Brand Image, Over-Service and Customer Loyalty: A Case Study of Restaurant Chain in Taiwan

As industrial progress contributes to larger family incomes and social habits evolve more and families, particularly those with double incomes, are dining out. This is very evident in Taiwan. In turn this is creating new growth opportunities in the Taiwanese catering industry which is exponentially growing. Chain-restaurants in Taiwan place a high value on brand image and individual style service. These certainly are a consideration for the customer/client in selecting a particular restaurant. This has led to Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) in many chains. This, in turn, leads to what the Chinese term Over-Service or in western parlance Over-the-top-Service. Although it is well meant Over-Service can be intrusive and counter-productive to customer satisfaction. Ironically, as will be seen below, the converse appears to be true in the case of chain-restaurants. Customer loyalty to a brand is a more constant element in determining long term relationships between the customer/client and the restaurant. This study looks at a chain-restaurant group in Taiwan to investigate the impact on it of the three elements brand image, over-service and customer loyalty and how they complement and relate to each other. The result reveals that there is a positive correlation between brand image, over-service and customer loyalty. There is no distinction between brand image and customer loyalty generally as the latter is a follow on from the former. There is, however, a positive correlation between over-service and customer loyalty. As the quality of the service of the chain-restaurant increases the greater the loyalty of the customers will become.