Effects of Dessert Café Environmental Characteristics on Overall Quality, Brand Image and Loyalty

Purpose: Along with the trend increasing dining-out and enjoying variety of menu, dessert café has been introduced as a new type of food service provider and grown up rapidly. We need to verify structural relationship that dessert café environment influences overall quality and brand image and loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology: This study seeks to understand how in-café environment influence overall quality, brand image and loyalty directly and indirectly based on SOR theory. We examine detail effect of in-café environment on overall quality and brand image and subsequently loyalty. Sample data were collected from 563 online survey panels and analyzed by using SmartPLS 3.2.9. Result: The results indicates that all sub-dimensions of in-café environment influences positively overall quality. While, menu and atmosphere make positive impact on brand image. price, food and beverage quality, employee service do not affect significantly brand image. Further, overall quality influences positively brand image and both overall quality and brand image affect positively loyalty. In addition, overall quality plays full mediator role in relationship among price, food and beverage quality, employee service and brand image. Conclusions: Dessert café should differentiate itself from competitors through physical and non-physical environments which are likely to influence overall quality. As overall quality mediates between environment and brand image and influences loyalty, dessert café is required to communicate strength of functional quality and service quality aggressively. Additionally, favorable brand image affecting loyalty is required to be dominated in advance as the market is likely to be segmented along with its growth.