International Journal of Managerial Studies and Research (IJMSR) Volume 3, Issue 11, November 2015, PP 92-98 ISSN 2349-0330 (Print) & ISSN 2349-0349 (Online) www.arcjournals.org ©ARC Page | 92 Customer Preference to Select a Restaurant through Smart Phone Applications: An Exploratory Study Kandappan Balasubramanian PhD Research Scholar Karpagam University, Coimbatore, India Adalarasu Balraj Dean and Professor RVS Faculty of Management, Coimbatore, India The increasing number of Smart Phone Applications (SPA) user and fast growing restaurant industry prove the great potential of using SPA as business marketing opportunity in Malaysia. The constant growth in mobile technology has created a prospect for the restaurant industry to use SPA as a restaurant promotion tool. The growing attention of use of SPA among the Malaysian customer, marketing research remains understudied in the field of SPA based restaurant promotion activities. The aim of this study is to explore the increase in customer acceptance to use SPA based restaurant promotion and to identify the customer preference to use SPA to select the restaurant. Thus, this paper mainly focuses on restaurant information on product and promotion as antecedents of customer acceptance of smart phone apps by underpinning the Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model. A conceptual model and hypotheses are tested with a sample of 116 students from a private university at Selangor district, Malaysia. The findings indicate that there is a positive relationship to increase customer acceptance level through SPA based restaurant product information and also strong relationship with the restaurant promotion information. It also indicates that customer acceptance of SPA through experience and satisfaction has a positive significant effect on customer preference to select a restaurant. Based on the results, this paper rounds off with conclusion, recommendations for future marketing research and provides a new marketing strategy to formulate among the restaurant business sector. Keywords: restaurant promotion, use of smart phone applications, customer acceptance and preference. 1. INTRODUCTION The invention of new forms of Information Technology through the smart phone apps has given the hoteliers and restaurateurs to enrich their elements of marketing apparatuses. The hotel industry is facing a revolution that is largely driven by information technology cross the world 26 . Existing mobile apps support a wide range of functions that include providing information on hotels, restaurants and bars, as well as transportation arrangements and tourist attractions; enabling location or map directions; and supporting picture and video sharing through email and social media apps 7 . Hilton hotels recorded 100,000 mobile app phone bookings in 2011, which significantly increased revenue by 200 percent 10 and Marriott international gained at least $1.25 million from mobile app bookings 10 . Despite all of the opportunity made available by mobile media, the potential of marketing through the use of smart phone apps has not been fully exploited in the restaurant industry. This is due to a lack of experience in smartphone based marketing among restaurateurs. The reviewed 180 research studies determined that information quality plays a dominant role in the success of an information system 5 . Information quality comprises the characteristics of the output offered by the information system, including accuracy, timeliness, and completeness 25 . Restaurant menu is the main channel of information source when dining in the restaurant. Thus, restaurant menus should be designed to present items in a manner that is appealing to the customer in an attempt to induce sales 8 . In order to provide customers with more information of the dishes, related description, nutrition facts and visual aid were included in the content of the menu. Many studies showed that information quality directly affects behavior intention when using an information system 16 . Information quality should thus directly and indirectly affect the user acceptance of a new information technology. As smartphone app is growing rapidly at Malaysia, many studies about the use of smart phone apps as a marketing tool for the hotel, tourism and travel industry was carried out. But no study has been