The impacts of atmospheric environments to repurchase intention in fast food reataurants

Abstract

Nowadays, restaurant business owners not only focus on delicious food menu, they also shift their attention on the atmospheric environments to make their physical facilities become more attractive to customers. Various research papers on atmospheric environments have been conducted in numerous field of study such as restaurants, spa, clubs, grocery stores, ect with many research techniques such as experimental, qualitative and quantitative techniques. Accompany with this recent trend, this research was aimed to explore the impacts of atmospheric environments on the re-purchase intention from customer of fast food restaurants with quantitative research method. In order to assess the impacts of atmospheric environments, this research applied Kotler (1973) model with adopted suggestion from Lovelock and Wirtz (2008) including “Sight: External facilities, Interior layout, Restaurant layout”, “Music”, “Scent: Freshness, Congruent Scent, Tobacco Smoke”, “Touch: Temperature, Smoothness, & Softness” and “Employee Response”. Based on this modified model, the questionnaires was designed and distributed to 402 customers who are living and using services of fast food restaurants in Ho Chi Minh city. From the linear regression analysis, it can be concluded that the repurchase intention have statistical relationship with atmospheric environments elements. In more details, the Employee Response: Staff Attitudes and Responses, Touch: Perceived Smoothness, & Softness, Scent: Congruent Scent, and Music: Music Volume have strongest positive influence to the repurchase intention of the customers. Remarkably, the Tobacco Smoke have negative influence to the repurchase intention of the customers. - xiii - The regression equation of this study which aims to provide the relationship between repurchase intention and atmospheric environments, can explain 49.5 percent of the variance in repurchase intention. The remaining 50.5 percent can be obtained by other factors of repurchase intention such as food price, location, food quality. And these are not included in the scope of this study. Keywords: Atmospheric Environments, Repurchase Intention, Sight, Scent, Music, Touch, Employee Response.