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The research presented in this article focuses on consumer values in restaurant meal experiences from the restaurant customers’ points of view. Based on a set of data, the purpose is to evaluate the customers’ perceived consumer values in restaurant meal experiences and to compare the results with other studies on consumer values and service quality and with studies of meal experiences. A modified grounded theory approach has been followed. The empirical data are based on seven semi-structured interviews of experienced restaurant customers in two cities in Norway. A conceptual model illustrates the coding process that shows the connection between the different categories. The data analysis produces different categories of consumer-specific values on three levels of integration. The lowest level includes 29 consumer values that are integrated into 13 specified values. On the highest level, five value categories of consumer-oriented values are specified. These are excellence, harmony, emotional stimulation, acknowledgement, and circumstance value, of which harmony is the most emphasised value among the restaurant customers. This study offers the restaurant industry increased insight into consumer values among their actual and potential customers. It also lays a foundation for conducting a quantitative study in the future to test the validity of the determined values in customer meal experiences.

The meal experience represents a moment in the everyday life of human beings (Mäkelä, 2000), and individuals will have their own experiences of meals—whether they eat at home or in a restaurant (Warde and Martens, 2000). Meals occur as complex phenomena, and for an understanding of the different facets of meals in practice increased acknowledgement of the complexity of the meal is required (Meiselman, 2000). The first person to be credited with formalising marketing insight into restaurants was Campbell-Smith (1967). The key elements in restaurants as identified by Campbell-Smith (1967) were food, atmosphere and service that could influence commercially provided meals. According to Warde and Martens (2000), meal research was scattered prior to their research on eating out; there was scanty systematic social scientific research before they started. The complexity of the meal was discussed from different perspectives (Meiselman, 2000). Scientific studies or discussions about meals are sparse, especially about meal experiences (Andersson and Mossberg, 2004; Bugge and Døving, 2000; Douglas et al., 1997; Gustafsson, 2004a and Gustafsson, 2004b; Jonsson, 2004; Warde and Martens, 1998; Warde and Martens, 2000; Wood, 1994).

This study has identified and categorised a number of consumer values based on the empirical context of meal experiences in à la Carte restaurants. A confrontation with some of the previous research on consumer values and on influencing factors based on service literature has also been carried out. As emphasised previously, the consumer values developed through the data analysis are considerably more contextually specified compared with more generic consumer values found in consumer research in line, for example, with Holbrook (1999). The assumed strength of the study is thus that is has revealed a number of central or relevant (Glaser, 1978) and important properties by the consumption values linked to a restaurant meal context. The deviations occurring within this study primarily represent differentiations in the comparison with more generic values and frameworks rather than opposing findings. Among some of the interesting findings are the significance of harmony in the consumer preference experience and the identification of the circumstance value linked to the initiation and the occasion of the consumer experience, as well as the dynamic dimension exceeding the time limitations of the restaurant visit (compare Sánchez et al., 2006). Though a few of the consumer values developed should need even more solid empirical support in order to obtain a stronger validation, the composition of the values revealed offers a much-needed insight into the area of consumer values with particular relevance for the restaurant context. Such an insight can also be of use to the management of restaurants in their efforts to improve the experience quality for their customers and to increase customer loyalty. Future research areas can be to measure consumer values in restaurant meal contexts or other comparable contexts through quantitative methods. The consumer values developed here could thus be used as pre-categories and as suggestions concerning what to look for within more comprehensive empirical studies in the future.