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This study used the colours of plates as atmospheric stimulus factors in the Mehrabian–Russell model of environmental influence, which served as the study’s basic background theory, to explore how plate colour affects consumer appetite preference and dining emotions in Chinese fine dining restaurants. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The study used quantitative surveys and employed purposeful sampling and rolling snowball surveys of consumers in Chinese fine dining restaurants in Taipei; 581 effective surveys were collected from the test subjects. The research tools included a plate colour appetite preference scale and a dining emotion scale.

There were significant differences in age and gender in terms of appetite preference and plate colour. The plate colours with the highest appetite preference were gold, white and black. There were significant differences in plate colour appetite preference in terms of dining mood, with white and gold plates eliciting positive dining moods.

Most academic papers have focused on studying plates in Western dining, while very few studies have focused on the colour of Chinese dining plates. The greatest contribution and value of this study is its discovery of the colour combination of dining plates that can elicit appetite preferences and positive dining emotions among diners in Chinese fine dining restaurants. This information can be used to stimulate positive dining emotions among consumers and help restaurateurs improve the level of dining aesthetics.

Service excellence has been recognized as a crucial means of achieving customer delight. Several recent studies have argued that redundant services may be perceived as unnecessary by customers; however, few studies have explored the construct of service redundancy. This study aims to identify and classify service redundancy in the foodservice industry.

This qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with 72 participants, namely, 36 customers and 36 managers of fine dining restaurants in Taiwan. Content analysis of the data yielded the classification of service redundancy.

This study determined 16 categories of service redundancy categorized under three themes: service behavior, service regulations and environmental factors. Furthermore, six causes and four consequences of service redundancy were identified.

Customers and managers of fine dining restaurants were interviewed; thus, the findings may not be fully generalizable to service redundancy in other restaurant types.

The contribution of this research is the construction of a model of service redundancy, which could serve as a theoretical foundation for further examination of service redundancy and the relationships between the related constructs.

A high-end ethnic restaurant is a tourism experience that can increase the attractiveness and brand recognition of a tourism destination. The restaurant environment is a key element that affects consumer visits. The purpose of this paper is to adopt Schmitt’s experience module to analyse tourist preferences and experiences with respect to floral styles in ethnic fine dining restaurants. The results of this study are intended to serve as a reference for operators of fine dining establishments in designing flower arrangements.

This study adopts a quantitative research method. A sample was developed using tablet computers to simulate flower arrangements in restaurants. The research tools included a floral style preference scale and a tourist floral experience scale.

Based on the results, the test subjects preferred European floral design styles in restaurants. Restaurant environments with floral arrangements were best at relaxing the test subjects. A restaurant’s floral style was positively correlated with various aspects of the tourist experience. Gender, age, Chinese flower styles, Japanese flower styles, European flower styles and other variables enabled forecasting the degree of the tourist experience.

When a consumer exhibits higher preference for a restaurant’s floral style, the level of the tourist experience increases. This study investigates the aesthetic experience of restaurants and restaurant atmosphere as a marketing tool. Sensory stimulation within the restaurant atmosphere can be based on the five senses such that tourists may, through the design of the restaurant environment, have specific emotional reactions that improve their tourist experience and reinforce the restaurant’s brand image.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between restaurant key attributes, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions. The mediating role of customer satisfaction is assessed between restaurants’ key attributes of service quality and behavioral intentions.

Data were collected from a sample of 296 customers dining in the fine dining restaurants of Pakistan through a self-administered questionnaire. The data were then analyzed through regression analysis and gap analysis. Model fitness was checked in SPSS AMOS through CFA.

The findings suggest that the key restaurant attributes have a significant positive effect on behavioral intentions. Customer satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between key restaurant attributes and behavioral intentions. The findings also suggest that there is a significant gap between the perceptions of customers regarding the importance and performance of key restaurant attributes.

The result indicates that food taste and environmental cleanliness are the cornerstones of fine dining restaurants’ success in Pakistan and are among the strongest predictor of customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions; while improvement efforts should be made in four key areas, i.e., healthy food option, food freshness, food safety and fair price.

