Search results

As the restaurant industry is a representative service industry, long-living restaurants could carry the secrets of key factors that are needed to establish “sustainable business models” in service industry. The authors aim to answer the following question: How can restaurants innovate business model sustainably to last for more than 50 years through the era of digital transformation with open innovation dynamics?

Five long-lived restaurants from Daegu, Kyoto and Naples were selected separately by using the snowballing approach, and were analyzed through in-depth interviews and participatory observations.

Restaurants in Daegu have lived long mainly because of adding value to their recipes. Restaurants in Kyoto have lived very long, primarily by decoupling their original services, ingredients and recipes. Restaurants in Naples have enjoyed long lives by coupling or recoupling their ingredients, services and recipes.

The implication is that long-living restaurants or service firms could maintain their own sustainability by dynamically circling the following services: (1) adding and boning recipes (focusing on special menus or products), (2) coupling of ingredients (creative recoupling of original ingredients) and (3) decoupling of services (disconnecting the value chain and rebalancing it).

Using the lens of crisis innovation and strategic alignment, this study explores how a segment of the restaurant sector that may be less agile than others—Michelin-starred restaurants—perceives and aligns with the challenges brought about by the COVID-19-pandemic.

The study collected data from 19 Michelin-starred restaurants in Spain using a qualitative interview method. The data were analyzed qualitatively and organized thematically.

Four key categories of strategic challenges were identified: human resources, uncertainty, control and economic challenges. In response, chefs displayed both behavioral and organizational strategies. Those organizational strategies were new human resource management, reorganization, product and service innovation and marketing. While the new human resource management actions adopted to align with the human resource challenges identified, a misalignment remains between some of the other strategic actions, such as product and service innovation, marketing and economic and uncertainty challenges.

The findings offer new insight into Michelin-starred restaurant chefs' challenges and (mis)alignment strategies, an area that has been understudied in the current literature on innovative responses in the hospitality sector post-pandemic.

Restaurant operators often use auspicious connotations embedded in the names and shapes of dishes to increase consumers’ purchase intentions. However, the interaction effect of multiple auspicious cues (i.e. food name and shape) on purchase intentions has rarely been examined in the restaurant context. Thus, grounded in processing fluency theory, this study investigates the direct influence of the two-way interaction effect of food name (auspicious vs nonauspicious) and shape (auspicious vs. nonauspicious) on purchase intentions and its indirect influence via perceived auspiciousness and positive emotions.

Utilizing a 2 (food name: auspicious name vs. nonauspicious name) × 2 (food shape: auspicious shape vs. nonauspicious shape) between-subjects design, the authors conducted two experimental studies with 356 Chinese customers. In Study 1, which focused on a main dish, we investigated the two-way interaction effect food name × food shape on purchase intentions. In Study 2, we replicated this experimental study by focusing on a different food type (i.e. dessert) to test the direct and indirect influences of the two-way interaction of food name × food shape on purchase intentions through perceived auspiciousness and positive emotions.

The results reveal that the congruity condition of auspicious names and shapes significantly influences consumers’ purchase intentions. Congruity with auspicious food cues also indirectly affects purchase intentions through consumers’ perceived auspiciousness and positive emotions. These effects were consistently observed in two experimental studies analyzing different dish types (main dish and dessert).

Restaurateurs should consider utilizing auspicious food cues to attract customers. Specifically, they should combine both food name and shape to increase their perceived auspiciousness and sales.

This study tested processing fluency theory using auspicious food cues. This study contributes to the hospitality literature by improving our understanding of the congruence effect by exemplifying the conceptual alignment between food name and food shape.

Operational risks can cause considerable, atypical disturbances and impact food supply chain (SC) resilience. Indicatively, the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions in the UK food services as nationwide stockouts led to unprecedented discrepancies between retail and home-delivery supply capacity and demand. To this effect, this study aims to examine the emergence of digital platforms as an innovative instrument for food SC resilience in severe market disruptions.

An interpretive multiple case-study approach was used to unravel how different generations of e-commerce food service providers, i.e. established and emergent, responded to the need for more resilient operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

SC disruption management for high-impact low-frequency events requires analysing four research elements: platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency. Established e-commerce food operators use partner onboarding and local waste valorisation to enhance resilience. Instead, emergent e-commerce food providers leverage localised rapid upscaling and product personalisation.

