Social Media Marketing and Service Decision among Working-Age Consumers of Japanese Yakiniku Buffet Restaurants in Thailand

Social media has emerged as an important channel for information regarding restaurants since in many cases, service attributes cannot be fully evaluated until after a visit. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships of consumer perception and perceived social media marketing with service decision in a group of working-age consumers who had experience with Japanese yakiniku buffet restaurants in Thailand. The study was conducted using a quantitative cross-sectional survey available through an online questionnaire in a buffet-oriented Facebook community. The final sample comprised 385 complete responses from consumers aged 25–59 years. The questionnaire included consumer perception, dining behavior, and four dimensions of perceived social media marketing, as well as service decision. Descriptive statistics, comparisons between groups, simple linear regression and multiple regression were used. Consumer perception had a positive relationship with service decision (β = 0.875, p < 0.001). When all four dimensions of social media marketing were examined together, e-WOM (β = 0.432), trend-related appeal (β = 0.355) and entertainment (β = 0.203) maintained statistically significant positive relationships with service choice. In the second model, after controlling for the other social media marketing dimensions, the interaction dimension showed no independent relationship (β = −0.043, p= 0.496).