Evaluating Service Quality of Korean Restaurants: A Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Approach

Abstract

Every service firm must find ways to attract new customers, retain existing customers, and remain competitive and profitable. As competition increases, delivering better service becomes more important. Service quality is considered as a vital aspect for the success of the firms. Restaurant cannot be separated from the service quality they have to deliver. The development of restaurant is supported with the reputation of the country where the food comes from. Recently, one of the most trending topic is Korean wave which affects the Korean cuisine. A fuzzy AHP was employed to evaluate the service quality. It is more preferable than traditional AHP which is criticized for its inability to handle the uncertainty of the decision maker's perception. Six attributes are used to evaluate five Korean restaurants in Semarang, Indonesia. The result shows that innovation is the most important attribute. It seems that decision makers viewed the food variation and new method service as main factors that the restaurants have to manage. This finding can provide the managers with valuable insights into the attribute that reflects customers' perceptions; also to position their service based on their competitors. Validating the scale in other culture-based restaurants is an interesting area to be pursued.

Sustainable Development of Food Processing Enterprises in China

“…AHP is a widely used analytical tool for solving multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems [28]. It eliminates bias in decision-making by converting MCDM problems and subjective evaluation into a multilevel hierarchical framework [29].…”

Bridging the Perception Gap between Management and Customers on DINESERV Attributes: The Korean All-You-Can-Eat Buffet

“…In this research, the AHP model was used for ranking factors significant for choosing an ethnic restaurant, while in the second stage, a structural equation modeling model was used to identify the triggers of perceived image after a visit to an ethnic restaurant. Ulkhaq et al [2] employed a fuzzy AHP to evaluate the service quality at five Korean restaurants in Semarang, Indonesia. In this paper, they provided the managers with valuable insights into the attributes that reflected customers' perceptions, in addition to positioning their service based on their competitors.…”

“…First, most previous IPA related restaurant studies have primarily focused on the importance and performance of service attributes from the perspective on customers [10,31,35,37,42,44]. Several AHP-related restaurant studies have measured the ranking of strategic prioritization of operational resources [1,2,8,9,23,32]. Moreover, some previous studies such as those of Hsu et al [49] and Wang et al [21] have sequentially employed the AHP and IPA methods to measure the service attributes of container terminals and tourist attraction.…”

“…The worldwide restaurant industry has expanded as the demand for eating-out has increased with economic growth, improved standards of living, and changing food consumption patterns. In particular, dining out in Korea has been growing faster than in other countries due to changes in the Korean economic and social environment including lifestyle changes, the alteration of eating habits, and increased eating out [1,2]. This rapid growth has accelerated the complex and fierce competition among restaurants.…”

An integrated fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS model for evaluating the performance of raw material suppliers: A case study in lasem batik writing centre

“…It has been combined with AHP to present fuzzy AHP (FAHP). It is a refinement of the AHP [16] that can facilitate the real-life situations to make effective decisions [17]; see [18][19] for the FAHP applications.…”