Dynamics of consumers' perception, demographic characteristics and consumers' behavior towards selection of a restaurant: an exploratory study on Dhaka city consumers

Purpose – The overall objective of this study is to test the consumer's perception towards their behavior of choosing a restaurant when demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income play a mediating role. This study also seeks to highlight some propositions to guide future empirical research. Design/methodology/approach – The survey instrument was administered on 350 consumers from Dhaka city in Bangladesh. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to extract and test the key influential attributes on the basis of data of total samples respectively. Structural equation modeling was also used to define the structure of influencing attributes and to measure the degree of impact for each attribute of the consumer's behavior in selecting a restaurant. Findings – The results show that there is a strong relationship between consumer perception and behavior in selecting a restaurant when age, gender and income play a mediating role. In addition it is also found that consumers' age differences have the highest influence on their behavior of choosing a restaurant. Research limitations/implications – This research used a convenience sampling procedure, which is the main limitation. Future research could use a stratified random sampling procedure with more samples. On the other hand the EFA is difficult to generalize to a larger audience. There was a lack of experimental control for the questionnaire investigation, so the quality of questionnaire cannot be ensured. Practical implications – Restaurant operators who are trying to understand their consumers must measure not only their perception, but also their age, gender, and income because those variables also play a substantial role in predicting consumer behavior as well. Originality/value – Until the present paper, the majority of research into restaurant customers has utilized demographic characteristics (age, gender and income) has been scarce. Moreover, this is a relatively new issue that remains largely undiscovered by researchers from an underdeveloped country's perspective.