UNRAVELLING THE ANTECEDENTS OF RESTAURANT GRATUITY IN KISUMU COUNTY, KENYA: A STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING APPROACH

Abstract

Purpose - Empirically, the act of tipping in the global services industry is as ancient as the Roman times. It can be traced back to centuries ago, although the area has attracted less attention in research. Nonetheless, gratuities contributes immensely on the economic wellbeing of servers. This paper therefore presents an investigation into applicable constructs triggering gratuities within the hotel food service departments including; rewarding service perceptions, incentives for improved future service and social norms. Thus, the purpose of this study was to establish the contribution of each construct under investigation on restaurant tipping in the selected two and three star hotels within Kisumu County. Design - The study applied a descriptive research survey design. This design was chosen based on its suitability for describing gratuities based on responses from the selected respondents within two and three star hotels. Methodology - The study was carried out within Kisumu County, in Kenya. A census of two- and threestar hotels was taken, while questionnaires were self-administered to 384 respondents who were selected by simple random sampling method. Data was organized by skillfully coding and cleaning in order to correct any potential errors and thereafter fed into spreadsheets. The data was further transformed for purposes of conducting specific analysis. Statistical Packages for Social Sciences-Analysis of Moment Structures (SPSS-AMOS) was applied. The study respondents were assured confidentiality, privacy and anonymity in addition to the data collection tools being destroyed after report writing. Approach - The study was carried out in nine hotels within Kisumu County, among which one hotel was selected for pre-testing. On the other hand, respondents constituted food service clients and managers. Questionnaires and content analysis were used in the collection of data. Reliability was determined by Cronbach’s coefficient Alpha test (> 0.70) while content validity was used to assess the internal validity of the research instruments. Findings - The study results gave factor loadings ˃ 0.70 which indicates that the factors under investigation extracts sufficient variance from the dependent variables. Further, the study results show that alcohol consumption gave the highest prediction (91.2%) and thus unique contribution to the independent variable. Finally, the study established a positive significant relationship (at 95% confidence level) between superior service, frequency of patronage, alcohol consumption as well as weather and gratuity. Originality of the research - The act of giving gratuities is prevalent across the global hospitality environment, with a myriad of economic importance to the industry. However, very minimal studies have been carried out, though not related to this study. Most of previous studies are on the service quality-tipping relationship, while this study focused on tipping-service quality relationship. Therefore in the best of our knowledge, no similar study has ever been carried out, and thus this is a unique and original study that has addressed the topic.