How Do Individual Personality Traits (D) Influence Perceived Satisfaction with Service for College Students (C) in a Casual Restaurant Setting (I)? The CID Framework

Empirical research in hospitality marketing must be carefully conducted and calibrated so as to ensure reproducibility of results when the same set of experiments are repeated at a later point in time. Even when careful controls are put in place, the effects being demonstrated in psychological and pharmaceutical research have been known to diminish considerably over multiple replications, a phenomenon known as the decline effect. In order to improve the specification of parameters in hospitality marketing research, we propose a framework called CID, which essentially states that a study can be anchored in the context of a specific customer segment (C), industry vertical (I), and determinants of consumer behavior (D) in the context being studied. To illustrate the CID concept, our study addresses the influence of college students' (C) personality traits (D) on their perception of satisfaction, as well as their evaluation of various relational benefits offered in casual dining restaurants (I). A quantitative survey was conducted to measure college students' personality traits and level of satisfaction with restaurants and structural equation modeling was used to validate hypotheses relating various personality traits to satisfaction. The results indicate that two kinds of relational benefits, confidence in the abilities of the service provider and social benefits offered during the service experience, enhance customer satisfaction for college students, but surprisingly, special treatment benefits extended during service could negatively impact satisfaction.