The impact of the social penetration theory on service recovery satisfaction in a restaurant setting
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Abstract
The highly sociable nature of a restaurant is governed by successful customer communication. Effective communication with customers can not only promote customer satisfaction, but can also elicit relationships with customers, bringing them back into the restaurant. This study investigates the drivers of a long-lasting, reliable relationship between servers and customers, and how a customer’s prior experience influences customer satisfaction. The study focuses on maintaining customer satisfaction in the event of a service failure. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of server disclosure on customer disclosure, as well as the impact of prior experience on customer disclosure. Also, the study investigates the influence of server disclosure on customer satisfaction of service recovery, and the influence of prior experience on customer satisfaction of service recovery. A questionnaire was used to collect data for the full study. The questionnaire was developed in Qualtrics, an online survey website, and was distributed through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online survey distribution database. The questionnaire was developed using validated measurement items to test each of the constructs of the study: server disclosure, prior experience, customer disclosure-willingness of providing feedback, customer disclosure-willingness of providing personal feelings, and customer satisfaction of service recovery. The questionnaire was used to collect data which was interpreted using MANOVA. The results indicated a significant relationship among all variables. The strongest influence of customer satisfaction of service recovery was server disclosure. Minimal research has applied the Social Penetration Theory to a restaurant setting to evaluate relationships with customers. Few studies have examined the way server disclosure and customer disclosure effect the relationship between front-line employees and customers in a restaurant setting. There is also little research existing in the literature which examines the way the relationship built by server disclosure and customer disclosure effects the outcomes of service recovery. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no research exists which examines the roles of server disclosure, customer disclosure, and customer satisfaction of service recovery, based on the difference between first-time and repeat restaurant customers. Keywords: Social Penetration Theory, Server disclosure, Customer disclosure, Prior Experience, Satisfaction of Service Recovery