No comparative study has been directed in fine dining restaurants of Pakistan with respect to the key restaurants attributes, i.e., food quality attributes, service quality attributes, atmospheric quality attributes, and other attributes which have been analyzed in the current study. This research was conducted to investigate the perceptions of customers toward the fine dining restaurants of Pakistan to measure the key restaurants’ attributes that influence customers’ satisfaction and their post-dining behavioral intentions. This study will facilitate restaurants’ managers to understand the stronger and as well as the weaker aspects of service quality and permit them to investigate the factors which contribute toward customers’ satisfaction and their post-dining behavioral intentions in order to build and maintain long-term relationship between restaurants and customers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the presence of other customers in restaurant social settings becomes a resource (referred to as “customer-to-customer interaction” or “C2CI”) to co-create an escape dining experience and stimulate dining outcomes, namely, food attachment and dining frequency. The relationships are further tested under the effects of regional economic conditions.

Data were collected by using a multi-step approach. The first data set was obtained through a personally administered survey, which included a sample of 356 Chinese tourists who dined at fine Western (i.e. Portuguese) restaurants in Macau. The second data set concerned economic statistics and was obtained from the statistics departments of mainland China and Taiwan. A multilevel design with hierarchical linear modeling was used to test the proposed model. Multilevel mediating and moderating effects were also examined.

The results suggest that customer escape dining experience significantly mediated the relationship between C2CI and food attachment, while food attachment fully mediated the relationship between customer escape experience and dining frequency. The multilevel effect of regional economic conditions played a significant role in moderating the C2CI–escape experience relationship in which the effect of C2CI was more salient for tourists from less economically developed regions in China. The experience–food attachment relationship was also contingent on the regional economic conditions in which the relationship was stronger for tourists from less economically developed areas. A multilevel mediating effect was also presented in the study.

The study contributes to the literature on experience co-creation in restaurant dining by exploring and testing the possibility of the presence of other customers to become a resource of experience co-creation, which is currently overlooked in the restaurant dining literature. The study advances the concept of co-creation by including the presence of other customers and restates the active role of diners in creating experiences. It also considers the existence of structural patterns in individualized experiences.

This paper aims to investigate the perceptions by owners and staff working in causal full-service restaurants in Macao of their two major subcultures of customers: Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwan Chinese in terms of their dining behavior and preferences.

Face-to-face interviews with 36 service staff of casual dining restaurants in Macao were conducted through the purposive convenience sampling method. Thematic content analysis was conducted in the data analysis.

The results reveal that although the customers from the two Chinese subcultures have a similar appearance, use the same Chinese characters and share common cultural inheritances; their dining behavior and preferences are perceived as being different.

Practical implications are given on how to better design the products and services to meet each subgroup’s needs for enhancing customers’ experience and service quality in restaurant settings.

This study focuses on examining if there are any sub-cultural differences in food behaviors and preferences among Hong Kong and Taiwan visitors, who are the major tourist sources in the world market. It contributes to the scarce literature on intracultural dining variances of sub-groups within Chinese.

This study aims to investigate consumers’ intention to use onsite restaurant interactive self-service technology (ORISST) using a modified value attitude-behavior model. To extend the understanding of how consumers’ dining value focus could influence their intention to use ORISST, this study examines the conditional indirect effects of restaurant type (quick-service vs fine-dining) within the proposed model.

An online survey was developed and distributed to randomly selected respondents in the USA. A total of 588 (quick-service: 295; fine-dining: 293) responses were used for the data analysis. Structural equation modeling with a robust maximum likelihood method was used to examine the proposed model. To investigate the moderated effects of restaurant type, a latent moderated mediation model was used.

The results showed that consumers’ value perceptions toward technology use in restaurants influenced their intention to use ORISST via both hedonic and utilitarian expectations. Latent moderated mediation analyzes revealed that the mediation effect of hedonic expectation between perceived value and the intention was stronger in fine-dining than in quick-service restaurants.

This study extends the understanding of consumer intentions to use interactive self-service technology in restaurants by building on a model that is customer-oriented instead of tech-specific. Furthermore, the conditional effects of restaurant type are investigated using the latent moderated structural equation method. The findings of this study provide guidelines for managers of quick-service and fine-dining restaurants to better incorporate ORISST in their restaurants, to boost customer experiences and to increase operational efficiency.

