Taste, Value & Service: Guest Return Intent Drivers
Every time a guest visits a restaurant they learn something as a result of the experience, and depending on what they learn, they adjust their behavior based on the experience. The guest may stay longer or leave early, purchase more items or purchase less, tell others of their experience, or decide to return for a repeat experience. This link between the experience and guest behaviors offers managers a clear path to manage the guest experience in profitable ways.
Kinēsis conducted a survey of 800 respondents asking them to recall their most recent experience at a restaurant and rate the experience across the following 16 attributes grouped into five dimensions.
| Dimension | Attribute |
| Arrival | Greeted promptly and felt welcomed |
| Greeting friendly and cheerful | |
| Seated quickly | |
| Service | Food delivered in a timely manner |
| Server attentive to needs | |
| Prompt attention of server | |
| Friendliness of server | |
| Food | Order delivered accurately |
| Taste of food | |
| Temperature of food | |
| Overall presentation of the food | |
| Value | Good value for the money |
| Portion appropriate | |
| Environment | Server’s appearance neat and clean |
| Restaurant clean, comfortable and appealing | |
| Table clean, dry and presentable |
Additionally, to serve as a dependent variable for additional analysis, respondents were asked to rate their return intent on a 5-point scale. We then cross tabulated the responses by positive and negative return intent to determine the frequency in which each attribute is positive in surveys with positive return intent compared to those with negative return intent. This cross tabulation yielded the following results:
| Attribute |
Positive Return Intent |
Negative Return Intent |
| Greeted promptly and felt welcomed |
75% |
61% |
| Greeting friendly and cheerful |
81% |
58% |
| Seated quickly |
74% |
65% |
| Food delivered in a timely manner |
79% |
58% |
| Server attentive to needs |
80% |
58% |
| Prompt attention of server |
74% |
66% |
| Friendliness of server |
77% |
58% |
| Order delivered accurately |
75% |
65% |
| Taste of food |
94% |
34% |
| Temperature of food |
76% |
61% |
| Overall presentation of the food |
80% |
58% |
| Good value for the money |
86% |
49% |
| Portion appropriate |
76% |
62% |
| Server’s appearance neat and clean |
75% |
65% |
| Restaurant clean, comfortable and appealing |
78% |
63% |
| Table clean, dry and presentable |
73% |
67% |
Combining these into one net difference between surveys with positive and negative return intent ranks the attributes in terms of the strength of their relationship to return intent:
Difference Between Positive & Negative Return Intent
Grouping these attributes back into the dimensions described below reveals the following average net strength of change in return intent by dimension:
This analysis gives managers an informed view of which attributes in which to invest. Clearly, the experience attributes that will yield the most ROI in terms of return intent are the quality of the food and perceptions of value for the money. Next is the human element, how are guests greeted and made to feel welcomed and how they are served throughout the visit. Finally, the physical environment plays an important but secondary role to the quality of the meal, perceptions of value and service.The quality of the meal and perceptions of value for the money each have the strongest relationship to return intent, followed by the service, greeting on arrival and the environment.
Kinesis CEM 