Importance of Service Quality in the Food and Beverage Industry

Discuss about the Training Of Employees To Achieve Customer Satisfaction In Food And Beverage Industry.

In the recent times there has been the rapid development of the food and beverage industry. In this regard it can be said that the importance of providing customers with the best of service has become extremely crucial. It is therefore necessary for the service markets to understand the customer’s perception of service quality and meet out the needs of the customers accordingly. In the food and beverage industry the customer perception and therefore the service quality is a crucial weapon for attaining competitive advantage (Colakoglu, Culha & Atay, 2010). In the present era of globalization, understanding the different behavioural intentions of the customers is extremely important. This is basically the most effective way of establishing a market strategy with the limited resources a person possesses (AbuKhalifeh & Som, 2012).

To ensure that the staff of the food and beverage industry provide proper service to the customers there are several training programs which are conducted. These training programs help the employees understand the impact of their service quality and provide the best of service in order to retain their consumers.

The research methods section is used to discuss the procedure of data collection which has been utilized in the research on the relationship between employee training and customer satisfaction in the Food and Beverage Service. It aims to understand how the training of the employees impacts the customer satisfaction.

The methods which are used to collect data are qualitative in nature. The particular research case has been used to understand the viewpoint of the person who has participated in the survey. The aim of qualitative research and methods of collection of the data are used to understand the opinions of the participants in the survey. Basically, it is the aim of qualitative survey to understand why the people react in a particular way. There are a plethora of contexts in which qualitative survey can be conducted. In this particular case, the food and beverage industry has been taken into consideration. The impact of employee training and its influence on the customer satisfaction in the food and beverage industry has been considered (Patton, 2002).

The role of the person who undertakes the research is to basically understand the thought processes of the individuals participating in the survey. Often the researchers are faced with many challenges at the time of conducting surveys. The information which is extremely confidential may not be disclosed by the interviewee. In case the results conducted in a qualitative survey are accurate and genuine, it helps in paving the way for a quantitative survey in future.  The researcher in this case obtains general conclusions by the observation of the specific phenomenon and procedures by understanding the behaviour of the interviewees and therefore a certain degree of inductive reasoning is also necessary in this particular case (Wu, Huang & Chou, 2014).

Research Methods for Measuring Customer Perception and Employee Training

Sampling is a crucial step for the methodology. The most important steps for sampling included the proper definition of sampling technique and the sample design and also the appropriate sample size. The nature of the data which had been collected in this case was that of primary data. The size of the sample in this case the interviewee was one. Only one manager of a food and beverage industry had been interviewed. It is known that primary sources of the data were much more reliable than any other secondary sources. In this research the qualitative sampling method had been adopted. The two persons involved in the interview process were the researcher and the interviewee. The researcher needed to be technically competent at the time of conducting the interview. There should not be any personal bias or errors with the interviewer at the time of conducting the interview (Patton, 2002).

The different possible types of techniques that can be adopted in the collection of primary data are purposive sampling, convenience sampling, quota sampling and snowball sampling. The method of sampling which has been adopted in this particular case is that of purposive sampling. In this sampling procedure the researchers recruit participants who are capable of giving an in depth and proper detailed information about the phenomenon which is being studied. This study can be completely subjective and it can be governed by the researcher who is generating the qualifying criteria (Torres & Kline, 2013).

The three different types of interviews which can be conducted are that of structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Structured interviews are such that are essentially administered in a verbal manner and in this type of interview the questions which are to be asked are pre-determined and there is very little or no variation at all from the pattern which is to be followed. There might be a little issue with the problems that can arise in case certain responses require a certain part of elaboration.

Unstructured interviews on the other hand, do not have any structured system following which the interview is to be conducted. Such type of interviews does not have a pre existing flow and can go in any direction depending on the way in which the manager is responding to the questions of the interviewer. Certain untrained researchers might face problems in conducting these sort of interviews in case they are not properly trained.

Sampling Methods and Procedure for Data Collection

In this particular research the interview method which had been adopted is that of a structured interview. In this case the researcher was provided with a set of predetermined questions which helped him or her to proceed with the interview successfully.

In this particular research one manager of a restaurant of the food and beverage chain had been interviewed. In other words the size of the sample was one. The nature of the data collected in this case was qualitative and primary by nature.      

The procedure of coding was applied in this particular research. At first open coding was applied and then axial coding was considered. The topics on which the researcher was questioned and the answers which were provided by him helped in the eliciting of a proper response and the categorisation of his answers into proper headings and subheadings for future scope of research on this particular topic. The application of axial coding after open coding helped in the overall completion of the analysis.

Any research is incomplete without any sort of ethical considerations on the study. In this case, the structured form of interview was utilized and therefore the position and responsibility were utmost important for the interview. The ethical considerations of the interview were maintained in the sense that the personal details of the manager were not disclosed by the researcher at the time of analysis of the results. The manager of the interview was made to sign on an agreement where it was mentioned that the personal details would not be disclosed at any cost. Thus the ethics of conducting the interview were maintained at all levels.

The limitation of this particular study is the absence of sufficient data. Interviewing a particular manager of a food and beverage service hotel or restaurant is not enough to gain considerable knowledge on the topic of research. In case the data collected are not enough, conclusions to me made are also not suitable for the data to be collected. It is necessary to collect more opinions from more managers so that a comprehensive conclusion can be drawn about the particular service. Different managers from separate food and beverage service industries needed to be collected.

Conclusion:

There were several possible ways in which the analysis would have been much more accurate and applicable. The ways and methods of training of employees are bound to be different in different industries and therefore the impacts on their customers will also be different. The customer type and the target customer range based on the prices of the products on offer were also bound to be different. Thus the discussion and explanation of experiences of the managers will also be different. Unless there are a range of different experiences mentioned and discussed it is not possible for the researchers to make befitting conclusions.

In order to make much better conclusive statements about the relationship between employee training and customer satisfaction the number of people to be interviewed should have been more. Customers have the power to either make or break a particular industry. Specifically the food and beverage industry is such that it heavily relies on the opinions of its consumers and they can either lead to the success or failure of the industry. The managers are people who closely study the impact of the industry consumers and the treatment of customers by their employees, However in this particular research there is much scope for improvement.

References:

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Wu, P. H., Huang, C. Y., & Chou, C. K. (2014). Service expectation, perceived service quality, and customer satisfaction in food and beverage industry. International Journal of Organizational Innovation (Online), 7(1), 171.