THE ROLE OF PATRON DINING EXPERIENCE AND EMOTIONS ON RELATIONSHIP QUALITY IN CHAIN RESTAURANT INDUSTRY: A CONCEPTUAL PAPER

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of patron dining experience (PDE) and emotions on relationship quality in the chain restaurant industry. The research includes PDE and emotions as the predictors of relationship quality and loyalty as the consequence. Hence, a conceptual framework of relationship quality expanded with PDE, emotions and loyalty construct is proposed. The present paper hypothesized emotions as the predictor of relationship quality in achieving customer loyalty where it also further discusses the relationship between PDE and emotion. Relationship quality is constructed of three dimensions (i.e. trust, satisfaction and commitment) where PDE consist of five attributes (i.e. price, food quality, service quality, location and environment). Emotions are constructed by both positive and negative emotions. The present paper hopes to provide managers in services, particularly those in the restaurant industry, relevant information to assist in improving their relationship marketing programs.


INTRODUCTION
The old approach of product-oriented marketing is being phased out by the customer-oriented relationship marketing over the years in order to capture customer satisfaction [15].
Researchers found that meeting customer satisfaction alone is no longer enough to ignite loyalty in them [35] [36].
They suggested that there should be a relational bond between a firm and its

Relationship Quality
Smith [40] in his initial research on relationship quality been found that relationship quality can be described as

Patron Dining Experience (PDE) Through Relational Bonds
Food service marketing is often subsumed into that of generalized ''hospitality' ' [45] and in some texts is associated with ''tourism'' [23].Both of these groupings tend to favor the restaurant industry.The food service industry has features which set it apart from other areas of the service sector such as financial and professional services [19].It is also closely concerned with the choice of food and quality.As a result, the restaurant patrons' behavior is influenced by complex attributes Nevertheless, customers tend to expect higher quality food when the price is high [17].

Emotions
The construct of emotions is often confused with other constructs related to it such as mood, affect and attitude.The different constructs need to be distinguished first.The construct of affect is seen as the broad construct in describing the common state of feelings [2][9] [24].Some researchers establish a fine distinction between emotions and moods [24].Such researchers associate emotions with action tendencies and described emotions as a stronger turn-on than moods.In order to further distinguish the construct, Clore et al. [11] and Frijda [13]  and may result in specific actions to affirm or cope with the emotion, depending on its nature and the person having it."

Loyalty
The core objective of relationship marketing has always been to achieve customer loyalty by establishing and maintaining long-term relationships.Thus, customer loyalty is treated as the concluding dependent variable in the present paper.This is supported by several researchers who have maintained that the formation of loyalty is related to relationships [35][39].
Consequently, loyalty is identified as the most important part as well as central to the paradigm of relationship marketing [16][33].The importance of loyalty can be seen from the idea that it is more profitable to maintain a customer than to find a new one.Its importance is based on the three common concepts of which loyal customers spend more with the company, they are less price sensitive and they are cheaper to maintain [6][31] [42].

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The conceptual framework of the

Patron Dining Experience (PDE) and Emotion
The present paper also discusses whether patron dining experience (PDE) will affect customer emotions.In particular, the impact of patron dining experience

Emotions and Relationship Quality
The theoretical and empirical grounds for this linkage have been established

Relationship Quality and Loyalty
Strong evidence has been found in support of the linkage between relationship quality as an overall construct comprising of satisfaction, trust and commitment with loyalty.
Shammout [38] in investigating the linkage between relationship quality as an overall construct with loyalty, found that satisfaction and trust are strong determinants of loyalty.The result is consistent within the hospitality context, where an increasing amount of evidence in support of the linkage between relationship quality and loyalty is found.Therefore, based on the support found in the literature, the following hypothesis is proposed: H4: Relationship quality positively influence on customer loyalty.

Construct Measurement
The choice of scale items corresponds to a business-to-customer market context and are adopted from the most relevant literatures of consumers' perceptions as end users in buyer-seller relationship.The following items are suggested.
customers and this relationship needs to be maintained.They referred this relational bond as relationship quality.The research in this relationship quality remains vague and the present paper tried to address this by covering three issues.The first issue is related to nature of relationships since there is a lack of robustness due to the fastchanging and competitive environment in the chain restaurant industry.is even harder [1].The present paper suggests on possible new determinants of relationship quality in the chain restaurant industry.Secondly, the predictors of relationship quality are changing over time.Moreover, the predictors are not generic across fields.However, according to Wang et al. [44], these antecedents of relationship quality have all along been based on relational bonds which consist of financial, social and structural bonds.The present paper proposes on forming a generic construct of patron dining experience (PDE) as the predictor of relationship quality in the chain restaurant industry consistent with the relational bonds theory.Thirdly, to cover a gap in the relationship quality research, the present paper hopes to discuss the impact of customer emotions on relationship quality as it lacks systematic investigation.The present paper is the first to propose the role of emotions as a new predictor of relationship quality in the chain restaurant industry.

[ 17 ]
[29].They have maintained that the patrons' evaluation on these attributes influences their behavior.Consistent with the present paper, their view is appropriate to define patron dining experience (PDE) construct in the study.PDE is defined as the response of the patrons' behavior.However, only five of these are widely accepted.They are the quality of the food, the price, the service, the location, and clean environment[17][41].These attributes are selected as the foundation to explain the PDE construct.The formation construct of the construct is supported by the relational bonding process (financial bonds, social bonds and structural bonds).The relationship marketing researchers focused on studying only three types of bonds which are financial, social and structural bonds.In later research, authors have suggested that only by applying all those three types of relational bonds: financial, social, and structural, firms can build relationships with their customers [28][44].Their suggestion is consistent with the present paper, where these three relational bonds support to explain the formation of the attributes in patron dining experience (PDE).Financial bonds are commonly related with retention marketing or better known as frequency marketing.In restaurant marketing context, price has always been considered as an important criterion [17][29][41].Marketers must continually improve the quality of products and lower prices in order to attract and maintain customers.
present paper has been developed based on the earlier literature review.The framework has five main hypotheses which are to be tested.Hypotheses H1 and H2 are proposed to reflect the influence of patrons dining experience (PDE) on relationship quality and customer emotions respectively.The effect of emotions on relationship quality

Figure 1
Figure 1: Proposed Conceptual Model

(
PDE) on customer emotions has not been empirically examined.To discuss on the link between patron dining experience (PDE) and emotions, it is first pointed out by Walls [43] on the possibility that emotional link between consumer and provider exist through bonding process.The existence may be at a very deep personal or a brief level.Walls [43] has maintained that bonds are able to reduce customers' sadness, anxiety and separation distress by providing added feelings of comfort,

[ 38 ]
[46].It has been found that some researchers have linked emotions with relationship quality as an overall construct consisting of satisfaction, trust and commitment.There is also some research which linked positive and negative emotions to the relationship quality construct, separately.Wong [46] provided an explanation for the relationship suggesting that customers elicit various types of emotions during the consumption experience.The service encounter experience overall relationship quality is assessed by customer with emotions conveying important information in the assessing process.Therefore, it can be said that customers are expected to develop positive perceptions towards the overall relationship quality if he/she display positive emotions during the service encounter.In response, the below hypothesis is proposed: H3: Customer emotions positively influence on relationship quality.