CUSTOMER SATISFACTION OF FAST-FOOD

RESTAURANTS IN URDANETA CITY

DURING PANDEMIC

Presented to the Faculty of College of Hospitality Management

ABE International College of Business and Accountancy,
Urdaneta City, Pangsinan

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management

By

Name of Researcher:

Baylon, Erika Jones B.

Catubay, Xyrel F.

Higonia, Eloisa Mae A.

Oliveras, Jon Vince B.

2021
 Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

When the Covid-19 Pandemic hit the Philippines, countermeasures to

slow its spread were implemented unto all Institutions, establishments, and

Businesses. Among these businesses affected is Jollibee. These

countermeasures have changed how Jollibee carry out their day-to-day business.

Some of these countermeasures are service crew, guards, and customers have

since been required to wear face shields and face masks. Customers also can’t

dine together at a table unless the table has a plastic barrier.

The researchers aim to study the customer satisfaction of Jollibee

customers in Urdaneta city during the covid-19 pandemic. Whether the

customers’ satisfaction has been affected by the abrupt changes in Jollibee’s

business execution, how is the customers’ satisfaction affected by it, and what

has Jollibee done to fix these problems.

Lucjan Kierczak (2021) argues that the importance of customer

satisfaction should never be ignored even in today’s age. There are dozens of

factors contributing to the success (or failure) of a business, customer

satisfaction is one of them. He also believes that it’s important to track this factor

and work on improving it to make customers more loyal and eventually turn them

into brand ambassadors.

Jollibee Food Corporation is the biggest Filipino Multinational fast-food

chain. It is safe to say they are the benchmark on how and what a fast-food
restaurant should be. This research on how Jollibee’s customers’ satisfaction has

been affected since the implementation of Covid-19 Pandemic Health Protocols

and what they did and still doing to resolve this issue will provide invaluable

information to countless other fast-food restaurants who are struggling during this

pandemic. Not only will this research be useful to current fast-food restaurants

but also to future fast-food restaurants if there comes another pandemic in the

future.

Through this research, we can shed some light on how Jollibee has kept

its customers satisfied despite the hassling changes in their restaurants so

closed, new, struggling, and/or old fast-food restaurants may assimilate this

research for the gain of the fast-food industry.

Background of the Study

A quick google search on “customer satisfaction research” on google

returns about 325,000,000 results and the website www.quirks.com has 372

complete research papers about customer satisfaction. Why there have been

countless articles and research papers altogether about customer satisfaction is

because of how important it is to businesses.

According to Indeed Editorial Team (2021) “identifying and addressing

unhappy customers is crucial to the success of any business. Negative customer

reviews, or word-of-mouth warnings to friends and family based on bad

experiences, can adversely impact a company's longevity.”

While there may be countless studies on customer satisfaction this

particular research is unique, and the researchers believe that this will prove to
be useful to the field of fast-food restaurants sometime in the future. Though

there have been pandemics before this Covid-19, not many papers, if there is at

all, about customer satisfaction in a fast-food restaurant during pandemic were

produced so because of the current Covid-19 pandemic the researchers found

an opportunity to study this topic.

Owing to earlier studies on customer satisfaction, we had a grasp on

factors that affect it and the theories that explain them. These factors and

theories brought about by previous research papers and articles on customer

satisfaction have helped the researchers formulate their survey. Two theories,

Dissonance Theory, and the Theory of Assimilation, were chosen to help explain

the results of the survey that will be conducted by the researchers.

Theoretical Framework
The Dissonance Theory says that a person who expected a high-value

product and received a low-value product would recognize the disparity and

experience cognitive dissonance (Cardozzo, 1965). That is, the disconfirmed

expectations create a state of dissonance or psychological discomfort (Yi, 1990).

According to this theory, the existence of dissonance produces pressures for its

reduction, which could be achieved by adjusting the perceived disparity.

This theory asserts that post-exposure ratings are mainly influenced by

the customers’ expectations rather than actual experience because the job of

acknowledging disconfirmation is believed to be psychologically uncomfortable.

So, customers are put in a position to distort the discrepancy between the

expectation and the actual service to match with their prior expectation level. One
example of this is when customers raise their product evaluations when they

learn that the cost of a product or service is high for them.

For example, when a customer enters a restaurant, he/she has already

set an expectation that the food and service there is good but when the meals

turn out to be bad as well as the service, for the dissonance to be reduced, the

customer might convince him/herself that the food and service weren’t that bad

and that maybe the restaurant crews may just be having a bad day, etc.

Festinger’s theory of dissonance (1957) forms the basis for the theory of

assimilation. The dissonance point of view on post-usage evaluation was

introduced in the literature discussing satisfaction under the form of the theory of

assimilation. (Anderson, 1973) According to Anderson, the consumers try to

avoid dissonance by adjusting their perceptions of a certain product (or service),

to bring it closer to their expectations.

The theory of assimilation assumes the customers are driven enough to

alter their expectations and their perception of the restaurant’s service. If

customers alter their expectations and their perception of the restaurant’s service,

dissatisfaction won’t be the result of the post-usage process.

