Sustainability in Ghanaian restaurant service The role of service recovery

Abstract

In many parts of the world, restaurants have systematic mechanism for recovering failed services. However, many restaurants in Ghana do not practically perceive service recovery as a strategic management tool, and hence attaches limited significance to systematic service recovery in an attempt to ensure sustainable performances. This study therefore investigates the role of service recovery in the sustainability of Ghanaian restaurant services. The explanatory design and quantitative study involved the survey of 37 managers, 57 waiters/waitresses, and 169 customers of 10 restaurants in the Kumasi Metropolis. Data collected through structured questionnaire was entered in the SPSS IBM 20 and validated using the Lisrel 8.50. Data was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and hypotheses tested using both multiple regression and Structural Equation Model. The study showed that both customers and service providers perceive the restaurants in the Kumasi Metropolis to adhere to service recovery justices. Nonetheless, the level of service recovery adherence of the restaurants depended largely on the category or grade of restaurant. The higher the grade of restaurant, the higher the adherence to service recovery practices. Distributive and procedural justices had no effect on the social and environmental sustainability. However, the interactional and informational justices positively and significantly influenced both social and environmental sustainability. The distributive, interactional and informational justices positively and statistically significantly influenced the satisfaction level of customers. Also, the satisfaction level of the customers of the restaurants positively and statistically significantly influenced social and environmental sustainability. Customer satisfaction fully mediated the effect of the interactional justice on sustainability whereas the informational justice affects the sustainability of the restaurants only partially through the satisfaction level of the customers. The legitimacy of the restaurants in their located communities was not a moderator in the effect of the level of satisfaction of the customers on sustainability of the restaurants. Lastly, the positive effect of interactional and informational justice on social and environmental sustainability is through the intervening role of customer satisfaction but not dependent on the legitimacy of the restaurants. This study therefore recommends organisation of workshops and seminars on service recovery and promotion of online complaint handling.