalty are very important to the business in gaining revenue.

Chinese merchants and traders have long ago been linked to the Malayan Peninsula in the South China Sea. It was, however, later in history during the 1800s, that the Chinese came in masses to the Malayan Peninsula. The Chinese brought with them not only their skills, culture, languages and customs but also the various provincial styles of Chinese cuisines. Chinese cuisine in Malaysia is mainly Cantonese, Hokkien, Hainanese, Teochew and Hakka styles of cooking. Chinese cuisine is generally milder compared to Malay or Indian fare. But thanks to the influence from this multiethnic country, Chinese cuisine in Malaysia, has taken on a spicier touch, often reinventing classic Chinese dishes. Many Chinese dishes are unique in Malaysia and not found in China.

Chinese restaurant has rapid growth in the foodservices industry. Research conduct by Mintel (2009) has show that ethnic food has increase steadily mostly Chinese food segment growing by 11 percent between 2006 and 2008. From this study we can see rapid growth in Chinese restaurant. Today's Chinese restaurant face many competitions with other Asian restaurant for examples Thai, Indian, and Korea restaurant, this point of view is supported by research make by (Edralin & Castillo, 2001) which say that in Filipinos, the choice of the restaurant and fast food outlets ranked according to importance, are flavour and taste, value for money or its nutrient content, presentation and packaging, variety and systematic ordering and selling. This can indicate how restaurant industry faced varies challenges. Most of ethnic restaurant not only provide special food but indirectly it helps foreigners to understand the culture, (Wood and Munoz, 2007) say Chinese restaurant has act as the 'culture ambassadors' which means, ethnic restaurant functioned to help share the foreign food to local customer. Owner of Chinese restaurant create unique in term of theme, this to differential it from other competitors and each theme are natural consequence of their heritage. This attract customer who are looking for something extra ordinary dining experiences (Ebster and Guist, 2004; Lego et al 2002). Chinese restaurant has grow drastically and there are bigger number of repeat customers and contributed to this turnover, based on study made by (Lam, Baum, & Pine, 2001) Has indicated annual turnover some Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong is rate from 30 percent to as high as 100 percent.

Customer satisfaction is a central concept in marketing because it is crucial to meeting the needs and wants of customers (Spreng, Mackenzie, & Olshavsky, 1996; Yi, 1990). It is found that it would gave a positive effect on both of the customer loyalty and relationship quality which is due to the service quality that positively affects emotional satisfaction (Wong, 2004). In most cases, customers are loyal to such restaurants because they are satisfied of the service quality offered by the restaurant. Customer satisfaction is vital towards maintaining the long term relationship. For example, customers will recommend the restaurant that they found is the best place to dine to other people who will bring in more customers and this will increase the restaurant income. Firms deliver a product as well as satisfaction to customers, and obtain profits in return (Yi, 1990). Therefore, more customers will increase in the sales and income of the firm.

Customers want to stay with us these days. We hold on to them even when competitors offer a lower price. It's as if customers are looking for excuses not to switch after they felt comfortable, whereas 10 years ago they were looking for excuses to leave. Whatever the reasons for the changes are, it presents a big opportunity to those entrepreneurs who recognize it. Among other things, more than ever, we should be focusing on keeping the customers