Impact of Ambiance Conditions on Customer Satisfaction in the Restaurant Industry; Case Study of Debonairs Pizza Outlets in Botswana

This paper presents a study of the impact of ambient conditions on customer satisfaction at Debonairs Pizza outlets in Gaborone Botswana. Managers at Debonairs Pizza outlets are continually changing the design of restaurants, which are the colour, layout, lighting, scent, temperature and decor. However, the effect of this changed design is not fully understood whether it causes customer satisfaction or not. The objectives of the study was to establish the relationship between the scent in Debonairs Pizza outlets and customer satisfaction, to determine the relationship level between customer satisfaction and lighting at Debonairs Pizza outlets and lastly was to determine the relationship between temperature levels and customer satisfaction at Debonairs Pizza outlets. Casual research design was employed and simple random sampling was used during the study. A sample size of 81 customers was used. Data was obtained from three Debonairs Pizza outlets in Riverwalk, Main Mall and Pula Spar Mall in Gaborone, Botswana. The instrument for data collection was through personally administered closed ended questionnaires. Furthermore, SPSS software was used for regression analysis to analyse the relationship between dependent (customer satisfaction) and independent (ambient conditions) variable. Results indicated that there is a significant impact of ambient conditions on customer satisfaction at Debonairs Pizza outlets in Gaborone Botswana. Ambient scent was having a value of 0.805, lighting 0.771 and temperature 0.662 respectively. Hence it was recommended that Debonairs Pizza outlets managers should engage more into enhancing their ambient conditions as they cause customer satisfaction.