ABSTRACT
The study is focused on nutritional labelling of restaurant menu and customer’s choice of restaurant. Nutritional labelling is the practice of providing information about calories, fat, sodium, or other selected nutrients in menu items at point of purchase, nutritional labelling is one strategy in a broad spectrum of efforts to reduce rates of obesity and diet-related chronic diseases all over the world. Since many people all over the world consume food away from home, access to nutrition information at point of food and beverage purchases may help consumers make healthier choices. Menu labelling regulations for chain restaurants, usually in the form of calorie information at the point of purchase, have been adopted by many countries especially the developed and developing countries. Menu labels can appear on menu boards, food tags (cards with nutritional information placed next to food items in display cases or cafeteria lines) or printed menus. The significant growth in food labelling does not, itself, give consumers the knowledge to make informed choices. Without a clear understanding of how this information can improve one’s health, the advantages are lost. Nutritional labelling on restaurant menus is more likely to be accepted in popular restaurant and fast food establishments where consumers eat regularly and predominantly for sustenance and, where such information is available. Similar schemes in fine-dining restaurants, may be viewed less favorably by customers. No labelling system or legislation can control the choices made by individuals and therefore the responsibility to select nutritional balance food is personal. The difficulties of standardization and the high costs involved in providing precise nutritional information suggest it would difficult for small businesses to achieve and these may be put at risk of closure if forced to calculate nutritional values. Without an appropriate, holistic, restaurant nutritional labelling system, there appears to be little point in the hospitality industry endeavoring to provide information which many customers may ignore or not understand. Based on this conclusion, the study recommends that fast food restaurants have to put more effort on encouraging customers to use nutritional labeling by making the label more accessible and in a user friendly format. Also restaurants should ensure that their menu is labelled in such a way that customers can actually know the content of the food. This is because some customers have health issue that would deprive them of eating some foods. The study further recommends that nutritional labelling should be compulsory for every fast food and restaurants. That would give customers more confident in consuming the food having known the content of the food.
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background
of the study 1
1.2 Statement
of the problem 6
1.3 Objectives
of the study
8
1.4 Research
questions
8
1.5 Significance
of the study
9
1.6 Scope
of the study
10
CHAPTER
2
2.0 Review
of related literature
11
2.1.1
Conceptual framework
11
2.1.2
An overview of the Nigerian Restaurant Industry 12
2.1.1
Quick service restaurant
14
2.1.2
Food labeling 16
2.1.3
Food labelling in restaurants
18
2.1.4
Nutrition
22
2.1.5
Legal implementation of nutritional labelling
36
2.1.6
Impact of nutritional labelling in the restaurant 37
2.1.7
The impact nutritional labelling has on customers behaviors
Towards their food choices in the
restaurant 38
2.1.8
Influence of menu labelling and restaurant foods 46
2.2
Theoretical framework
51
2.2.1
Utility theory (Richarm 2005)
51
2.2.1.1
Analytical method
52
2.2.1.2
Perspective models
54
2.3
Empirical literature
54
CHAPTER
3
3.0
Research methodology
60
3.1
Research Design
60
3.2
Area of the study
60
3.3
Population of the study
60
3.4
Sample/Sampling techniques
60
3.5
Instrument for data collection
61
3.6
validation of the instrument
62
3.7
Reliability of the instrument
62
3.8
Method of data collection
63
3.9
Method of data analysis
63
CHAPTER
4
4.0
Data presentation, analysis and discussions of results 64
4.1
Data presentation 64
4.3
Major findings 72
4.4
Discussion of findings 73
CHAPTER 5
5.0
Summary, conclusion and recommendation 77
5.1
Summary 77
5.1.1
Restatement of the problem 78
5.1.2
Description of methods used 79
5.1.3
Major findings 80
5.2
Conclusion 80
5.3
Recommendation 82
5.4
Contribution to knowledge 82
5.5
Suggestion for further studies 82
REFERENCE
APPENDIX
LIST OF TABLES
2.2.1
Cognitive Consumer Behavior Model (Hall, 2016)
51
4.1 Distribution of questionnaire and response
rate 64
4.2.1
Socioeconomic Characteristics of the respondents 64
4.3 Factors affecting purchasing decisions,
Consumer buying and Nutritional
Labelling in the restaurant. 65
4.4 Mean responses on the influence nutritional
labelling is having on
Consumer Purchasing decisions within restaurants 67
4.5 Mean responses on how customers purchasing
decisions are affected
by Nutritional labelling on menus.
69
4.6 Mean responses on the extents of
nutritional labelling impacts on
Purchasing decisions in the
restaurant.
