Consumer Attitudes to Eating Beef at Fine Dinging Restaurants

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Italians' behavior when dining out: Main drivers for restaurant selection and customers segmentation

Abstract

This study investigates which attributes drive Italian customers while choosing a restaurant, how many of these attributes correspond to intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of restaurants and which are the main segments of customers. A structured online questionnaire was used to reach 513 respondents through the snowball sampling technique (valid response rate of 97%). Descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis were applied to infer information. A distance-based ordination technique (Principal Component Analysis) was implemented to display patterns in multivariate data. The reliability of the model was evaluated through the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and Bartlett's test of sphericity. Six components were extracted, namely: 'geographic proximity and accessibility', 'aesthetic-based requisites', 'fine dining and renowned eating places', 'average standard requirements', 'traditional cuisine', 'feedbacks and personal experience'. A cluster analysis was performed and four different profiles of restaurant customers were found, with specific socio-demographic characteristics and attitudes towards intrinsic and extrinsic attributes of restaurants. The homogenous features customers have within each segment can be used by foodservice operators as an information to orientate their strategies.

Introduction

The foodservice sector is one of the most important for the Italian economy, represented by 184,587.00 restaurants and 148,274.00 bars in 2019; a total consumption expense of more than 84 billion € places the Italian market at the third place in Europe after the United Kingdom and Spain, and 35.7% of national food consumption take place at restaurants (Federazione Italiana Pubblici Esercizi, 2019). Restaurants are the most common type of venue for dining, with a presence in 93.2% of Italian municipalities (Federazione Italiana Pubblici Esercizi, 2019). According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT, 2021a), the domestic expense for foodservices passed from 79.2 billion € in 2016 to 85.5 billion € in 2019, with a positive trend of +8%. Because of the CoViD-19 pandemic, this trend has reversed, with a decrease of −31.5%, in 2020 compared to the previous year. Pairwise, the average monthly household expenditure remained almost unvaried in the period 2018–2019 (approx. 110 € per family), while in 2020 it has decreased by −40% (ISTAT, 2021b). From the side of restaurant marketers, the total turnover in the sector has been 64,354.00 billion € in 2018, which meant, approximatively, an average of 200 thousand € per local unit (ISTAT, 2021c). The socioeconomic importance of the foodservice sector for the Italian economy is also confirmed in terms of total added value, which was about 24,015.00 billion € in 2018, and in terms of occupation, with a total of 1305.00 billion people involved (ISTAT, 2021).

Understanding the preferences of customers and how they address the decision-making process is of utmost importance for restaurant managers. Identifying their characteristics and potential homogeneity or heterogeneity when valuing different restaurant attributes is critical to effectively address customers' needs and ensure the economic viability of businesses. Customers' preferences and purchasing intentions are always evolving, influenced by several aspects such as personal characteristics, needs, food fashions, and information availability.

The typologies of foodservice activities considered in this study are those identified by ISTAT with the ATECO (Classification of Economic Activities) code 56.10.1 "Full restaurant service; foodservice connected to farms and fish farms" (ISTAT, 2022).

Therefore, it is necessary to recurrently study and identify which values customers attach to different restaurant attributes, and how these values are influenced by personal characteristics, to identify segments, target offerings, and position the restaurant correctly. A tailored marketing strategy can be more effective to meet customers demand, creating loyalty and increasing returns on investments. Understanding how to satisfy target customers allows restaurateurs to successfully market to them. Demographic segmentation is important for targeting purposes, but attention should be paid to many other attributes useful for marketers because of the insight they can provide about the target market such as lifestyle variables (Jang et al., 2011). Also intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of restaurants, can have different importance depending on stakeholders' desiderata: for the purpose of this study (see Section 2), the intrinsic attributes are those internal qualities and characteristics directly linked to the restaurant, (e.g., food quality and quantity, ambience, cleanliness, menu, service). Extrinsic attributes are related to the restaurant but are physically not part of it, nor under the control of the restaurateurs (e.g., reputation, ratings on social networks, position, proximity to points of interest, quality certifications). Therefore, this study aims to verify how customers, in the process of selecting a restaurant, are influenced (driven) by several attributes, not only inherent to intrinsic characteristics of the restaurant but also relative to extrinsic features, that can also have different significance according to customers' personality. Based on this backdrop, the following research question is proposed: "Which are the principal attributes that drive Italian customers in the restaurant selection process?".

In answer to that question, two hypotheses have been formulated according to the insight retrieved from the literature review, which is presented in the next section. Section 3 illustrates the methodologies applied for data gathering and analysis; Section 4 presents the results obtained, then discussed in Section 5, along with concluding remarks.

Section snippets

Customers' behaviour in restaurant choice: selection attributes

There is an extensive body of scientific literature relating to customers' behaviour, customers' satisfaction, consumption patterns and behavioural intentions, all fields of study rooted in applicative disciplines that systematically study, describe and understand the consumption behaviours in a multidisciplinary perspective, involving at the same time economics, psychology, sociology and even anthropology (Mowen, 1988; Grunert, 2007). Relevance of these fields of study is particularly strong

Survey instrument and data collection

Data were collected from May to September 2021 using a multi-section and structured questionnaire, with a specific set of predefined questions, developed through the interactive support of Google Forms® to allow the compilation via web to reach a higher number of Italian customers in less time. To overcome the difficulty of reaching a population geographically dispersed, the sampling technique chosen is snowball sampling (Goodman, 1961), i.e., a targeted, exponential, non-discriminatory,

Principal component analysis results

The PCA was applied to the 28 variables selected from literature and proposed to the attention of interviewees, related to intrinsic and extrinsic attributes of restaurants. At the end of this first analysis, six components, explaining the 64.3% of total variance, were extracted. Table 3 reports the rotated components loadings that allow to describe synthesized predictive models of restaurant by reducing the multi-dimensionality of variables; thus, it was possible to associate each component to

Discussion and conclusion

This study aimed to address the objective of understanding which are the most important restaurant attributes that lead Italian customers to make a choice. The results obtained not only provided a wide set of attributes and variables that influence customers' choice but also confirmed the two hypotheses previously formulated, i.e.: H1. Italian customers select restaurants according to a set of intrinsic and extrinsic preferred attributes; H2. Italian customers' perceived importance on

Authorship contributions

Conceptualization and design of the study: A.I. De Luca, G. Di Vita, N. Iofrida. Methodology: A.I. De Luca, G. Di Vita. N. Iofrida, R. Zanchini. Acquisition of data: M. Ferretti. Analysis and/or interpretation of data: A.I. De Luca, G. Di Vita, N. Iofrida, R. Zanchini. Writing - Original Draft: A.I. De Luca, G. Di Vita, N. Iofrida, R. Zanchini. Writing - Review & Editing: M. D'Amico, A.I. De Luca, N. Iofrida, R. Zanchini. Supervision: M. D'Amico, A.I. De Luca, G. Di Vita, G. Gulisano. Funding

Funding

This study is partially carried out within a post-doc research fellowship co-funded by the European Commission (EC), European Social Fund (ESF), and Calabria Region; the authors are the only ones responsible for this study, the EC and the Calabria Region decline any responsibility for the use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1878450X22000531