Abstract:
The objective of this study is to examine the impact of Word of Mouth Communication
on Customer Relationship in Food and Beverages Companies in Kandy District. Food
and Beverages industry one of the key service sector in economy. In order to retain and
attract customers, owner have to fulfil their need, want and perceptions. In that situation
word of mouth communication act significant role in the restaurants industry. This
research find word of mouth factors effect on customer relationship in Food and
Beverages in Kandy District
The study accompanies with Quantitative research approach. Primary data as well as
secondary data had been practiced by this study. Structured questionnaire was used as
the method of data collection and questionnaire consist with two parts as personal
information of the respondent and research information. Questionnaire included 26
questions with five Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Word
of Mouth Communication with respect to independent variables was made up using 250
respondents. Convenience sampling technique is used as sampling method. It has been
considered Kandy district as research area. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS
22I analysis. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation, and
regression analysis.
The result indicated that Service Quality, Food Quality, Physical Environment Quality
and Price were high level in Food and Beverages companies in Kandy District. Also
result indicated significant strong positive relationship between Service Quality, Food
Quality, Physical Environment Quality and Price and Customer Relationship. The
result indicated that most significant factor that impact Customer Relationship was
Service Quality. And also that another factors (Food Quality, Physical Environment
Quality and Price) were significantly impact in Customer Relationship.
Based on the overall research findings, researcher recommended that Word of Mouth
communication help to increase in customer relationship. Therefore, companies
especially more attention to word of mouth communication than other factors such as
television advertisement.
