Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in Klang Valley area, Malaysia
F. Ahmad, H. Ghazali & M. Othman
Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: The objective of this research was to rank the five attributes used by customers in select-
ing casual-typed restaurant when they dined out. Customers who had dined at casual dining restaurants
within the past three months were conveniently selected. Twenty four attributes have been listed and
respondents were asked to rank order the five attributes that influenced their decision in selecting a res-
taurant. There were a total of 384 usable questionnaires collected. Descriptive analysis was run using IBM
SPSS Statistics version 21. Results found that the five attributes mostly influence customers' selections
were: convenient location, the price of food, good taste of food, type of food and restaurant cleanliness.
It is hoped the findings will help restaurateurs to fulfil consumers' preference when selecting a restaurant
to dine out. Finally, restaurateurs may also use the information from this study to strategise their business
and gain more profit in the future.
Keywords
:
Restaurant selection, important attributes, consumer preferences, dining out, Klang Valley
1 INTRODUCTION
inflation rate in 2012 the value sales of full-service
restaurants in Malaysia including the casual dining
restaurant was increased 4 percent to RM10.6 bil-
lion (Euromonitor International, 2013b).
With the positive sales and the number of out-
lets opened this research is specifically focused on
casual dining restaurants. In this sense, casual din-
ing restaurant is the informal restaurants that are
categorized as midscale restaurant, provide table
service, offering a variety of menus and with mod-
est prices (Barrows & Powers, 2009).
In line with the above notion, restaurant con-
sumers may set a certain level of each attribute or
characteristics before making a decision to which
restaurant they wanted to dine in. Past research-
ers pointed several preferences used by customers
to select a restaurant however those studies were
undertaken in Hong Kong, India, United King-
dom and United States with little study looking at
Malaysia restaurant customer's preferences. Thus,
this study is therefore designed to access consum-
er's preferences attributes to select the casual din-
ing restaurant.
1.1
Background
Trends of food consumption were changed due
to the increasing of the disposable income. Over-
all review between the year of 2006 to 2011, the
amount of per capita annual disposable income
and expenditure are steady growth between 33.2 to
33.4 percent and the expenditure in most catego-
ries was double-digit growth rate which encourages
people to dine out. Nowadays, Malaysians is found
are eager to dine out and unsurprisingly, casual
dining chains, cafés and informal restaurants had
appealed their attention (Euromonitor Interna-
tional, 2013c). According to Habib, Dardak &
Zakaria (2011), due to times shifting and influence
of Western culture, the food consumption pat-
tern among urban people were also changed even
though Malaysians are still liking to have their
home-cooked meals.
With that pattern, the casual-typed restaurants
are gaining popularity especially among young
affluent, professional worker and also students
(Euromonitor International, 2013a). Casual dining
restaurants are categorized in full-service type res-
taurants along with fine dining restaurants. How-
ever, the fine dining restaurants are less popular
in Malaysia compared to casual dining restaurants
(Euromonitor International, 2013b). Economic
growth in Malaysia is highly giving an impact on the
growth of casual dining restaurant. Despite the high
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1
Eating out
There are substantial numbers of researches looking
at the factors that influence customer of eating out.
Some factors are owing to busier lifestyle and dual-
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