SPOONING: Persuasive System Design of the Mobile Reservation Service Avoiding Restaurant No-Shows

Abstract

While the issue of restaurant no-shows has emerged as a major threat to the nation’s foodservice industry and to customers’ overall dining experience, studies on why customers renege and how no-shows can be prevented or reduced remain extremely limited. This research takes a contextual design approach to understand and design a persuasive system of a restaurant reservation application that can avoid no-shows, by investigating motivating factors of customer behavior according to the Theory of Planned Behavior: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived control. To understand the perspectives of customers, we conducted quantitative analysis (N=102) of significant motivating factors and perceptions of customer behaviors (i.e. making reservations, canceling reservations, waiting and reneging). We found that capacity (i.e. perceived ability) was the most determining factor of their future behavior. Based on semi-structured interviews (N=9) we identified four distinct user groups, namely no-shows, reservations, waits, and restaurant managers. Insights from contextual design models help derive design implications building on the Theory of Planned Behavior (i.e. subjective norm and perceived behavioral control) that all-inclusive persuasive system featuring easy access to reservation, modification, cancellation, waitlist, and restaurant management as well as providing instant feedback and communication can have positive effects on both customers’ and managers’ perceived capacity.