70-71
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background to the Study
With
the increasing rates of obesity and chronic diseases globally, hospitality
clients are increasingly concerned about the nutritional content of their foods
choices at all points of purchase. Nutrition and food content labels on
restaurant menus has become a topic of increasing relevance as the rate of
persons suffering from complications associated with obesity and weak or
compromised immune systems. This nutrition labeling regulation has not only
allowed the consumer to make more informed decisions, but has also encouraged
the food industry to re-evaluate their product formulation and to create
healthier food options. The indication of nutritional information on menus has
been implemented in selected restaurants in the United States in an attempt to
combat growing obesity rates. Studies show an increasing demand from the
consumer for nutrition information in restaurant menus (World Menu Report, 2011).
This nutrition transparency in all types of restaurants can allow the health
conscious consumer to make informed decisions and thus increase customer
satisfaction. However, there is a lack of evidence on the impact of menu
labelling on consumer food choices in fine dining gastronomy type restaurants.
A
restaurant is a sector of the hospitality business that prepares and serves
food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the
premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services.
Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety
of cuisines and service models ranging from inexpensive fast food restaurants
and cafeterias, to mid-priced family restaurants, to high-priced luxury establishments.
In Western countries, most mid-to high-range restaurants serve alcoholic
beverages such as beer and wine. Some restaurants serve all the major meals,
such as breakfast, lunch, and dinner (e.g., major fast food chains, diners,
hotel restaurants, and airport restaurants). Other restaurants may serve only a
single meal (for example, a pancake house may only serve breakfast) or they may
serve two meals (e.g., lunch and dinner).
Nutrition
looks at the body's dietary needs, outline the food that helps maintain a well
balanced diet. If your body does not receive the right foods, it can result in
poor nutrition, in turn, causing reduced immunity and an increased chance of
catching diseases (World Health Organization, 2017). Therefore, indicating the importance
of nutrition with previous experiments also indicating that nutritional
labelling can lead to healthier purchasing (Krieger, et al., 2013). Results
have shown that providing nutritional information on menus is not just
beneficial to consumers but also the restaurant, as it can help gain
reassurance and confidence from the consumer and establish a better consumer
image of the information's source (Hwang and Lorenzen, 2008 in Roberto, Larsen,
Agnew, Baik & Brownell, 2010).
In
a restaurant, the menu is a list of food and beverages offered to customers and
the prices. A menu may be à la carte which presents a list of options from
which customers choose or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-established
sequence of courses is offered. Menus may be printed on paper sheets. Customers
eat with their eyes, and that is why food must be desirable, and impress both
the eyes and the palate (Magoulas, 2009 in Arnold, Pandeya , Byrnes, Renehan,
Stevens, Ezzati, 2015). The look and presentation of foods affect our tastes,
moods and inner comfort levels, this is why restaurant owners need to stimulate
taste by creating a meal that tastes great, healthy and looks amazing. “The
menu is the number one tool, and is the purest form of a restaurants strategic
marketing plan”, (McCall and Lynn, 2008 in Viera and Antonelli, 2015). Menus
drive the process for diners to enter restaurants; it serves as a first
impression and can tell a lot about the outlet. Menu design is directly linked
to and influences how customers perceive things. The placement of menu items,
graphics and descriptions tells and sends messages to the customers about what
they should order (Talbot and Avery 2011). They are intended to promote a
perception of value to customers, and helps give more direction to what to
choose (Bassett, Dumanovsky, Huang , Silver, Young and Nonas 2017). There is a definite need for
restaurants to find better ways of showing information, but at the same time
they must avoid overloads and visual clutters. For these reasons nutritional
information and pictures on restaurant menus and menu boards or table cards
would be more beneficial (Steptoe, Pollard and Wardle 2013). In today‟s
restaurants, nutritional information is rarely offered, but there is demand as
more people are aware of healthier options; people are more conscious about
what they choose to eat and this leads to a potential impact of enabling people
to be more knowledgeable and health conscious about what they consume “Recently
significant attention has been paid to the epidemic of obesity and other health
issues that relate to foods people consume” as stated by (Mohd Zahari, Din and
Shariff, 2010). Not enough is known about this information on menus, so further
insight into how health icons, pictures and nutritional information could
influence customers‟ choices will be investigated in this study by the use of
randomized samples. The spotlight focuses on the fact that more people eat out
away from home and this impacts their health and weights (Mohd Zahari, Din and
Shariff, 2010), and to help determine what could be done to encourage healthier
food choices and intakes at restaurants (Mohd Zahari, Din and Shariff, 2010).
