The Role of Authenticity in Mainstream Ethnic Restaurants

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
The role of authenticity in mainstream ethnic restaurants: Evidence from an
independent full-service Italian restaurant
Hongbo Liu, Hengyun Li, Robin B. DiPietro, Jamie Alexander Levitt,
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Hongbo Liu, Hengyun Li, Robin B. DiPietro, Jamie Alexander Levitt, (2018) "The role of authenticity
in mainstream ethnic restaurants: Evidence from an independent full-service Italian restaurant",
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 30 Issue: 2, pp.1035-1053,
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-08-2016-0410
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The role of authenticity in
mainstream ethnic restaurants
Evidence from an independent full-service
Italian restaurant
Hongbo Liu
School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Temple University,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and
Hengyun Li, Robin B. DiPietro and Jamie Alexander Levitt
School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management, University of South
Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to examine the effects of perceived authenticity at an independent, full-
service mainstream ethnic restaurant and the moderating effects of diners’ cultural familiarity and
cultural motivation on the influence of perceived authenticity on perceived value and behavioral
intention.
Design/methodology/approach – A total of 417 self-administered questionnaires were collected from
customers of an independent, full-service Italian restaurant in southeastern USA. The data analysis was
performed using structural equation modeling.
Findings – Restaurant authenticity has a positive influence on perceived value. Respondents who are more
familiar with and interested in Italian culture and food tend to attach more value to the restaurant
authenticity. Respondents tend to use authenticity to convey quality judgment of the restaurant.
Research limitations/implications – First, this study advances previous literature on dining
authenticity by incorporating cultural familiarity and cultural motivation. Second, this study extends the
theoretical framework of perceived quality of ethnic restaurants by connecting authenticity perceptions and
quality assessment.
Practical implications – Results suggest that the managers at independent, full-service mainstream
ethnic restaurants should focus on the restaurants’ environment and atmospheric authenticity, especially for
customers who possess cultural familiarity and cultural motivation, while also ensuring the quality of food
and service.
Originality/value – This study makes an initial attempt at studying the role of authenticity in a
mainstream ethnic restaurant context and adds to the knowledge of restaurant authenticity from the
perspectives of cultural familiarity, cultural motivation and perceived quality.
Keywords Perceived authenticity, Perceived quality, Cultural familiarity, Cultural motivation,
Italian restaurant, Mainstream ethnic restaurant
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In contemporary society, increasing awareness of cultural diversity has resulted in a growing
quest for authenticity in the consumption of products and services (Gilmore and Pine, 2007).
Seeking exotic and authentic cultural experiences is one of the primary motivators for
customers visiting ethnic restaurants (Liu and Mattila, 2015), and authenticity has been
widely acknowledged as a value-added offering of restaurants (Kovács et al., 2014). Previous
Ethnic
restaurants
1035
Received 2 August 2016
Revised 23 October 2016
27 February 2017
5 April 2017
Accepted 1 August 2017
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
Vol. 30 No. 2, 2018
pp. 1035-1053
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0959-6119
DOI 10.1108/IJCHM-08-2016-0410
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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empirical studies have supported the positive relationships between ethnic restaurants’
authenticity and customer satisfaction (Liu and Jang, 2009a), perceived value (Jang et al.,
2012), behavioral intention (Liu and Jang, 2009a) and brand equity (Lu et al., 2015).
Consequently, restaurants often use the concept of authenticity as a unique selling point (Lu
et al., 2015), and whether the food and dining environment reflect the culture of ethnic origin
has become a critical attribute for evaluating ethnic restaurants (Liu and Jang, 2009a).
Along with the increase in the popularity and familiarity of ethnic foods among
American people, some traditional ethnic cuisines, such as Italian and Mexican, have
become what is called “mainstream American cuisine” (Ha and Jang, 2012; Liu and Jang,
2009a). For example, Italian cuisine has become part of Americans’ daily lives, as Italian
food is common and easily accessible (Levitt, 2012). According to the National Restaurant
Association’s report, Italian and Mexican food are the top two ethnic cuisines in the USA in
terms of familiarity and frequency of consumption, with 61 and 50 per cent of respondents
eating these cuisines at least once a month, respectively (NRA, 2015). Contrary to these
mainstream ethnic cuisines, less common ethnic cuisines, specifically those that less than
half of respondents indicated eating at least once a month, such as Chinese, Korean or Thai,
can be considered niche ethnic cuisines. To date, most of the previous studies have been
conducted in the context of niche ethnic restaurants (Jang and Ha, 2015; Liu and Jang,
2009a), but it is unknown whether findings on authenticity in niche ethnic restaurants can
be relevant to mainstream ethnic restaurants.
