Training for Front-line Service Employees and Service Quality Attainment in Small-Medium Sized Restaurants--A study on the Restaurants in Taina

• Main Authors: IN-Young Chiu, 邱英洋
• Other Authors: Liu, Abby
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35152694060053287032

碩士 === 真理大學 === 管理科學研究所 === 96 === The social structures in Taiwan have witnessed drastic changes in the past few years with the prevalence of double-income family, increasing consuming capacity of teenagers, as well as regular dinning-out habits acquired since childhood. These trends have encouraged the restaurant sector to grow vigorously; and among those, the medium and small-scale restaurants, especially sole-ownership restaurants where operators take up several responsibilities, predominate the market. However, the employment opportunities available in the restaurant sector have been generally perceived as being of temporary, transitional in nature, and often suffered low stability, high fluctuation and low social status, leading to the chronic shortage of labour force. The service quality excelled by the employees represents a dominant determinant which impacts the “value” of a restaurant. Restaurants create maximum consumer satisfaction, profitability or gross revenues through productive interactions initiated by the front line service personnel with their customers Building upon the above observations, this research employed service quality model and SERVQUAL scales which were proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithmal and Berry (1985) for examining the relationships between the service quality of front line employments and staff training, followed by the development of a training program for medium and small sized restaurants. Data were acquired from focus group interviews with operators and employees, respectively and through questionnaire surveys administered to the customers. Analysis involve both validity and reliability tests, factor analysis, paired t-test, and importance-performance analysis. The main research findings indicate: (1) the construction of a training program for medium and small sized restaurants has three fundamental focuses, including knowledge cultivation of restaurant operation, skill mastery and ability for interactions. (2) Availability of time and both employers and employees’ interest in engagement are dominating factors impacting the implementation of front line personnel training program. (3) The execution of training program has been found to be a positive factor elevating service quality. (4) The IPA analysis revealed that, after the offering of training program, service quality exhibited through dimensions of “employee retention”, “job morale”, and “professional skills” have performed fairly good (keep up the good work quadrant), while “work ethic” and “self relaization” ones received modest evaluation as they both fell into “the concentrate here” quadrant. Some useful recommendations that were drawn from our findings were proposed for consideration for improvement of service quality and monitoring employee performance by the restaurant operators.