The interest in the study regarding the factors that influence restaurant-choice has been developed in recent decades. In 1962, Becknell and Maher identified the main criteria to select a food retailer, which include food quality, cleanliness, pricing, service, and unique features. Miller and Ginter (1979) also mentioned fast-food criteria that influence choice, such speed of service, variety of menu, popularity with children, cleanliness, convenience, taste of food, and price. However, these two studies do not assist marketers in understanding the factors on how consumers choose a restaurant.Restaurants-choice research was started to support the study of Lewis (1981) regarding restaurant advertising. In addition, Lewis (1981) concluded that the aspect of food is the most important factor for restaurant choice, which was also confirmed by Auty (1992) and Kevila (1997).
Yet, Lewis (1981) still mentioned that when consumers made the restaurant choice, they seemed to process “the bundle” of factors or “total-benefit” factors instead considering the single criteria(Alpert, 1971, Lewis, 1981).The role of dinner’s occasions was revealed by June and Smith (1987), where the ranking of restaurant’s feature are not stable, but varied depending on occasions. In this study, five features were given consideration, including the price, service, atmosphere, liquor license, and quality of food in four occasions, namely family occasions, intimate occasions, celebrations, and business lunches.Liquor license was the most important factor for intimate occasions, and celebration dinner, but for business lunches and family dinners, liquor license ranked third. In support of this study is the study done by Auty (1992), Sweeney (1992), and Koo (1999), which supported the role of occasions in choosing a restaurant. Auty (1992) stated the restaurant choice model, and identified the important attributes influencing restaurant choices in the United Kingdom.
The study emphasized that food aspect was the most important criteria in choosing a restaurant (Kivela, 1997, Lewis, 1981, Auty, 1992). Likewise, Kivela (1997) studied restaurant segmentation in Hong Kong, and confirmed that food aspect was the most important factor for Hong Kong’s consumers as well. Both Kivela (1997) and Auty (1992) agreed that in Hong Kong and in the United Kingdom, age and income influences the segmentation of the market. Age and income factors ave something in common which reflected certain content (Auty, 1992, Kivela, 1997). For example, young people in school age have a limit in their income, so are not the type of individuals who would dine at expensive restaurants. In relation to this is the study done by Tucci (1997) who examined whether or not service-guarantee policy affected decision-making in restaurant choice, and found out the unexpected result, stating that service guarantee did not have any effect on restaurant choice.
Not all studies agreed with such results mentioned. One of these studies is done by Sweeney (1992) who found that reputation, and employees’ manner were the key factors in selecting a restaurant. In addition, price had positive and negative roles in restaurant selection. The researcher further summarized that consumers seem to focus from personal sources of information such as experience, and word-of-mouth more than non-personal sources such as location, advertising, price, and physical facilities.
Nevertheless, Pedraja (2001) argued that external information including advertising and information provided at the premise were drawing more attention from consumers. With this, it can be understood that advertising becomes a vital tool in making decisions, whereas interpersonal source was employed less in the high-income family (Pedraja and Yague, 2001). Similarly, Koo (1999) agreed that advertising played more important role as a source of information in decision-making for choosing a restaurant.