It is important to study authenticity in the mainstream ethnic restaurant context for
multiple reasons. First, consumers may have different authenticity perceptions, as they have
different levels of familiarity with and knowledge about mainstream and niche ethnic
restaurants. The impact of authenticity may be lessened for mainstream ethnic restaurants
because of increased public familiarity (Ha and Jang, 2012). Second, consumers are driven by
different motivators to visit mainstream and niche ethnic restaurants. Specifically,
consumers visit niche ethnic restaurants to seek novelty and exotic cultural experiences,
whereas visiting a mainstream ethnic restaurant could be driven by more utilitarian factors
(Ha and Jang, 2010). Third, a postmodern perspective suggests that not all diners would care
about authenticity if a certain kind of food became more mainstream. Some postmodern
consumers believe that the constant reproduction of products in today’s society is blurring
the line between the fake and the real, and they are no longer concerned about authenticity,
as long as they enjoy the products or services (Brown, 2013; Kim and Jamal, 2007).
Moreover, mainstream ethnic foods deserve more research attention, as they represent the
largest proportion of the US ethnic food market (NRA, 2015).
Although a number of extant studies have investigated the impact of authenticity on
customer evaluation and behavioral intention (Ebster and Guist, 2005; Jang and Ha, 2015;
Jang et al., 2012), few have revealed why some people are concerned about authenticity, while
others are not. Research in consumer psychology suggests that cultural familiarity and
cultural motivation could help explain this. People who are more familiar with the ethnic
culture and food are better at judging the authenticity (Ebster and Guist, 2005) and therefore
more likely to use authenticity assessment as diagnostic information for evaluating their
overall dining experience. Cultural motivation represents high interest, involvement and
personal relevance, which lead people to pay more attention to the authentic aspects of an
experience (Celsi and Olson, 1988).
To overcome the research gaps mentioned above, the present study aims to answer the
following two research questions through a case study on an independent, full-service
Italian restaurant:
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RQ1. Do perceived authenticity and its different dimensions matter when dining out at
a mainstream ethnic restaurant?
RQ2. Do cultural familiarity, cultural motivation and perceived quality help explain
why diners care or do not care about authenticity at a mainstream ethnic
restaurant?
This research makes several contributions to ethnic dining literature. First, this exploratory
study is an early attempt to investigate the authenticity of mainstream ethnic restaurants.
By using a context different from prior studies, which focus on authenticity at niche ethnic
restaurants, this study helps determine if customer perceptions differ between mainstream
and niche ethnic restaurants. Second, this study adds to existing work by introducing the
moderating effects of cultural familiarity and cultural motivation as an initial attempt to
explain why some people are concerned about authenticity when dining in an independent,
full-service mainstream ethnic restaurant, while others are not. Third, this study extends the
theoretical framework of perceived quality of ethnic restaurants by establishing the
relationship between authenticity perceptions and quality assessment, which provides a
new perspective for understanding customers’ quality judgments about ethnic restaurants.
2. Literature review
2.1 Authenticity
Authenticity can be broadly defined as the quality of being genuine, real or true (Taylor,
1991). Type authenticity, which denotes whether a product or service is true to its type or
category, is generally used to assess the authenticity of market offerings, including food and
restaurants (Kim and Baker, 2017; Wang and Mattila, 2015). In other words, a restaurant is
considered authentic when the food and the dining experience reflect the culture of its
referent ethnicity (Wang and Mattila, 2015). Authenticity of an ethnic restaurant can be
reflected mainly by those two aspects (Liu and Jang, 2009a; Jang et al., 2012). Food
authenticity refers to whether the ingredients or dishes are unique to a geographical place
and whether the food is cooked in a traditional way; cooked with local ingredients; or
prepared by natives (Sidali and Hemmerling, 2014). Regarding the dining environment
authenticity, it is usually assessed by the interior and exterior design, decorations and
music, as well as the employees’ uniforms (Jang et al., 2012; Wang and Mattila, 2015).
