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This paper investigates the linking between employees' working life (EWL) and job performance of ethnic minority Bangladeshi restaurants in Greater London.

The authors use in depth face-to-face interviews of 40 participants working in 20 Bangladeshi restaurants (BRs) following a convenience sampling method. A thematic analysis technique, with the help of QSR N10, developed two key themes related to EWL and performance.

These themes highlight several aspects of the relationship between EWL and performance. First, EWL is “beyond” the UK tradition; employers show a domineering attitude; however, employees continue to work due to lack of skills and competence. Second, employees perceive and present themselves as satisfied; however, this satisfaction is not reflected in the business performance of BRs. Third, the analysis shows that business owners “trap strategy” constrains employees to develop their skills for mobility to other industries. Hence, employees express satisfaction with their existing situation on the basis that it is the best they can hope for, given their specific skills and competence, and need for some security in the UK. Fourth, non-financial performance, for example, job autonomy, sense of fulfilment is related to EWL.

The paper provides a framework to promote a better understanding of the linking between employees' working life and performance of UK ethnic minority restaurants. Also, the paper makes recommendations for further research, including an examination of the applicability of the findings to SMEs operated by other ethnic groups in the UK.

This paper adds to the scarce literature on the working life of people in Bangladeshi restaurant businesses in the UK and the relationship between EWL and business performance.

While the usage of social media reviews has become increasingly popular in recent years, few studies in this context of Bangladesh have investigated its impact on restaurant visit intention. Therefore, this study aims to explain the role of attitude toward social media reviews in customers' restaurant visit intention from the perspective of Bangladesh. In doing so, predictors of attitude toward social media reviews were also ascertained and their indirect effects on restaurant visit intention were investigated.

A survey questionnaire was administered to 300 university students. A six-factor based measurement model was proposed, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in testing the hypotheses represented by the model. Furthermore, a focus group discussion with 12 respondents was also held to assess how negative reviews on social media affect the customers' restaurant visit intention.

This study reveals that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trustworthiness and information quality of social media reviews are positively related to attitude toward using positive social media reviews for choosing a restaurant. Furthermore, attitude toward positive social media reviews directly contributes to the intention to visit restaurants. Besides, attitude toward social media reviews fully mediates the relationship of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and trustworthiness with restaurant visit intention, whereas it partially mediates the relationship between information quality and restaurant visit intention. Besides, results from focus group discussion revealed that customers typically trust negative reviews which reduce their intent to visit restaurants.

The samples chosen for this study belong only to a particular stratum of the population (students from a specific institution/university). Hence, the outcomes should be generalized with caution.

This study provides practical guidelines for the restaurant marketers to formulate improved strategic decisions by tracking the restaurant customers' attitudes, behavioral intentions, sentiments and share of voice on social media platforms. The results of this study will encourage the restaurant marketers to build sustainable relationships with influential food bloggers to spawn positive electronic word of mouth (e-WOM).

This is one of the first studies in Bangladesh that have covered up a timely and untouched research area, providing empirical evidence regarding the effects of attitude toward social media reviews on restaurant visit intent in the context of a South Asian country like Bangladesh.

This article presents fieldwork perspectives gained from conducting qualitative research among Bangladeshi immigrant communities in Lisbon (Portugal), Boston (Massachusetts – USA) and Brussels (Belgium). This discussion will primarily benefit those who conduct, or are interested in, undertaking qualitative research with Bangladeshi immigrants, one of the largest immigrant communities represented globally.

The author conducted 32 semi-structured interviews using a qualitative descriptive approach.

The author discusses and demonstrates effective strategies to acquire meaningful insights from fieldwork while interviewing Bangladeshi immigrants. Though maintaining standard criteria for producing credible qualitative research is crucial, the adoption of a flexible and dynamic approach is also necessary. The article highlights versatile approaches taken in the following four areas: (1) establishing community presence, (2) managing informed consent, (3) adjusting research instruments and protocols, and (4) dealing with unexpected situations during fieldwork. Moreover, these elements are examined within the context of navigating the role and positionality of the researcher.

The generalizability of these techniques is limited to this study, but similar issues in conducting qualitative research with Bangladeshi communities and other immigrant groups can be found.

This paper addresses a gap in the discussion of fieldwork strategies for conducting qualitative research with Bangladeshi immigrant communities. Practical knowledge for researchers facilitating qualitative research with this group is relatively scarce despite the growing presence of these communities globally.

This paper outlines ways in which struggling ethnic minority entrepreneurial service ventures and their owners might respond to unforeseen economic and social shocks. Interviews with owners of Bangladeshi Curry Houses in the United Kingdom — whom historically have lower performance rates compared to other ethnic minority businesses in the country — reveal that the entrepreneurs' response strategies undertaken to survive and remain in the business despite the challenges faced from operating in a turbulence environment.

The authors conducted depth phone interviews with owners of Bangladeshi Curry Houses in London during January and February of 2021. The Gioia methodology was applied to the interview scripts to identify which crisis themes exist.

Despite no advanced educational training, Bangladeshi owners have applied all of the different crisis management techniques present in larger companies: retrenchment, persevering, innovation, and exit. Although the results show that government schemes aimed at helping small businesses have contributed significantly to their survival, concerns regarding the post-health crisis situation remain challenging and threatening for their growth and survivability.

The results indicates that the ethnic minority owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are less likely to plan for the future operations; furthermore, they tend not to have formulated a strategy for dealing with an external shock hence affecting and threatening their performance and competitiveness in the marketplace.

The purpose of this study is to provide an insight into the crucial antecedents of customer satisfaction and revisit intention in the context of dining restaurants in a holistic approach, taking Bangladesh as a unit of analysis.

The research design was cross-sectional. Data were collected from 30 dining restaurants in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. The proposed model was tested using partial least square structural equation modeling with a sample size of 600 respondents.

