ABSTRACT

The Effect of Attribute Selection of Local Specialty Food on the Customer Satisfaction and Behavioral Intention
-Focusing on Visitors to Gang-neung Specialty Food Town-

Kim, Se-Kyoung
Department of Hotel Culinary & Food Service Management
Graduate School
Catholic Kwan-dong University
(Supervised by Professor Yoon, Deok-Ihn)

This study aimed to analyze the relationship among local specialty food selection attributes, customer satisfaction and behavioral intention of consumers trying out local specialty food by discussing the effect of local specialty food selection attributes on customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. After identifying concept of each variable, structural relationship of variables was examined by literature review to perform empirical analysis. For empirical analysis, 249 surveys were collected from consumers who have tried out local specialty food through local specialty food villages and local festivals of Gangneung between September 24th and October 5th of 2016. Survey analysis was performed using SPSS 20.0 program, and frequency analysis was used to find out general characteristics and conditions of the samples. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis were performed on the measured variables. In addition, correlation analysis was done before testing of hypothesis to find the relationship among variables, and simple regression analysis and multiple regression analysis were performed for testing of hypothesis.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows.
First, among local specialty food selection attributes, food taste ad quality factor, human service factor, physical service factor and image factor had positive effect on customer satisfaction. Convenience factor did not have positive effect on satisfaction. This implies that taste and quality of food, human service, physical service such as surrounding environment, and image such as reputation can improve customer satisfaction when trying out local specialty food.
Second, among local specialty food selection attributes, food taste and quality factor and image factor had positive effect on behavioral intention. Human service factor, physical service factor and convenience factor did not have significant effect. This means that taste and quality of local specialty food and image of local specialty restaurant have positive impact on behavioral intention of customers, and taste and quality of food and image of restaurant should be actively reflected on marketing activities. On the other hand, it would be necessary to further increase competency of restaurants by diagnosing and improving problems found in relation to human service factor, physical service factor and convenience factor, thereby providing higher level of service.
Third, customer satisfaction showed positive effect on behavioral intention. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a marketing strategy that focuses on customers showing high satisfaction to increase their behavioral intention. Such marketing strategy should try to maximize customer satisfaction so that consumers who try out local specialty food can come back later. This requires high level of food taste and quality and service.
Based on the implications of this study, business operators in the four local specialty food villages need to place voluntary efforts to continue developing local specialty food and come up with effective marketing strategies. In addition, food experience activities using local specialty food, familiarization tours with local tourist products through the use of the 6th industry, and increased promotion activities on SNS can be taken into consideration.