Digital food platforms offer a highly customisable, multisided digital marketplace wherein platform members may aggregate product offerings and customers, thus sharing value throughout the network. Platform-induced disintermediation allows bidirectional flows of data and information among SC partners, ensuring compliance and safety in the food retail sector.

The study contributes to the SC configuration and resilience literature by investigating the interrelationship among platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency for safe and resilient food provision within exogenously disrupted environments.

This study aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on knowledge-sharing drivers in small- and medium-sized family firms within the restaurant and fast-food industry. The pandemic has led to significant changes in business culture and consumer behaviour, accelerating digital transformation, disruptions in global supply chains and emerging new business opportunities. These changes have also influenced knowledge sharing (KS) and its underlying drivers.

To address the research objectives, a two-phase study was conducted. In the first phase, an exploratory analysis using the Delphi method was used to identify the essential drivers and factors of KS in family businesses (FBs). This phase aimed to establish a conceptual model for the study. In the second phase, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the identified knowledge-sharing drivers. The study examined both the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods to capture the shifts in attitudes towards KS.

The findings indicate a significant shift in attitudes towards knowledge-sharing drivers. Before the pandemic, organisational drivers played a central role in KS. However, after the emergence of the pandemic, technological drivers became more prominent. This shift highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on KS within FB.

The research contributes to understanding knowledge-sharing in the context of FBs and sheds light on the specific effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on knowledge-sharing drivers. The insights gained from this study can inform strategies and practices aimed at enhancing KS in similar organisational settings.

As technology increasingly integrates into the restaurant industry, avatar servers present a promising avenue for promoting healthier dining habits. Grounded in the halo effect theory and social comparison theory, this study aims to delve into the influence of avatars' appearance, humor and persuasion on healthier choices and customer satisfaction.

This paper comprises three experimental studies. Study 1 manipulates avatar appearance (supermodel-looking vs normal-looking) to examine its effects on perceived attractiveness, warmth and relatability. These factors influence customer satisfaction and healthy food choices through the psychological mechanisms of social comparison and aspirational appeal. Studies 2 and 3 further refine this theoretical model by assessing the interplay of appearance with humor (presence vs absence) and persuasion (health-oriented vs beauty-oriented), respectively.

Results suggest that avatars resembling supermodels evoke stronger aspirational appeal and positive social comparison due to their attractiveness, thus bolstering healthier choices and customer satisfaction. Moreover, humor moderates the relationship between appearance and attractiveness, while persuasion moderates the effects of appearance on social comparison and aspirational appeal.

This research bridges the halo effect theory and social comparison theory, offering insights enriching the academic discourse on technology’s role in hospitality.

The findings provide actionable insights for managers, tech developers and health advocates.

Despite its significance, avatar design research in the hospitality sector has been overlooked. This study addresses this gap, offering a guideline for crafting attractive and persuasive avatars.

The paper provides a step-by-step guide in the guise of a roadmap for service improvement initiatives using importance performance map analysis (IPMA).

To empirically illustrate how IPMA can be applied to any service industry, three sectors are considered; sports and fitness (study A), hospitality (study B) and higher education (study C). Following the proper selection of measuring instruments and their evaluation using structural equation modeling-partial least squares (Smart-PLS), IPMA is applied to identify those attributes having strong total effects (high importance) over the targeted construct (satisfaction) but which also have low average latent variable scores (low performance).

For sports and fitness (study A), the physical aspects and programme quality require managerial attention. For the hospitability sector (study B), it is service commitment, interaction quality and internal sense of happiness. Whereas for higher education (study C), it is administrative quality as well as the element of transformative quality, namely the university’s role in adding to its students’ emotional stability, which needs the attention of the top management.

This study provides researchers and practitioners with a roadmap for applying PLS-SEM and IPMA for continuous service quality improvement. The roadmap extends upon Ringle and Sarstedt’s (2016) work. It highlights critical decisions that need to be considered in the pre-analytical stages of the IPMA application, i.e. at the research design phase in selecting the most appropriate service quality measurement model specifications. It not only contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence to advance theory development in the quality management field but also has implications for the practitioners in any service sector on where to focus their attention for an effective service improvement.