University Students' Perspective towards the Atmospherics of Theme Restaurants in Selangor, Malaysia

This study explored the factors affecting university students' perspectives towards a theme restaurant. Atmospherics has been regarded as one of the factors that affect the satisfaction of students as it would trigger emotional responses within the theme restaurant, determining the behavioral intention of the students, whether they would return to the restaurant or not. The findings could be referred by the theme restaurant managers to understand more about customers' needs and wants in terms of physical environment of the theme restaurant. Qualitative research method was applied. 10 face-to-face interviews were conducted and the research context was in the theme restaurants around Selangor, Malaysia. As a result, this study has found that the physical environment of the theme restaurant affected students' satisfaction towards their dining experiences as well as elicits emotional responses among the students during their dine-in processes in the theme restaurants. Both satisfaction and emotional responses of the students were found out to be imposing significant effects on the behavioral intention of the university students. Hence, this study provided assistance for the theme restaurant operators to understand their customers of university students and make more effective managing strategies.