| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄餐旅大學 === 餐旅管理研究所 === 100 === Free food samples may be one of the most popular promotion methods used by restaurateurs and food retailers; it not only lets consumers to experience the flavor of food products, but also narrows the distance between consumers and food sample employees. After eating, the consumer will keep the quality of food product and employee service in mind and then decide whether he or she will buy the product or not, which will accelerate the speed of purchasing.
In order to understand the motivation why consumers go for free food samples in hypermarket and whether consumer perceived quality will affect customer satisfaction and customer loyalty or not, this study take the free food samples in Costco as example and explore the relationships between "consumer motivation", "perceived quality", "customer satisfaction", and "customer loyalty". Besides, we will classify consumers into different groups according to their motivatons and find out which group is easily affected by free food samples, and then the restaurateurs or food retailers can take it as reference and provide appropriate services for different groups of consumers to increase the trading opportunities.
This study distributed 250 questionaires and collected 198 valid questionnaires. The results show that the consumers can be classified into three groups: "hedonic group", "utilitarian group", and "conscious group". The hedonic group has significant difference in perceived quality and customer loyalty among these three groups. This study also finds perceived service quality will positively influence product and service satisfaction, but perceived product quality only positively influence product satisfaction, indicating that the quality of food sample employee is more important than increase the quality of food only. Besides, customer satisfaction affects customer loyalty positively.
According to the above findings, it is recommended that restaurateurs and food retailers can regard hedonic consumers as target market, combining sensory, convenient products and kind, professional services to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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