•Delivery service contributed to the sales of restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic.•Casual and fast casual dining restaurants had more benefit from delivery service than fine dining ones after ...COVID-19 restrictions were eased.•Discount options failed to increase sales during the pandemic.•Brand effects on restaurant financial performance were stronger after the COVID-19 outbreak.
To contain the pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19), social distancing, self-isolation and travel restrictions have been imposed globally. To shed light on how COVID-19 is affecting restaurant industry, this study aims to explore the factors that affect restaurant firms’ financial turnaround for their sustainability after the business shutdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic. By utilizing a total of 86,507 small- and medium-sized restaurant firms’ sales data collected from nine cities in Mainland China, the exploratory approach of this study successfully determines positive impacts of three aspects of operational characteristics (i.e., delivery, discounts, and service type) and brand effects as uncertainty minimizing factors amid distinctive business shutdowns and restrictions. This is the first empirical study in the management realm on the impacts of COVID-19 on restaurant industry. This paper strengthens the extant literature by highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry after the business restrictions are lifted.
•Proposed model for understanding customer decisions to dine out during a pandemic.•Explored conceptual and empirical literature and constructs of trust, transparency, motivation, and risk.•Applied ...optimism bias theory to forward a model of motivation based on affective decision framework.•Proposed model could provide insight to managers for marketing to a motivated customer during the pandemic.
The restaurant industry is one of the most affected businesses during the outbreak of COVID-19. The customer choice regarding whether or not to dine in a restaurant have changed due to this unprecedented global pandemic. Integrated with the affective decision-making framework, meta-theoretic model of motivation (3M), and optimistic bias theory, this conceptual paper proposes a theoretical scheme for understanding constructs that affect consumer motivation while considering the significance of consumers’ risk perceptions of the novel coronavirus disease. This research aims to delineate the role of loyalty, trust, and transparency on resuming in-restaurant dining during and after the pandemic. By identifying the link between each construct and addressing the unparalleled food-/health related risks, this study suggests that restaurants who accumulated more customer trust by fostering transparency are likely to have more business and quickly recover from the shock.
Recently, the restaurant industry has witnessed an unprecedented rise of healthy restaurant brands. However, the existing literature offers little guidance on how to effectively leverage such brands ...in the marketplace. To address this gap, the current research examines a novel marketing strategy (i.e., using handwritten typeface on menus) that enhances consumer responses to healthy restaurant brands. The results show that handwritten typeface creates a competitive advantage by conveying a sense of human touch, which subsequently induces the perception that love is symbolically imbued in the restaurant's offerings. The belief that “menu contains love” leads to a wide range of favorable consumer responses including positive attitudes toward the menu, enhanced perceived healthiness of the brand, and higher social media engagement. The results show that these positive effects occur only when the restaurant brand is health-focused. Moreover, the handwritten typeface effect with healthy restaurants is observed in both social and solo dining contexts. Implications for branding, visual design, and menu psychology are discussed.
•Healthy restaurants using handwritten (vs. machine-written) typeface will generate more favorable attitudes toward the menu, perceived healthiness, and social media engagement.•Healthy restaurants’ handwritten typeface effect is explained by a “typeface ➔ human touch ➔ love ➔ consumer responses” serial mediation process.•Healthy restaurants’ handwritten typeface effect is observed in both social and solo dining contexts.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe consequences across various aspects of life, significantly impacting the culinary sector, which is a crucial part of the tourism industry. Restrictions on dine-in ...services compelled businesses to adapt to take-out options, resulting in significant repercussions. To navigate these challenging times and ensure the survival and growth of the culinary industry, entrepreneurs and restaurant managers had to adopt innovative strategies. Income reductions affected nearly 43% of culinary businesses during this period. To investigate the dynamics further, the research conducted a PLS-SEM analysis, surveying 163 MSME owners or restaurant managers operating in the Surabaya city region, who had received government support and continued their business operations amidst the pandemic. The analysis revealed that strategic flexibility played a pivotal role in influencing marketing innovation and process innovation. However, the impact of marketing innovation on business survival was not direct, while process innovation significantly influenced business survival. Interestingly, the study observed that government support did not alter the relationships between marketing innovation, process innovation, and business survival.
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