The antecedents of customer satisfaction (i.e. service quality, food quality, atmospherics, other customers and perceived value/price) were found to have significant positive effects on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction and restaurant reputation were found to have significant positive effects on revisit intention, while variety seeking tendency was found to have a significant negative effect on revisit intention. Trust was found to partially mediate the customer satisfaction-revisit intention and restaurant reputation-revisit intention relationships.

This study is among the first to provide a holistic approach toward the crucial antecedents of customer satisfaction (i.e. service quality, food quality, atmospherics, other customers and perceived value) and revisit intention (i.e. customer satisfaction, variety seeking tendency, trust and restaurant reputation) in one structural equation model, and investigated their interrelationships in the context of dining restaurants. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has investigated the mediating role of trust between the customer satisfaction-revisit intention and restaurant reputation-revisit intention relationships in the context of dining restaurants. From a market-specific context, this the first study to investigate and link the examined variables in the context of Bangladeshi dining restaurants.

The purpose of this study is to determine how consumers perceive restaurant service in Bangladesh. The goal of this study is to determine the impact of perceived service quality and price fairness on consumer satisfaction and loyalty toward restaurant services.

The data for this study were collected from 326 respondents who have used restaurant services in Bangladesh. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to evaluate the research data with SmartPLS 3.3.3.

The current study’s findings indicate that perceived service quality and price fairness both have a direct and significant effect on consumer satisfaction. Additionally, the research findings reveal a considerable association between perceived pricing fairness and consumer pleasure and consumer loyalty. Additionally, findings indicate that perceived service quality and price fairness both have a significant indirect effect on customer loyalty via the mediating effect of consumer satisfaction.

The current study demonstrates that perceived price fairness has a substantial effect on restaurant consumers’ satisfaction and loyalty; thus, this evidence can assist restaurant owners and managers in developing and implementing their pricing strategy to retain customers. Additionally, the findings have significant implications for restaurant operators, practitioners and policymakers.

Only a few research have been conducted to determine the effect of service quality and pricing fairness on consumer satisfaction and loyalty when it comes to restaurant services. This research conclusion provides guidance to service providers on how to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty through an emphasis on price fairness and service quality.

Through the medium of a case study of Birmingham’s ethnic minority‐owned independent restaurant sector, the nature of training in the firms, the reasons for informal training, and employees’ tolerance of harsh working conditions are examined. The reluctance of many small businesses to utilise formal programmes of training is confirmed. However, even in this sector, which is characterised by poor personnel practices, the importance of informal approaches to training and learning is noteworthy. Moreover, from the perspective of workers, employment in the ethnic minority business sector can be seen as a form of training in itself; it can constitute an “apprenticeship” for entrepreneurship rather than permanent entrapment in low‐paid work. However, the capacity to realise this goal is contingent upon the availability of class resources. Further research is needed to explore approaches to training in other sectors that ethnic minorities are engaged in.

This study was designed to specifically explore confirmation and perceived usefulness associated with mobile food ordering apps (MFOAs) in consideration of their impacts upon attitudes, satisfaction and intention to continuously use.

The research utilized the convenience sampling to gather data from 250 respondents having prior experience with MFOAs during COVID-19 pandemic period in Bangladesh. The Structural Equation Modeling technique was applied to analyze the data using SmartPLS 3 software.

This study's results showed that customers' perceived confirmation and usefulness were significant in determining their dinning attitudes. Besides, customers' dining attitudes were positively related to e-satisfaction. Finally, the customers’ continuance intention to use MFOAs was significantly influenced by their e-satisfaction.

Restaurants managers should focus on online sales through MFOAs during the pandemic period since social distancing is a key strategy to manage COVID-19. Customers should be assured that the safety measures are undertaken while delivering the food.

This study incorporated the expectation-confirmation theory and technology acceptance model and tested it in the context of MFOAs.

This study investigates how a competitor orientation (knowledge of and acting on competitors' strengths and weaknesses) facilitates coopetition activities (collaboration with competitors), within networks of competing micro-sized, independent, family restaurants, owned by entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds.

An instrumental case study features data collected from interviews with 30 owners (as key informants) of micro-sized, independent, family-owned restaurants, in two urban clusters within the Midlands (UK). Specifically, the context involves restaurants offering South Asian cuisine and where the owner originated from the Indian sub-continent (Bangladesh, India or Pakistan). Secondary data were collected wherever possible. These two clusters (not named for ethics reasons) are highly populated by members of these respective ethnic communities; also, they contain a relatively large number of restaurants offering South Asian cuisine.

A competitor orientation facilitated strong coopetition-oriented partnerships comprised of extended family and intra-community members that helped enhance individual firms' performance, maintained family employment and sustained their cluster. It also helped owners develop subtle counter strategies where weak ties existed, such as via inter-community networks. For example, strategies attracted customers that were not loyal to a particular restaurant, or indeed, sub-ethnic cuisine (within Bangladesh, India or Pakistan, like the Punjab region). Subtle as opposed to outright counter strategies minimised retaliation, since restaurant owners wanted to avoid price wars, or spreading misinformation where the reputation of a cluster may suffer alongside the likely survival of individual businesses within that regional cluster.

Mixed evidence exists in earlier studies regarding the competitive rivalry in certain sectors where ethnic minority ownership is prominent; not least, restaurants located in regional clusters. However, this investigation considers the notion – what if some of these earlier studies are wrong? More specifically, does certain prior research under-represent the extent that rival entrepreneurs of an ethnic minority origin collaborate rather than compete for mutually beneficial purposes? New evidence emerges regarding ways in which a competitor orientation can influence the performance-enhancing nature of coopetition activities among business owners originating from both intra and inter-ethnic communities.