A survey on consumer perception: Southeast Asian restaurants in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Abstract

The hospitality industry comprises the major segments of the industry; food service, lodging, travel and recreation. Millions of people who eat out every day have a wide variety of needs and tastes. Minneapolis was ranked 25 h among cities with 200,000 or more when using 1992 population. It had been reported that the number of Asian in Minneapolis, Minnesota was 15,723 in 1990. Since the number of ethnic group increases, the number of ethnic restaurants was also increases accordingly. The purpose of this research was to identify the customers' perception upon demographic segmentation, identify the influencing factors for consumers to dine in the selected restaurants and identify the factors that motivated consumers to dine in the selected restaurants. Using a 9 questions questionnaire, data was computer analyzed with statistical procedures including frequency counts and percentages. The researchers had 280 questionnaires returned. One important data shown these Southeast Asian restaurants received a high percentage on repeated customers (67.5%). Most of participants agreed on speed of service, speed of food served, room decoration and cleanliness of restaurants. They were also agreed that the products were excellent on size of portion and flavor. The suggestion for restaurants were to increase the more choices of menu items, change menu items occasionally and/or have special items on specific days. The research should be conducted utilizing different methods of research sampling, additional restaurants should be included in the survey, increased sample size other factors that influenced customer choices and evaluation and implement marketing methods used to market Southeast Asian restaurants were recommended for further study.