Given the rapid development of ethnic‐themed restaurants, this study aims to investigate how authentic atmospherics affects consumer emotions and behavioral intentions in Chinese restaurants in the USA.

A total of 348 usable responses from full table service restaurants in the USA were obtained via self‐administered questionnaires. A proposed model was tested following Anderson and Gerbing's two‐step approach: a measurement model and a subsequent structural model.

Using a structural equation modeling technique, this study found that authentic atmospherics significantly influences consumers' positive and negative emotions, and both types of emotions acted as full mediators between authentic atmospherics and behavioral intentions. Subsequent regression analyses revealed that menu presentation, furnishings, and music were significant predictors of positive emotions whereas menu presentation and music significantly influenced negative emotions.

The data were collected from only full table service restaurants. Therefore, generalizing the results for other segments of the restaurant industry may not be possible.

The findings have important implications for selecting and refining crucial elements of authentic atmospherics in order to enhance customers' favorable emotions, avoid unfavorable emotions, and ultimately heighten positive behavioral consequences.

Different from previous studies on the general aspect of atmospherics, this study exclusively investigates the effect of authentic atmospherics on customer post‐dining behavioral intentions in Chinese restaurants, one of the most popular ethnic restaurant segments in the US foodservice market. This study could also provide directions for improving the perceived authenticity of restaurant atmospherics.

This paper aims to use a mixed method approach to understand the role of emotions and sensual delight in influencing satisfaction and intention. The setting for the study is restaurants. Three types of restaurants form the basis of investigation: fine dining, family dining and fast food restaurants. Using three categories of restaurants affords the opportunity to understand the differential impact of sensual delight and emotions in these settings. Furthermore the mixed method approach helps to validate the quantitative findings and also to offer additional insight in consumption emotions.

The study is based on a concurrent, two‐studies design where quantitative and qualitative data are both collected (concurrently or sequentially) and analyzed separately. Four independent investigations are reported in this paper. The first three investigations (fine dining, family dining and fast food dining) are based on quantitative modeling using LISREL. The last investigation provides a richer narrative using phenomenological approach.

The quantitative findings show a strong influence of sensual delight and emotions in affecting satisfaction and intentions. The qualitative findings show how managers may enhance the dining experience and customer satisfaction.

Caution is advised in extrapolating the results beyond the issues investigated in the study.

The findings provide a framework for managers in creating a delightful dining experience.

There are several important contributions from this study. First the role of emotions in various dining aspects is new in this study. It has not been investigated in dining situations. Next, while the role of sensual delight in hedonic situations is understandable, it has not been systematically investigated using causal models. Third, this study uses a mixed method approach. The quantitative study is followed by a qualitative study to add further insights that will help understand drivers of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Thus it is a very comprehensive study on sensual delight in the restaurant industry.

This paper aims to review existing restaurant classifications within the literature in the restaurant management field. The authors discuss intra-industry ramifications of the limited use of recognized typologies and the need to prescriptively guide the description of restaurant context in the literature to communicate the internal and external validity of findings.

Restaurant categories from accepted typologies are used as keywords to collect 345 empirical studies from ten relevant journals serving the global restaurant management discipline. Content analysis of titles, abstracts and methodology sections is used to examine three propositions regarding the standardization, rationalization and efficiency of restaurant classification in imparting restaurant context in published works.

Findings show inconsistent use of existing typologies and limited use of effective restaurant descriptors to inform users about the situational context in which data were gathered or hypotheses were tested. There is a general preference for categories commonly associated with those of the National Restaurant Association.

Researchers should standardize descriptions of restaurants in manuscript titles, abstracts and methods sections, thereby enhancing integration of international research, the ability to conduct macro-level industry studies, and communication of findings to practitioners for operational use.

Recommendations are offered to optimize the use of restaurant classification so that the content of empirical studies may be more effectively accessed, digested and compared, thereby enhancing the communication of advances in the restaurant management body of knowledge to practitioners and other researchers.