If the placements of information and icons would make a difference, this study
explored peoples‟ attitudes on these factors to see if they do in fact
influence customers‟ behaviours towards their meal decisions provided to the
diners, put on a large poster or display board inside the establishment,
displayed outside the restaurant, or put on a digital screen. According to the
Grocery Manufacturers of America, labeling laws are designed to provide the
nutritional information contained in a product in order to assist persons in
making knowledge‐based
decisions (Cleary 2011).Menus are also often a feature of very formal meals
other than in restaurants, for example at weddings.
In
today’s competitive restaurant business, an increase in restaurant business
competition implies that customers nowadays have more dining choices to choose
from than ever before, ranging from fast food to fine dining restaurants. As a
result, customer expectations of restaurant offerings are ever-increasing, and
they are now more demanding in choosing better restaurant choices based on what
they can get from their decision. In view of the growing phenomenon toward
eating out, knowledge of the criteria used by customers in the selection of a
restaurant is strategic in understanding food consumption trends. In fact, as
digital technology continues to advance, it is becoming increasingly challenging
to please restaurant customers as their eating out behavior is now more
sophistically evolved, and they are cognizant of the customer value. Thus, it
is particularly important that restauranteurs stay on top of consumer behavior
in the restaurant industry so that they can cater to the needs and wants of
customers appropriately. A restaurant customer’s decision making process begins
when he/she recognizes a need that can be fulfilled by consuming the
products/services offered by a restaurant. The need for restaurant consumption
may be driven by various factors, such as having quick meals, celebrating
special occasions, entertaining business clients, etc. Customers will search
for relevant information about restaurants, compare restaurant options, and make
the final purchase decision of which restaurant to dine at. The theory of
information integration posits an individual’s overall attitude toward a
product/service is mutually shaped by the perceived actual performance and the
perceived importance of the product/service. In hospitality business, it is
essential that service firms understand how important each product/service’s
key factor is in customers’ decision making. While service firms can
operationally control a product/service’s performance, customers, the direct
receivers of a product or service, primarily determine the importance of a
product/service’s decisive factors. Hence, several marketing scholars have
investigated the importance of key factors in customer decision making across
hospitality and tourism backgrounds, such as hotel, cruise, and destination. A
review of past research on restaurant management reveals that the factors
driving customers’ choice of restaurant are price, food, variety, reputation,
promotion, location, and information sources. In this regard, the key factors
in restaurant selection have relevance only if they are being perceived as
significantly important from the viewpoints of customers. Restaurateurs often
make costly expenditures on marketing activities to attract customers by
utilizing various marketing techniques from menu development to sales
promotion. However, any change in marketing activities meant to expand the
customer base and increase sales requires concrete and sound evidence to
evaluate whether such efforts payoff. Despite substantial interest in consumer
behavior and restaurant marketing research among hospitality scholars, evidence
of customers’ perceived importance of restaurant selection factors and how they
vary across situational factors (i.e., dining occasions and restaurant
segments) are surprisingly scant. Restauranteurs are left with little evidence
on how restaurant choice factors influence customers’ eating out decision
making. When making an eating out decision, customers often view a restaurant
in terms of a set of characteristics that make it desirable, assigning an
importance score to each factor. Restauranteurs thus need to be mindful of
whether a decisive factor is perceived by customers as generally important, or
important depending on the context and situation, or if the factor is perceived
to be trivial no matter what the context and situation. The effectiveness of
restaurant marketing strategy can possibly be strengthened by discerning
customer perception of important factors when making an eating out decision.
Relevance to this study, we theorized that the factors driving customers’
choice of restaurant vary with the occasion of eating out as well as with the
type of restaurant. Restaurant reputation, for example, may appeal to those who
are planning for special occasions, such as a birthday or a wedding
anniversary, rather than for those who want to eat out simply to satisfy
hunger. On the other hand, location may be perceived to be more important for
quick service restaurants than full service restaurants. More accurate
evidence, however, is needed. It is against this background the study tends to
examine the nutritional labeling of restaurant menu and customer choice of
restaurant.
