IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v47y2019icp222-228.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dining alone or together? The effect of group size on the service customer experience

Author

Listed:
  • Clauzel, Amélie
  • Guichard, Nathalie
  • Riché, Caroline

Abstract

Within the broader field of consumer experience of services, this paper addresses the impact of the size of a group of consumers sharing the same meal experience in a restaurant. This research is based on the quantitative analysis of sales receipts from 2753 restaurants tables. Multinomial logistic regression models and variance analysis show that the individual spend per guest depends on the number of guests per table. They also reveal that the proportion of prix-fixe menus ordered by table (vs. Ã -la-carte) is mostly maximized for meals taken as a couple and minimized for meals taken alone, depending on restaurant settings.

Suggested Citation

  • Clauzel, Amélie & Guichard, Nathalie & Riché, Caroline, 2019. "Dining alone or together? The effect of group size on the service customer experience," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 222-228.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:47:y:2019:i:c:p:222-228
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.11.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698918305800
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.11.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cindy Chan & Jonah Berger & Leaf Van Boven, 2012. "Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 39(3), pages 561-573.
    2. Ariely, Dan & Levav, Jonathan, 2000. "Sequential Choice in Group Settings: Taking the Road Less Traveled and Less Enjoyed," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(3), pages 279-290, December.
    3. Mora, José-Domingo & González, Eva M., 2016. "Do companions really enhance shopping? Assessing social lift over forms of shopper value in Mexico," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 228-239.
    4. Fellesson, Markus & Salomonson, Nicklas, 2016. "The expected retail customer: Value co-creator, co-producer or disturbance?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 204-211.
    5. Davis, Harry L, 1976. "Decision Making within the Household," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 2(4), pages 241-260, March.
    6. Hamilton, Rebecca W, 2003. "Why Do People Suggest What They Do Not Want? Using Context Effects to Influence Others' Choices," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(4), pages 492-506, March.
    7. Hart, Phillip M. & Dale, Rick, 2014. "With or without you: The positive and negative influence of retail companions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 780-787.
    8. Dimitris Bertsimas & Romy Shioda, 2003. "Restaurant Revenue Management," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 51(3), pages 472-486, June.
    9. Turley, L. W. & Milliman, Ronald E., 2000. "Atmospheric Effects on Shopping Behavior: A Review of the Experimental Evidence," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 193-211, August.
    10. Shwu-Ing Wu & Hsin-Ti Tsai, 2017. "A Comparison of the Online Shopping Behavior Patterns of Consumer Groups with Different Online Shopping Experiences," International Journal of Marketing Studies, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(3), pages 24-38, April.
    11. Dellaert, B.G.C. & Prodigalidad, M. & Louviere, J.J., 1997. "Family members' projection of each other's preference and influence : a two-stage conjoint approach," Other publications TiSEM c5277e3b-fd03-47d3-84b0-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    12. Song Yoon & Kwanho Suk & Seon Lee & Eun Park, 2011. "To seek variety or uniformity: The role of culture in consumers’ choice in a group setting," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 49-64, March.
    13. Wang, Jeff Jianfeng & Zhao, Xin & Li, Julie Juan, 2013. "Group Buying: A Strategic Form of Consumer Collective," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 338-351.
    14. Borges, Adilson & Chebat, Jean-Charles & Babin, Barry J., 2010. "Does a companion always enhance the shopping experience?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 294-299.
    15. Knoeferle, Klemens M. & Paus, Vilhelm Camillus & Vossen, Alexander, 2017. "An Upbeat Crowd: Fast In-store Music Alleviates Negative Effects of High Social Density on Customers’ Spending," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 93(4), pages 541-549.
