M.A. Thesis


The Study of the Relationships among Service Quality, Brand Image on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty - Focused on Grilled Pork Entrails Shop -

Seok Jo Hong

Department of Business Administration
Graduate School of Business Administration
Yeungnam University
(Supervised by Professor Sang Hyeon Kim)


Abstract

As franchise markets have become bigger, the number of Korean-food franchises has also been rising. Simultaneously, quite a few Makchang-gui shops have been popular. For "Makchang-Gui" Restaurants, it is necessary to have competitive edge in price as well as in customer''s satisfaction and loyalty by improving their service quality based on differentiation strategy and sustainable competitive advantage. Though the importance of service quality and brand image of franchise business has been demonstrated, there has not been a research aimed at Makchang-gui specialty stores. This study conducted a survey of customers who had used Makchang-gui specialty stores on how service quality and brand image can influence on customer’s satisfaction and loyalty. In terms of service quality, this study used the model by Brandy & Cronin(2001) in order to measure service quality constructs of specialty stores as interactions of customer-personnel, physical environment and result quality.
This study set up hypotheses as follows: First, the service quality (physical environment, communication, result quality) will have a meaningful impact on customer’s satisfaction. Second, the brand image will affect customer’s satisfaction. Third, customer’s satisfaction will have an important bearing on customer’s revisiting intention.
To verify them, the study have done survey research on the customers living in Daegu and GyeongBuk. As analytical methods, this research evaluated reliability and validity for each variable and then conducted reliability analysis and factor analysis using SPSS22.0. At the same time, Smart PLS2.0(M3) was adopted for confirmatory factor analysis and verification of validity and hypotheses.
Analysis showed that result quality influenced on customer’s satisfaction but physical environment did not have a meaningful impact on customer’s satisfaction. Besides, brand image affected customer’s satisfaction, while customer’s satisfaction influenced customer’s loyalty.
Significances of the study are as follows: First, although there are many researches on applications of service quality of food service industry, this research is the first survey targeting on Makchang-gui in particular. Therefore, it bears an academic significance in that it will provide a basis for further studies. Second, it is necessary to recognize environmental elements such as service facilities that influence on customer’s satisfaction and supporting facilities provision and design will be needed. In addition, this study suggests that customer management(or MOT) for customer’s satisfaction and developing distinct recipes to meet continuous customer demands will be required.