Recommendations' Impact on Customer Behavior and Visiting Catering Organizations

Abstract

In scientific literature the recommendation definition is often contradictory, which only shows how wide and diverse this field is. The impact of recommendations is becoming increasingly relevant, analyzing different customer target groups, segmented by demographic, geographic, psychographic, and consumer behavior criteria. The aim of the study is to analyze recommendations’ significance and impact on customers visiting points of sales. In order to achieve the aim a number of tasks are formulated: first, to form a conceptual model of recommendations’ impact on customers behavior and visiting points of sales; second, to carry out a quantitative study in order to identify statistically significant impact of recommendations on visiting catering organizations in integral sample of respondents as well as in different demographic groups. The study presents scientific literature review on social networks, online blogging, recommendation systems’ and informal word-of-mouth recommendations’ impact on customer behavior and visiting points of sales. Main research methods: comparative analysis of scientific literature, quantitative research – a survey. Summarizing empirical findings of the study it must be concluded that family members, friends and co-workers’ recommendations impact visiting catering organizations in the integral sample of respondents. Although advertising on radio, television and outdoor advertising influences the choice of the catering organization, such advertising does not necessarily encourage the frequency of visiting catering organization. However, recommendations on the range of dishes, interior of a catering organization as well as convenient billing and discounts for loyal customers have a positive impact on respondents’ visiting catering organizations.