1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Over
the last decade nutritional trends have altered dramatically and have led to
more health concerns and a need to live healthier lifestyles. Nutrition is
vital for existence and gives people the nourishment that they need for growth
and development. According to (Swart, Sanders & McLachlan, 2008 in
Finkelstein, French, Variyamet and Haines, 2014) the
overall nutritional status of Africa‟s population has not improved over the
last fourteen years. The past several decades have seen an increasing prevalence
of nutrition related conditions such as obesity; consequently, there has been
an on growing focus on consumer nutritional education (Nestle & Jacobson,
2000:U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2004 in Stewart, 2017). It is of great
importance that restaurateurs begin to include nutritional information as well
as more appealing visual food pictures, and health icons, aiding in the health
aspects and obesity awareness as well as giving people the nutrition they
require. The more people eat out, the lower their quality of diet becomes &
the higher the impact on their health (Morrison; 2011)
The
increasing popularity of eating out has meant the hospitality industry adapted
to meet demand, resulting in the increasing number of restaurants (Longart,
2015). Fast food restaurants accommodate the consumers looking for taste, low
price and quality (Franchise Help, 2018). Fast food restaurants alongside fast
causal restaurants (don't offer table service) are combined and classified as
Quick Services Restaurants (QSR) within the restaurant industry, making up for
more than 50% of sales within the sector (Franchise Help, 2018).
Therefore
the increasing demand and popularity of the fast food industry can cause some
issues especially for the health of consumers. Fast food products are renowned
for having high energy density and glycemic loads as well as providing
customers with large portion sizes. Therefore health specialists believe the
increase in fast food indulgence is contributing to the escalating rates of
overweight/obesity levels (Rosenheck, 2008). These growing issues are not
limited to USA with growing rates of obesity within the UK, 2015 figures
suggesting 58% of women and 68% were overweight/obese (NHS, 2017, A). Therefore
bringing to light the introduction of menu labeling within fast food chains.
Due
to the increasing popularity of eating out and overweight/obesity rates
increasing this has caught the attention of policymakers (Ellison, 2012). The
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and The Medicines and Healthcare products
Regulatory Agency (MHRA) have introduced a law with the aim to help educate
consumers on the food they are eating outside the home to help reduce the
excessive weight gain (Harnack and French, 2008). As a result of this, the new
law means chain restaurants or similar food retailers with more than 20
restaurants need to label the nutritional intake of their food products on
menus (FDA, 2016). The study aims at filling the gap by investigating
nutritional labeling of restaurant menu and customer choice of restaurant.
1.3
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The
main objective of the study is to identify The Influence of Nutritional
labeling of menu and customer choice of
restaurant in Umuahia, Abia State. However, the specific objectives of the
study are
i.
Evaluate the factors influencing purchasing
decisions, consumer buying and nutritional labelling within the fast food
industry.
ii.
Determine the influence of nutritional
labelling on consumer purchasing decisions in
restaurants.
iii.
Examine the influence of
nutritional labelling on the level of patronage in fast food restaurant.
iv.
Examine the extent
nutritional labelling impacts purchasing decisions within the fast food
industry.
1.4
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The
following research questions guided the study
i.
What are factors
affecting purchasing decisions, consumer buying and nutritional labelling
within the fast food industry?
ii.
What are the influence of
nutritional labelling on consumer purchasing decisions in fast food
restaurants?
iii.
What are the influence of
nutritional labelling on the level of patronage in fast food restaurant?
iv.
What are the extent
nutritional labelling impacts purchasing decisions within the fast food
industry?
1.5
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The information
gotten from the findings of this study will be of benefit to the following: The
students, consultants, managers and fast food owners.
Findings of the study should be included in
the institutions curriculum for teaching the students. That way, the students
will acquire the skills and become self-employed and employers of labor. The
students will learn to be creative and innovative. They will see opportunities
where others do not. There will be less dependency on the government for job/
employment. Students will become interested in learning rather than involve
themselves in committing social vices.
The findings of this study will help
business consultants by assisting them in providing information that will make
them to be more effective in the discharge of their duties. This will help the
state to reduce the number of unemployed youths in the labor market. An
increase in the work force of the nation will improve the economy of the nation
and reduce the number of unemployed youths and the rate of social vices and
vandalism of government properties. The
above benefits of the findings of this study will be possible when the findings
are made available in public libraries, school libraries, fast food counter,
journals and even in chambers, and also to local government chairpersons can
from time to time organize seminars and workshops, educating women and youths
on acquiring these skills.
The findings of this work will be of
benefit to managers of fast foods and quick service restaurants The study will enable them to know the
problems associated with the assessment of nutrition in the management of restaurant.
Government Institutions will benefit from the findings of this study, as this
work will help government institutions to know the innovative or creative
strength of nutritional labelling.
1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study centered on the Nutritional
labeling of restaurant menu and customer choice of restaurant in umuahia, Abia
State. The geographical scope is Umuahia while the unit scope is managers and
staff of some selected restaurant in umuahia Metropolis.
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