The relative importance of menu attributes at point of menu selection through conjoint analysis: Focused on adolescents

The purpose of this study was to identify the relative importance of menu attributes affecting customers' decision process when selecting a menu. In order to elicit these possible attributes, a focus group interview and pre-survey were performed. Four attributes, taste, appearance, price and nutrition aspect, were considered in this study to analyze the relative importance through conjoint analysis. Nine menu profiles which consisted of combination of four attributes which have two level respectively were elicited on the basis of fractional factorial design by the statistical package (SPSS 12.0). The subjects are composed of 250 students of the Pennsylvania State University. They were asked to rank the order of nine profiles according to their preference. The SPSS 12.0 statistic package was used to conduct the conjoint analysis. Taste (67.38%) was identified with the most important factor and price (16.77%), nutrition aspect (11.59%) and appearance (4.27%) followed respectively. The comparison for groups classified according to their expenditure level for a lunch showed that those in high expenditure group think nutrition aspects of a menu are more important than those in the low expenditure group. Those in low expenditure group think taste is less important than those in high expenditure group.