CONTINUING CASE STUDY THE SANTA FE GRILL MEXICAN RESTAURANT DEVELOPING RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES The owners have concluded that they need to know more about their customers and target market. To obtain a bet- ter understanding of each of these issues, they logged on to the Yahoo.com and Google.com search engines. They also spent some time examining trade literature. From this review of the literature, some "Best Practices" guidelines were found on how restaurants should be run. Below is a summary of what was found: if you do not have enough customers, first examine the quality of your food, the items on your menu, and the service Examine and compare your lunch and dinner custom- ers and menu for differences Your waitstaff should be consistent with the image of your restaurant. How your employees act and be have is very important. They must be well groomed, knowledgeable, polite, and speak clearly and confidently Menu items should represent a good value for the money Service should be efficient, timely, polished, and cordial. The cleanliness and appearance of your restaurant strongly influence the success of your business. Follow the marketing premise of underpromise and overdeliver!" Empower your employees to make decisions to keep your customers happy. Train your employees on what to do to resolve customer complaints Instead of com- Ing to the manager Create a pleasant dining atmosphere, including furni- ture and fixtures, decorations, lighting, music, and temperature Learn more about your female customers. For family Outings and special occasions, women make the de cision on where to dine about 75 percent of the time. With this information, the owners next need to specify the research questions and hypotheses to be examined 1. What research questions should be examined? 2. What hypotheses should be tested? 3. Should the literature search be expanded? If yes, how