The Effect of Employee Service Mind on Customer Orientation in Elementary School Foodservice

ABSTRACT

The purposes of this study were to measure the service mind and customer orientation of employees and to identify the effect of service mind on customer orientation in elementary school foodservices. The questionnaires were distributed to foodservice employees of the 19 elementary schools, but collected from 12 schools in Gwangju, Gyeonggi. The statistical data analysis was completed using SPSS (ver. 18.0) for the independent sample t-test, ANOVA, Cronbach's alpha, principal component analysis, hierarchical & K-means cluster analysis, Pearson' correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. Foodservice employees highly rated their service mind (3.94 out of 5 points), especially their perceptions on the importance of service (4.13 points). The effort to provide service was significantly different depending on the serving place (P<0.05). Employees had a high level of customer orientation (4.02 points), which was significantly influenced by age, position, or career (P<0.05), and cook license (P<0.01). As a result of cluster analysis for service mind, employees were divided into two groups a low-service mind group (cluster 1) and a high-service mind group (cluster 2). Cluster 2 had a significantly higher overall customer orientation than cluster 1 (P<0.001). The pride in providing services (beta=0.390, P<0.01) and the perception of the importance of services (beta=0.297, P<0.05) showed a significant and positive effect on customer orientation.