Designing and positioning food services for multicultural markets

Abstract

A study that compares the food-service preferences of individuals from three different language groups (English, Japanese, and Spanish) found several common threads. Using probabilistic discrete-choice analysis (DCA), researchers examined the desired food-service attributes of passengers waiting at the international terminal at O'Hare airport. The DCA process proposed different hypothetical changes for the four restaurants operating in the terminal's food court. Respondents chose the feature combinations that they wanted the most. In general, the waiting passengers responded favorably to expansions in the menus, particularly the addition of menu items with which they were familiar (for example, deli selections and Mexican dishes). All three groups of respondents were relatively price insensitive for the four different restaurants and often were willing to wait either to order or to be served, depending on the food-service concept (e.g., waiting for pizza made sense to them, but waiting for burgers did not). Many respondents liked the idea of pictures of the food on menus to help identify unfamiliar items, but virtually no one wanted menus translated into their native languages. Based on the study, one food-service outlet adopted a new marketing strategy that not only increased its market share but attracted more patrons to the food court.