Restaurant Attributes:A Conjoint Analysis

Restaurant business has been on the upswing continually, in Chennai, as much as in any other city. Urbanization, dual income families and westernization have fuelled the growth of the restaurant industry. In Chennai, visiting a restaurant has taken the shape of a lifestyle, rather than just a means of satisfying hunger. Today restaurant customers have abundance of choices. To capture and keep the customers, the restaurateurs need to practice a strong customer driven orientation and satisfy customers’ needs more effectively than their competitors. Understanding the customer is the priority in every restaurateur’s agenda. A better understanding of the huge customer base offers greater business opportunities for growth. Depending on the purpose of going out to dine consumers sub-consciously evaluate a complex set of attributes before making their buying decision. Choosing a restaurant involves intentionally or instinctively assessing a multifarious set of attributes in the mind of the potential customers. The restaurant service can be considered as a bundle of various important attributes including quality of food, hygiene, variety of food, price, location and much more. Choice of a restaurant largely depends on the value that a prospect attaches to each attribute. This paper is an attempt to identify the key attributes which a customer considers while choosing a restaurant using Conjoint Analysis.