Consumer Behavior Analysis For Five Meal Options

List of Five Meal Options

Describe about The Consumer Behavior Of Three Different Persons For Five Different Meal Options ?

Choice of food of customers is so varied these days. Some customers might like to go to a restaurant which provides a variety of food and some to a restaurant which is specialized in making one kind of food. It has always been a matter of discussion and research that which are the factors that actually shape these choices. A lot of research has been done on this issue and researchers have come up with various demographic factors like age, gender, financial status etc. Some researchers consider personality and the culture in which the person is brought up as the reasons behind different preferences. These reasons will be discussed in detail in the following paper.

Then with increasing globalization, people are becoming aware of foods of different countries and regions; Now Indian food is not eaten by only Indian people. Also a lot of experiments are being done with the food of different countries.

This paper will choose some factors which come into picture in the decision making process of a customer and then will do the analysis to find the respective weightage of these factors with various demographic characteristics.

Option 1: 2 pizza+1 garlic bread+250mL cold drink at Dominos for $25

Option 2: Original recipe chicken 5 pieces+1 grilled taster box+1 iced mocha krusher at KFC for $20

Option 3: 1 Spicy red capsicum dip with toasted pita+1 Supremo chicken wrap+ garden salad+1 coke 390mL at Nando’s for $25.45

Option 4: 1 Salman Carpaccio+ 1 Teriyaki Chicken + Nasu Miso at Masuya Japanese restaurant for $39.4

Option 5: Lamb tikka plate containing 3 Tandoori Lamb chops, Green salad, Basmati rice, and Mint Raita served on a platter plate topped with a crispy pappadum at The spice room for $30

Besides the above mentioned options, there is a lot of variety of food available in Sydney. Let it be breakfast, lunch or dinner; there is variety in all. Customer can go to restaurant for having food or can get the food packed to take away or can order online also. In this discussion, we have made assumption that the customer eats from outside and does not order from home also. For simplicity, these options are shown in table also:

Name of Restaurant	Meal	Price ($)	Remarks
Dominos	2 pizza+1 garlic bread+250mL Cold drink	25	https://www.dominos.com.au/
KFC	Original recipe chicken 5 pieces+1 grilled taster box+1 Iced mocha krusher	20	https://kfc.com.au/
Nando’s	1 Spicy red capsicum dip with toasted pita+1 Supremo chicken wrap+ garden salad+1 coke 390mL	25.45	https://www.nandos.com.au/
Masuya Japanese Restaurant	1 Salman Carpaccio+ 1 Teriyaki Chicken + Nasu Miso	$39.4	https://www.masuyainternational.com.au/en/masuya/
The Spice Room	Lamb tikka plate containing 3 Tandoori Lamb chops, Green salad, Basmati rice, and Mint Raita served on a platter plate topped with a crispy pappadum	$30	Home

Food Item	Code
From Dominos	DOM
From KFC	KFC
From Nando’s	NAN
From Masuya Japanese Restaurant	MAS
From The Spice Room	SPC

The above meal options were given to three different individuals to rank their preferences. The background and their rankings for these meal options can be discussed as following:

Creation of Decision Matrix and Application of Compensatory rule

Introduction

The actual name of the person is kept confidential due to confidentiality reasons. The person is a male of age 30 years. He works in a consulting firm and is not married yet. The ranking provided by ABC can be discussed as:

FOOD CODE	RANKING
DOM	3
KFC	2
NAN	1
MAS	4
SPC	5

Relative Significance of criteria

CRITERIA	PRICE	AMBIENCE	ACCESSIBILITY	FOOD QUALITY	CUSTOMER SERVICE
WEIHTAGE	30	30	20	10	10

FOOD/CRITERIA
DOM	2	3	1	5	5
KFC	1	2	2	3	4
NAN	3	4	4	2	2
MAS	5	1	5	1	1
SPC	4	5	3	4	3

Ranking of Food According to Compensatory Rule

FOOD CODE	RANKING
DOM	2
KFC	1
NAN	4
MAS	3
SPC	5

This is consumer is price conscious but when he goes for buying, he is actually inclined towards selecting a food which is more nutritious. This might be because he has high disposable income.

The actual name of the person is kept confidential due to confidentiality reasons. The person is a female with 25 years of age. She is pursuing a course in management. She has not started earning money yet. She is unmarried. She does not eat outside frequently. The ranking provided by XYZ can be discussed as:

FOOD CODE	RANKING
DOM	1
KFC	3
NAN	5
MAS	2
SPC	4

CRITERIA	PRICE	AMBIENCE	ACCESSIBILITY	FOOD QUALITY	CUSTOMER SERVICE
WEIHTAGE	30	15	10	35	10

FOOD/CRITERIA
DOM	5	1	1	2	1
KFC	2	2	2	4	2
NAN	3	4	4	3	5
MAS	1	3	5	1	3
SPC	4	5	3	5	4

Ranking of Food According to Compensatory Rule

FOOD CODE	RANKING
DOM	2
KFC	3
NAN	4
MAS	1
SPC	5

This customer is very much conscious for nutrition. This is clear from two ways, first she has given maximum priority to nutrition and secondly, she does not eat outside frequently. But as she does not earn right now, price of the food actually deviates her decision from her conscious.  

