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Recent studies show that hospitality and services can, if attractively designed, elicit positive responses from guests or customers. Although responses are individual and highly subjective, Fuzzy Quality Function Deployment (FQFD) may provide a competitive advantage to those who are able to read and interpret customers’ responses and needs in terms of hospitality services. This study introduces an integrative framework of Kano's model and FQFD applied to Taiwanese Ban-Doh banquet services. Kano's model with fuzzy sets was used and integrated into the FQFD method to show the relation between service attributes and customer responses. Kano's model categorizes service attributes into three major groups: Must-be, One-dimensional and Attractive. The findings of a case study involving six senior Ban-Doh chefs and 80 guests who attended Ban-Doh banquets are presented. By focusing on the quality of service characteristics that satisfy customers, this study enables service providers and managers to determine the extent to which they can prioritize the improvement of service design in Ban-Doh banquet services to satisfy customer expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the prosperity and the growing trend of online information system applications, consumers and business alike have been changing their behavioral models for obtaining information. This brings enormous commercial opportunities to the catering industry. In order to promote its competitive advantages, Napoli Pizza, a chain restaurant in Taiwan, implemented a real-time kitchen production capability information system (e-KS). This research aims at helping Napoli Pizza to identify factors affecting employees' attitude toward e-KS usage intention. The results show that employees have positive impressions and evaluations of e-KS, and the most influential factor is employees' "attitude toward using", which has a significant effect on their usage intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Tourism experiences in natural landscapes are considered an integral component of tourism value. Tourism experiences can also create a link between an individual and his or her spiritual needs. Thus, this study aims to utilize an effective approach to interpret individual, subjective human experiences in natural environments using interpretive structural modeling. This technique is used to build a hierarchy-based model and determine the mutual relationships among the enablers of tour value. In addition, this study uses the Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) analysis to analyze the degree of influence of these factors and their degree of dependence on each other. To collect the empirical data, questionnaires were distributed to visitors at Grand Gangshan, a tourist destination in northeastern Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The results show that particular enablers (Internet marketing, the establishment of sales locations and planning for travel information services) have a high degree of influence and exhibit low dependence. These enablers require a great deal of attention because of their strategic importance to tourism development. The approach employed in this study provides a very useful tool for travel authorities to use to differentiate between the independent and dependent variables affecting tour value and to identify the relationships among those variables. Using this approach will allow the actors in this industry to focus on the most important variables for promoting the visitor experience in natural settings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]