H. Han, S.S. Hyun / International Journal of Hospitality Management 63 (2017) 82–92 83
1998; Piron, 2000; Truong et al., 2008). How to enhance public
visibility and exhibit wealth publicly related to the consumption
of luxury product/service is a vital issue for practitioners, particu-
larly in the hospitality industry (Han et al., 2016). Given these, it is
indisputable that discovering the associations among the research
variables discussed above and exploring their role are of utmost
importance in order to clearly identify the ways to increase cus-
tomer repeat purchase decisions and behaviors.
In spite of their importance, the complicated interrelations
among the research constructs have not been wholly uncov-
ered and clearly understood. A simultaneous approach examining
the impact of such relationships on behavioral intention is also
rare. In addition, research that examines luxury hotel restaurant
patrons’ decision-making process and post purchase behaviors is
not abundant. Moreover, despite its importance, conspicuousness
consumption of luxury product and its moderating impact on hotel
restaurant customers’ decision-making process for repurchase of
the product and purchase of other products within the same hotel
property has been scarcely examined.
Filling these existing research gaps, the present study attempted
1) to explore how overall image of hotel restaurant, image congru-
ence, quality factors (physical environment, service, and food), and
satisfaction are interrelated and how such relationships influence
intentions to revisit a particular restaurant in a hotel and to visit
other restaurants of the hotel; 2) to identify which factor among the
study variables plays a salient role in determining patrons’ behav-
ioral intentions; 3) to discover how conspicuousness moderates
the magnitude of the relationship strengths among research vari-
ables; and 3) to identify if quality dimensions and satisfaction have
a mediating impact within the proposed theoretical framework. A
thorough review of the literature is presented in the following sec-
tion, then methods and results are presented, and finally discussion
and implications derived from the results of this study are provided.
2. Literature review
2.1. Overall image
An important predictor of behavioral intentions is overall image
(Lee et al., 2010). In particular, a positive influence of overall image
is reported on repeat purchase intention and recommendation
intention (Brunner et al., 2008; Cronin et al., 2000). According to
Brunner et al. (2008), image is the vital variable that plays an
essential role in intention formation along with customer satisfac-
tion, which is often regarded as having the strongest association
with intention. Boosting the level of product/service image that
customers have is likely to result in increased intention to be
loyal (Ostrowski et al., 1993) either in a directly (Andreassen and
Lindestad, 1998) or in an indirectly (Bloemer and Ruyter, 1998).
Thus, it is often suggested that image together with other important
variables need to be incorporated into the theoretical framework
of customer decision-making (e.g., Brunner et al., 2008; Lee et al.,
2010; Selnes, 1993). Keller (1993) defined overall image as one’s
general perception of a company as reflected in the relationships
held in customer memory. Similarly, Assael (1984) described it as
one’s overall perception of a product/firm developed ultimately
based on acquired and processed information. Furthermore, the
clearest definition of overall image is provided by Kotler et al.
(1993), who stated that overall image refers to the global set
of consumers’ beliefs, impressions, and ideas about a company,
brand, product, service, or destination. Consistently, in the present
research, overall restaurant image indicates that the set of beliefs
and impressions that patrons have of a luxury hotel restaurant
product and its attributes.
2.2. Image congruence
Image congruence is a concept related to a match-
ing/comparison between customer self-image and product
image/product-user image (Han and Hyun, 2013; Sirgy, 1985).
Self-image, whose alternative term is self-concept, includes (1)
actual self-image (i.e., how consumers actually see themselves)
and (2) social self image (i.e., how consumers feel others see them-
selves), which are derived from self-consistency motive, as well as
(3) ideal self-image (i.e., how customers would want to see them-
selves) and (4) ideal social self-image (i.e., how consumers would
want others to see themselves) that rely on self-enhancement
motive (Jamal and Goode, 2001; Kressmann et al., 2006; Sirgy
et al., 1997). Image congruence consistently comprises actual self-
image congruence, social self-image congruence, ideal self-image
congruence, and ideal social self-image congruence (Back, 2005;
Sirgy et al., 1997). Among these, social self-image and ideal social
self-image congruities are important particularly for a highly
conspicuous product/service (Back, 2005; Han and Hyun, 2013).
Researchers agree that hospitality and tourism products/services
include high conspicuous characteristics in nature as customers’
consumption experience of these products/services is mostly
shared with others (Back, 2005; Back and Lee, 2009). Conspicuous-
ness of consumption becomes even greater when such hospitality
and tourism products/services are luxurious (Han and Hyun,
2013). For instance, individuals who consider themselves to be
living high status and luxury lifestyles are inclined to select a fine
dining restaurant for certain occasions, especially when they want
to impress others (Kwun and Oh, 2006). Given this, the utilization
of social and ideal social-image congruence comprising social and
ideal social self-images as constituents of image congruence can
be adequate in the present research setting.
2.3. Quality and satisfaction
Quality has been defined in diverse ways. The conceptualization
of quality that has achieved the greatest acceptance is that quality
is customers’ assessment of the excellence of a company’s prod-
uct/service and the performance of its main attributes compared to
competing firms’ product/service and its attributes performances
(Taylor and Baker, 1994). In the same vein, Han and Hyun (2015)
conceptualized quality as tourists’ appraisal of the excellence in
a particular tourism product and its performances against those
offered by rival products. In many theoretical/empirical studies
in hospitality, quality of physical environment, service (or inter-
action), and food (or outcome) are regarded to be the essential
quality constituents (Chua et al., 2015; Mattila, 2001; Ryu and Han,
2010). Particularly, overall quality of a restaurant product encom-
passes tangible (i.e., physical facilities and foods) and intangible
(i.e., employee services) experiences (Mattila, 2001; Ryu and Han,
2010).
Satisfaction has also been conceptualized in many ways. The
conceptualization of customer satisfaction that has obtained the
widest agreement/acceptance is that satisfaction is an evalua-
tion of the affective responses/experiences following a cognitive
expectancy disconfirmation process across prior expectation and
perceived performance of a product/service and its attributes
(Oliver, 1980). Dissatisfaction occurs when customers evaluate that
the performance of the product/service differs from their expecta-
tion (Brunner et al., 2008; Oliver, 1999). Customers’ decisions and
purchasing behaviors rely heavily on the satisfactory evaluation of
their overall affective experiences with a product/service and the
performances of its attributes (Oliver, 1980).

Impact of Hotel-restaurant Image and Quality of Physical-environment, Service, and Food on Satisfaction and Intention

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