Case study · Behavioural science marketing for hospitality
Why customers choose a restaurant is measurable. So we measured it.
ESQ Cocktail Bar and Grill is a West African restaurant and late-night venue on Old Kent Road, London. It wanted more bookings, more sales, more visibility. Most restaurant marketing would have started with tactics. As a boutique, research-led hospitality marketing consultancy, we started with the customer's decision.
The challenge
Restaurant marketing was running on instinct
ESQ had everything a marketer dreams of: a distinctive offer, late-night hours no competitor matched, ten thousand Instagram followers. Yet bookings lagged, the website leaked demand, and every marketing decision was a guess. The brief was the question we build our whole practice on: why do customers actually choose one restaurant over another, and what would make more of them choose ESQ?
What we did
Evidence first, opinions second
- 01
Behavioural-science survey
A customer questionnaire built on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), the behavioural model we judged the best fit for this problem, measuring the attitudes, social influences and practical barriers behind booking decisions.
- 02
Statistical analysis
Regression and correlation testing on 33 booking customers, so the strategy would rest on measured drivers, not anecdotes.
- 03
Full marketing audit
Website and SEO audit, social media audit across four platforms, PESTLE, competitor analysis and a SWOT built on an Importance-Performance matrix.
- 04
A 16-point strategy
Recommendations across product, price, promotion and place, each tied to a finding from the research, delivered and presented to the client.
What the research found
What consumer psychology revealed
Ease and control was the strongest predictor of booking intent (Spearman correlation, perceived behavioural control)
Social influence came second: what friends, reviews and social media say (subjective norm)
Of website traffic came from the UK, with over half arriving through branded searches alone
Range of likes across Instagram posts, the signature of inconsistent posting without a content plan
Friction was costing bookings
The single strongest driver of booking intent was how easy and in-control the process felt. Yet the audit found a congested homepage, no visible menu or search, and a mobile journey that took real effort. The biggest lever was not louder marketing, it was removing friction.
Social proof beat self-promotion
Customers were moved more by what others said than by what the restaurant said about itself. That pointed budget towards reviews, word of mouth, referral mechanics and consistent community engagement rather than pure advertising.
The 0.83 and 0.77 coefficients are one worked example from a TPB-shaped engagement, not a company-wide benchmark. Every client gets its own measure from its own diagnostic.
The strategy
Sixteen recommendations, four levers, zero guesswork
Every recommendation traced back to a measured finding, organised into six workstreams and sequenced as a 90-day programme.
Fix the booking journey
Rebuild the website around ease: visible menu, mobile first, GDPR compliant, measurable.
Harness social proof
Referral mechanics, review generation and community engagement, where the data said the power sits.
Post with a plan
A structured content plan across four platforms to end the 9-to-1,450-like lottery.
Keep the first-timers
Email and SMS retention flows, because most surveyed customers had visited only once.
Widen the offer
Vegan and alcohol-free options, late-night deals, seasonal packages, sustainable packaging.
Price with the seasons
Keep penetration pricing where it wins, flex with measured spending behaviour.
The targets the strategy was built to reach
- +20% bookings quarter on quarter
- +20% monthly sales growth across a three-month period
- +10% monthly growth in social visibility, reach and engagement
These are the objectives the strategy was designed and scoped against, stated here for transparency. This engagement delivered the research and the strategy; implementation sat with the client.
Related reading
Why do people really choose one restaurant over another? The evidence, explained →