The actual name of the person is kept confidential due to confidentiality reasons. The person is a male of age 35 years. He works in a bank and he is married. The ranking provided by ABC can be discussed as:

FOOD CODE	RANKING
DOM	3
KFC	2
NAN	1
MAS	5
SPC	4

Relative Significance of criterias

CRITERIA	PRICE	AMBIENCE	ACCESSIBILITY	FOOD QUALITY	CUSTOMER SERVICE
WEIHTAGE	10	30	15	25	20

FOOD/CRITERIA
DOM	2	1	3	2	1
KFC	1	3	2	3	5
NAN	3	2	1	1	2
MAS	5	5	5	5	4
SPC	4	4	4	4	3

Ranking of Food According to Compensatory Rule

FOOD CODE	RANKING
DOM	1
KFC	3
NAN	2
MAS	5
SPC	4

As this consumer is married, he gives more weightage to ambience and customer behavior; which eventually in compensatory rule makes food from Dominos more preferable.

Age and stage of life cycle impact the preference of customer a lot. At lower age, people are less conscious for nutrition and can be more sensitive towards the ambience and brand image of place. While at higher age, weightage to nutrition increases. It has also been found out by some researchers that pattern of food preference according to age and the one according to gender has huge difference. 

Stage in life cycle may alter the choice in so many ways, preferences of a person before and after marriage vary a lot. 

Choice of food is not just about liking and disliking. As we observed above, when a consumer is working and has more disposable income, he/she gives more importance to other factors as compared to cost. Patterns of food preference according to income are also not much predictable.

Participant 1: ABC

There is no doubt that gender has a huge role to play in decision making. As the way of thinking is entirely different of a boy from a girl, so is the case with their preference for food. Studies have shown that more of the females prefer food with more vegetables and less oil. In contradiction to this, males prefer food which gives more energy. This has also been seen in researches that females are less inclined towards non-vegetarian food.

Personality is a unique combination of characteristics which differentiates a person from others. Various factors shape a person’s personality like his/her culture, family values, friend circle etc. While people grow up, they have varied experiences with food and this differentiates his/her perspective for food from another person. One consumer might has learnt to eat nutritious and healthy food through his/her surroundings and other might give more importance to taste and prefer fast food.

The recommendations are made for The Spice room. It is continuously being rated lowest in by people. But then people interviewed here are from Australia while Spice Room specializes in Indian food. Spice Room needs to put special efforts to penetrate more market besides just Indians. Efforts made in this direction might not improve sales in short term but sincere efforts in this direction will pay in long run.

It is important for The Spice Room to attract Australian population. It should concentrate on both international and domestic population. For this a more discrete and effective marketing strategy is required. It should also focus on pricing. In initial stage, it can keep the price lower to encourage population for giving at least one try to its products. It needs to bring its price lower than its competitors. With changing time, way of marketing has changed a lot. Digital marketing and increasing dependence on marketing research are some of the attractive features of modern marketing.

Conclusion

The above paper discussed The Consumer Behavior Of Three Different Persons For Five Different Meal Options. These people were asked to provide a ranking to different meal options. It is clear from the above discussion that there are a lot of internal as well as external factors responsible for decision making. This paper also shows that there are still a lot of reasons behind customer’s choice which are just saved in his/her subconscious mind. As we saw that the ranking the consumers made at first look and the ranking we found from compensatory rule has some variation. Consumers are not completely rational while making choice, there are various other things or emotions which come into picture. This possibly makes the task of marketing difficult because there are a lot of factors to be handled at one time. With this, one cannot underestimate the cost factor also. Before doing a research, management needs to be very clear that whether the output of research is worth the expense needed to be made on it. There is still need of much more research on this part so that the process behind customer preference for food can be decoded to more extent.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1995). Distinksjonen: En sosiologiskkritikkavdømmekraften(Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste) Translated by AnnickPrieur, Oslo, Norway, PaxForlag AS

Barthomeuf, L., Rousset, S. and Droit-Volet, S. (2009). Emotion and food. Do the emotions expressed on other people’s faces affect the desire to eat liked and disliked food products? Appetite, 52, 27 33

Zajonc, R.B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149, 269-274

Cooke, L. and Wardle, J. (2005).Age and gender differences in children’s food preferences. British Journal of Nutrition, 93, 741-746

Beardsworth, A., Bryman, A., Keil, T., Goode, J., Haslam, C. and Lancashire, E. (2002) Women, men and food: The significance of gender for nutritional attitudes and choices.British Food Journal.104(7), 470-491

Goldberg, L.R. and Strycker, L.A. (2002).Personality and eating habits: the assessment of food preferences in a large community sample. Personality and Individual Difference, 32, 49-65.

Carrillo, E., Varela, P., Salvador, A., & Fiszman, S. (2011). Main factors underlying consumers’ food choice: A first step for the understanding of attitudes toward “healthy eating”. Journal of Sensory Studies, 26(2), 85-95.