    16. Parkinson, Joy & Gallegos, Danielle & Russell-Bennett, Rebekah, 2016. "Transforming beyond self: Fluidity of parent identity in family decision-making," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 110-119.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zou, Huan & Wang, Hong & Li, Jing & Hua, Haiyan & Wu, Shuqi, 2024. "Ordering alone or together? The effect of ordering situation on over-ordering behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bandyopadhyay, Nirmalya & Sivakumaran, Bharadhwaj & Patro, Sanjay & Kumar, Ravi Shekhar, 2021. "Immediate or delayed! Whether various types of consumer sales promotions drive impulse buying?: An empirical investigation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    2. Wilken, Robert & Stimmer, Elena & Bürgin, David, 2022. "Should retailers encourage couples to shop together?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    3. Gui, Dan-Yang & Liu, Shixiong & Dai, Yu & Liu, Ying & Wang, Xiaoli & Huang, Huiying, 2021. "Greater patience and monetary expenditure: How shopping with companions influences purchase decisions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. Jennifer K D’Angelo & Kristin Diehl & Lisa A Cavanaugh, 2019. "Lead by Example? Custom-Made Examples Created by Close Others Lead Consumers to Make Dissimilar Choices," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 46(4), pages 750-773.
    5. Gentina, Élodie & Chandon, Jean-Louis, 2013. "Adolescent shopping behaviour: Different assimilation and individuation needs in France and the United States," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 609-616.
    6. Morone, Andrea & Nemore, Francesco & Schirone, Dario Antonio, 2018. "Sales impact of servicescape's rational stimuli: A natural experiment," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 256-262.
    7. Ximena Garcia-Rada & Lalin Anik & Dan Ariely, 2019. "Consuming together (versus separately) makes the heart grow fonder," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 27-43, March.
    8. Sahi, Gurjeet Kaur & Devi, Rita & Gupta, Mahesh C. & Cheng, T.C.E., 2022. "Assessing co-creation based competitive advantage through consumers’ need for differentiation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    9. Tobias Scholz & Jörn Redler & Sven Pagel, 2021. "Re-designing adaptive selling strategies: the role of different types of shopping companions," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(5), pages 1243-1280, July.
    10. Carvalho, Sergio W. & Luna, David & Goldsmith, Emily, 2019. "The role of national identity in consumption: An integrative framework," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 310-318.
    11. Tianhua Zhang & Juliang Zhang & Fu Zhao & Yihong Ru & John W. Sutherland, 2020. "Allocating resources for a restaurant that serves regular and group-buying customers," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 883-913, December.
    12. Dominici, Andrea & Boncinelli, Fabio & Gerini, Francesca & Marone, Enrico, 2021. "Determinants of online food purchasing: The impact of socio-demographic and situational factors," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    13. Kozak, Metin, 2010. "Holiday taking decisions – The role of spouses," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 489-494.
    14. Errajaa, Karim & Hombourger-Barès, Sabrina & Audrain-Pontevia, Anne-Françoise, 2022. "Effects of the in-store crowd and employee perceptions on intentions to revisit and word-of-mouth via transactional satisfaction: A SOR approach," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    15. Katakam, Bharath Shashanka & Bhukya, Ramulu & Bellamkonda, Raja Shekhar & Samala, Nagaraj, 2021. "Longitudinal analysis versus cross-sectional analysis in assessing the factors influencing shoppers’ impulse purchase behavior – Do the store ambience and salesperson interactions really matter?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    16. Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Moradi, Jasmine & Rudholm, Niklas & Öberg, Christina, 2019. "Effects of employees’ opportunities to influence in-store music on sales: Evidence from a field experiment," HFI Working Papers 4, Institute of Retail Economics (Handelns Forskningsinstitut).
    17. Kao, Karen C. & Rao Hill, Sally & Troshani, Indrit, 2021. "A cross-country comparison of online deal popularity effect," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    18. Lazaris, Chris & Vrechopoulos, Adam & Sarantopoulos, Panagiotis & Doukidis, Georgios, 2022. "Additive omnichannel atmospheric cues: The mediating effects of cognitive and affective responses on purchase intention," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    19. Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Moradi, Jasmine & Rudholm, Niklas & Öberg, Christina, 2021. "Effects of employees’ opportunities to influence in-store music on sales: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    20. Dehling, Noémie, 2023. "Silence in the consumer experience: A conceptualization and research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:47:y:2019:i:c:p:222-228. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.