The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction towards food supply service at Lok Kawi Camp, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

The Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) embarked on outsourcing the food supply service for their soldiers since 2007. This is done to enable the MAF to concentrate on their main core business in protecting and defending the sovereignty of Malaysia. At present, there are limited studies being conducted to identify the level of food supply service quality provided by the caterers as well as soldier’s satisfaction on outsourced food supply in MAF. Hence, this study was carried out at Headquarters Lok Kawi Staff Station, Lok Kawi Camp, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah due to problems arising pertaining to the caterer’s service quality namely cleanliness, food handling, taste of the menu and others. The quantitative research approach was chosen for this study and a set of questionnaire survey were distributed, collected and analysed involving a total of 186 soldiers as respondents. In addition, focus group interview was also conducted involving officers and soldier to gather their opinions on the subject matter. The five Service Quality (SERVQUAL) dimensions namely Tangible, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy were used to determine the level of soldier’s satisfaction with regard to outsourced food supply service at the camp. The findings from this study shows that each SERVQUAL dimension have a significant relationship with soldier’s satisfaction on food supply service whereby Tangible is the most significant variable with the greatest satisfaction. Therefore, it is recommended that future study for this topic could be conducted using qualitative method with the same research objectives. In addition, this study can be extended to the units in Royal Malaysian Airforce and Royal Malaysian Navy.