THE IMPACT OF WORD OF MOUTH COMMUNICATION ON CUSTOMER RE,LATIONSHIP IN FOOD .dND BEVERGES COMPANIES IN KANDY DISTRCT

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.