Psychology of Branding in Restaurant Design

Introduction

Findings are presented in tables and discussed in the context of the literature in the same sub-section. Statistical findings are supported by discussions of the responses from open-ended questions on the survey. While not all respondents gave open-ended statements, those that did apparently felt strongly enough about certain issues to supplement their responses to the closed-ended questions.

Demographics

These demographics are consistent with the demographic profile of the population of the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area, in terms of age, gender, and particularly the predominance of White Americans. it appears that the patrons of restaurants are more educated and more affluent than the average population. This is not surprising, since more highly educated and more affluent people are more likely to have sampled different cuisines, traveled widely, and to be adventurous.

Since many of the objectives of this study are focused on ethnic differences, respondents were asked to identify their ethnicity with five sub-categories of “American” such as White, Black, Hispanic. Similarly, South Asians were asked to self-identify whether they were from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, or Nepal. For purposes of meaningful statistical analysis, these sub-categories were collapsed into three categories of White American, South Asian, and other. Furthermore, for multivariate analysis, these were additionally collapsed into just two categories of “South Asian” and “other ethnic origin.”

The results are provided in Table it. Given that “White Americans” dominate the sample, it should be noted that averages would be skewed by their perceptions.

STRATEGIES

Customer perceptions of importance of influential factors

To address the second objective of the study, respondents were asked to score, on the Likert scale, the importance of each of the 15 given characteristics when deciding to dine at an restaurant. The findings are presented in Tables II and III. Table II shows the score on the importance of restaurant characteristics, while Table III focuses on the importance of various influences on respondents.

Taken together, Tables II and III show that the most important factors for the entire sample were quality of food, taste of the food, and hygiene and cleanliness, in descending order. Availability of vegetarian choices, availability of new items, and cultural familiarity were rated the lowest as important factors for the whole sample. However, it is noteworthy that even the lowest rated factors such as “price” were scored by respondents as more than “important” and not inconsequential in decision making.

These findings are consistent with national studies of restaurant patronage. “Food quality” and “cleanliness/hygiene” are consistently rated among the most important factors in selecting restaurants.

Ethnic differences in customer perceptions and influences

To address the objective of measuring differences of perceptions of ethnic groups, analysis was conducted. The results are shown in Tables IV and V. Significant differences were found in several influential factors, between respondents of South Asian origin, and those of “other” ethnic origin. Quality of food and taste of the food were the only two significant factors on which respondents of other ethnic origin had higher expectations than those of South Asian origin. South Asians had significantly ...