Consequently, in this study, authenticity in ethnic restaurants is defined as the degree to
which the food and dining environment are perceived as genuine to its type and reflect the
culture of ethnic origin.
The authenticity of ethnic restaurants can be understood from both objective and
subjective perspectives (Ebster and Guist, 2005; Lu et al., 2015). Objectively, the authenticity
of an ethnic restaurant can be judged by the food ingredients, food preparation, decorations,
interior and exterior design and appearance of employees, as well as service manners
(Ebster and Guist, 2005; Lu et al., 2015). However, the constructionist perspective suggests
that authenticity is socially or personally constructed (subjective), rather than objectively
determined (Ebster and Guist, 2005; Kim and Jang, 2016). The judgment of authenticity
could be largely affected by individuals’ cultural knowledge, social context, past experience
and others’ opinions, and therefore, authenticity perceptions of the same restaurant may
vary among diners (Robinson and Clifford, 2012; Wang and Mattila, 2015; Youn and Kim,
2017). On this basis, the present study focuses on customers’ subjective authenticity
assessment of mainstream ethnic restaurants, i.e. perceived authenticity.
Ethnic
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2.2 Perceived authenticity and perceived value
Objects recognized as authentic are usually perceived as more valuable than objects
perceived as inauthentic (Kovács et al., 2014). Perceived value can be divided into two
dimensions: utilitarian value and hedonic value (Overby and Lee, 2006). Authenticity is
more concerned with hedonic value (Ha and Jang, 2010), which is defined as “an overall
assessment of experiential benefits and sacrifices, such as entertainment and escapism”
(Overby and Lee, 2006, p. 1161). Empirically, Jang et al. (2012) found that food authenticity
has a significant and positive impact on perceived value at Korean restaurants in the USA,
and Liu and Jang (2009b) determined that authenticity of dining atmospherics at Chinese
restaurants has a direct effect on customer-perceived value. However, these studies only
provide evidence of the impact of authenticity on perceived value at niche ethnic
restaurants. Whether these findings are applicable to a mainstream ethnic restaurant
remains unknown. Therefore, the first hypothesis is put forward as follows:
H1. Perceived authenticity positively influences diners’ perceived value in a
mainstream ethnic restaurant.
2.3 The moderating effect of cultural familiarity
Familiarity with a culture is developed on the basis of one’s awareness, knowledge and
previous experiences related to that culture, and it is directly related to one’s evaluation of
restaurant authenticity (Robinson and Clifford, 2012). The present study proposes that
cultural familiarity moderates the effect of perceived authenticity on overall value
assessment based on three theoretical arguments.
First, cultural familiarity allows people to better judge authenticity. According to Ebster
and Guist (2005), participants who were more familiar with Italian culture were better at
differentiating authentic and themed Italian restaurants than their culturally inexperienced
counterparts. The underlying mechanism can be explained by consumer expertise. Higher
levels of product familiarity results in increased levels of consumer expertise, which means
increased ability to retrieve information from memory, identify and analyze relevant
information and categorize and differentiate products (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987).
Second, social psychology literature suggests that knowledge and direct experiences are
important dimensions of attitude strength, which measures the strength of positivity or
negativity and the confidence of the attitude (Krosnick et al., 1993; Whan Park et al., 2010).
Therefore, it can be argued that familiarity can increase attitude strength, as knowledge and
direct experience constitute familiarity, and diners who are more familiar with an ethnic
culture and food tend to have a stronger attitude, positive or negative.
Third, the availability heuristic in judgment and decision-making theories also lends
support to the moderating role of cultural familiarity. The availability heuristic suggests
that people make judgements and decisions based on what easily comes to mind (Schwarz
and Vaughn, 2002). Familiarity helps increase the ease of retrieval of information in memory
and the salience of readily available information (Schwarz and Vaughn, 2002; Tybout et al.,
2005). Therefore, in a high cultural familiarity context, people are more likely to use pre-
existing cultural knowledge, and it is easier for them to identify authenticity-relevant cues in
a restaurant for judgment and decision-making. By contrast, when people have less
knowledge or fewer past experiences for judging authenticity, they may tend to use other
available diagnostic information, such as taste or quality, and authenticity cues might
therefore have less of an impact on their evaluations. Based on the above discussions, this
study predicts that cultural familiarity moderates the relationship between perceived
authenticity and perceived value.
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