A Study of Customer Orientation of Service Employee (COSE) in the Full-Service Restaurant Industry: Customer Segment-Based Approach

The concept of customer orientation of service employee (COSE) has received much attention from both academicand industrial fields due to the effects of employee services on successful relationship marketing. Therefore, the aimsof this study are to (1) identify what kinds of COSE there are in the full-service restaurant industry, (2) find whetheror not patrons can be grouped into distinct subsegments based on COSE, and (3) investigate whether or not thereare statistical differences among the subsegments based on demographic characteristics. The results of confirmatoryfactor analysis indicated that there were four factors of COSE (e.g. technical skills, social skills, motivation, anddecision-making authority). Second, we classified respondents into four segments based on the four dimensions ofCOSE through K-means cluster analysis (Cluster 1 = restaurant patrons who highly place importance on technicalskills and decision-making authority, Cluster 2 = patrons who lowly place importance on all the factors, Cluster 3= restaurant patrons who highly place importance on social skills and motivation, Cluster 4 = restaurant patrons whohighly place importance on technical skills but very lowly place importance on social skills). Finally, Pearson'schi-squared test showed that there were statistical differences in gender and age among four segments. In the latterpart of the study, we suggested managerial implications.