Customers can reduce the resulting stress from the difference between

expectations and product/service performance either by warping their

expectations in a way that coincides with their product/service performance or by

increasing the level of satisfaction by decreasing the importance of the

discomfort experienced.
 Before surveying our respondents about their satisfaction with Jollibee’s

products and services we know that they already have a preconceived notion of

Jollibee’s services and products because we will be asking them about their

previous experience at Jollibee and their current experience at Jollibee during

this pandemic. Dissonance and Assimilation theory will work best in helping the

researchers describe the result of the survey because this theory assumes that

the respondents have already set an expectation on Jollibee and it will be that

case that customers/respondents already expect because they have already

gone to Jollibee before the pandemic, otherwise they won’t be included in the

survey. Though the topic of this paper is not about the difference in services

and/or products of Jollibee before and after pandemic it is closely related to it so

it may be brushed in this study.

Conceptual Framework

INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT

1. Does pandemic affect the

Identified if pandemic
customer satisfaction in fast-food
affects and how it affects
restaurants in Urdaneta City.
customer satisfaction in
2. How does the pandemic affect
A mixed method fast-food restaurant in
the customer satisfaction in fast-
research using interview- Urdaneta city.
food restaurants in Urdaneta City.
guide questionnaire. Identified the solutions
3. What are the solutions to the
provided by restaurants to
problem brought about by the
problems brought about by
pandemic with regards to
the pandemic.
customer satisfaction in fast-food

restaurant in Urdaneta City.

 include explanation of your conceptual

Statement of the Problem

1. Does pandemic affect Jollibee’s customer satisfaction in Urdaneta City?

2. How does the pandemic affect Jollibee’s customer satisfaction in Urdaneta

City?

3. What has Jollibee done to solve the problem brought about by the

pandemic with regards to their customer’s satisfaction in Urdaneta City?

Scope and Limitations of the Study

This study focuses on the customer satisfaction of Jollibee in Urdaneta

during the pandemic. The data collection will be conducted to only 5% of the

daily average customers of Jollibee Urdaneta (the one beside 7-11) who will

represent the population for the researcher’s resources can’t survey 10%. Only

persons aged 16 to 59 years old will be surveyed because they are the only ones

allowed by the government to go out in public places, hence they are the only
ones that may enter Jollibee. The customers of other Jollibee's in Urdaneta are

not within the scope of this research. The study will be done using questionnaires

to the customers as a survey reference. No one-on-one interview and other

forms of surveying will be used other than questionnaires because the data

gathered would be easier to interpret if there’s only one form of survey. The

researchers will then interpret the result according to their plans. if no interview then how
will you condcut the
rsearch based on your
conceptual there will be an
interview

Significance of the Study

When fast-food restaurants were forced to temporarily close due to the

Covid-19 pandemic many of them have gone bankrupt, some opened again but

ultimately closed, new ones opened but also closed yet big corporations like

Jollibee doesn’t even seem to have taken a hit.

Though a lot of factors affect Jollibee’s success one of the main factors

that should be taken into consideration is customer satisfaction. (Indeed Editorial

Team, 2021) Customer satisfaction should be the main focus of an organization

because customers drive business. Collecting customer satisfaction data helps a

company determine what is working well with their products, services, and

internal processes, and what they need to improve or change completely.

Lucjan Kierczak, 2021 whats this for?

 Some research says that it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire

a new customer than it is to keep a current one. On average, loyal

customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. insert citation

Banks or mobile providers know it best, so they don’t have any

problem with going the extra mile for a customer who is not quite satisfied

and often offers him something special. Not only it is more expensive but

also much more difficult to keep existing and loyal clients (let alone

keeping them fully satisfied and happy!) than to gain some new ones.

Understanding whether the pandemic has affected customer satisfaction

on Jollibee and how it may have affected it and how customers and Jollibee itself

have adapted to the abrupt changes will help other fast-food restaurants.

Regardless of whether the pandemic has affected Jollibee’s customer

satisfaction. The data that will be gathered will still be useful as a reference for

future research. We may or may not have another pandemic and seizing this

opportunity to learn about the pandemic's effect might give us something we

never intended to discover in the first place.

Definition of Terms how did you define the terms here?operational or conceptual?

Customer satisfaction 1. According to Indeed Editorial Team (2021),

Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT) is a measurement of how

happy (or unhappy) customers are with a company's products, services, or

experience. Customer satisfaction consists of a customer's perceived quality,

value, and expectations of your company and what you offer.

Customers 2. According to Indeed Editorial Team (2021), customers

include anyone a company provides products, services, or experiences.

Jollibee 3. Jollibee is a Filipino multinational chain of fast-food restaurants

owned by Jollibee Foods Corporation

COVID-19 4. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease

caused by a newly discovered coronavirus

Exposure Rating 5. Exposure Rating is a method of rating, usually

applied to an excess of loss reinsurance, under which the rate is determined

based on an analysis of the exposure inherent in the business to be covered and

not on the loss experience the business has demonstrated in the past.

Pandemic 6. Pandemic and Covid-19 Pandemic has been used as the

same thing and has been interchangeably used in this study.

Paper 7. Paper refers to this research paper

Study 8. The study refers to research papers and/or other academic

papers/articles.

Disconfirmation 9. To deny or refute the validity of the expectation vs

reality

Word-of-mouth 10. Word of mouth or viva voce is the passing of

information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as

simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-

of-mouth communication where one person tells others a story about a real event,

or something made up.