QR CODE MENU DESIGN AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN MALAYSIAN CASUAL DINING RESTAURANTS

QR code menus are now standard in Malaysian casual dining, yet little is known about which mobile interface features are associated with diner satisfaction. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model and Menu Engineering principles, this study examines whether digital presentation, strategic item placement and visual digital prompts predict customer satisfaction in independent casual dining restaurants. A cross-sectional online survey was administered to casual dining patrons in Penang, recruited by purposive screening followed by snowball referral and required to have used a QR code menu within the preceding six months; 248 usable responses were retained. Constructs were measured on six-point Likert scales (α = .843 to .867) and analysed by multiple linear regression. The three predictors jointly explained 85.0% of the variance in customer satisfaction, R² = .850, adjusted R² = .849, F(3, 244) = 462.428, p < .001, and each was a significant positive predictor: visual digital prompts, β = .474; strategic item placement, β = .310; digital presentation, β = .178. However, the attributes proved not to be empirically separable: no construct met the Fornell-Larcker criterion, the collinearity condition index reached 37.144, and 92.5% of explained variance was shared rather than unique. Relative weights analysis accordingly returned near-equal contributions of 31.5%, 32.5% and 35.9%. The substantive finding is that QR menu interface design considered as a whole is strongly associated with customer satisfaction, while the ordering of the standardised coefficients should not be read as a hierarchy of design criteria.