Bridging the knowledge gap of restaurant DINESERV attraction attributes between customer expectations and restaurateur priority ranking

This study aims to explore and reveal the perception gap of restaurant attraction attributes between customers' expectations and restaurateurs' prioritization in casual and fine dining Korean table d'hôte restaurants. This study surveys the 16 critical restaurant attributes for restaurant visiting customers and restaurateurs. And, we employ the integrated importance-performance analysis (IPA) and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) approaches by setting the customers' importance and the restaurateurs' priority ranking for restaurant attributes as vertical and horizontal axes, respectively. The results of integrated IPA-FAHP suggested that most of the restaurant attributes were situated in the "Pairwise Harmonic Zone," indicating that the customers' importance and restaurateurs' priorities were in agreement. Conversely, the attributes such as "restaurant ambience" and "restaurant sanitation and cleanliness" placed a relatively lower restaurateurs' priority compared to high customers' expectations. Casual and fine dining restaurants have different restaurant attraction attributes and operating strategies. Restaurateurs require operating initiatives and leverage strategies tailored to their characteristics to maximize operational efficiency. This study is a first attempt to bridge the perception gap of restaurant attraction attributes between expectation and priority ranking by using integrated IPA-FAHP approaches. We provide restaurant operating guidelines combining both customers' and restaurateurs' perspectives on restaurant attributes.