Chapter 10 Case Study: Enhancing ethnic food acceptance and reducing perceived risk

Study background

There are growing efforts to establish marketing strategies with the potential to attract global customers towards emerging ethnic food markets (Jang et al., 2009). Although ethnic food restaurants have become an important component of the food service industry, scholars and practitioners have yet to address how ethnic restaurants become successful. This study attempts to consider US consumers food-related behaviours. Food-related consumer behaviours are transformed and influenced by various factors that can be categorized as food-internal factors and food-external factors. One food-internal factor specifically related to food choices is food neophobia. Throughout history, humans have viewed ingesting novel foods as potentially harmful. Exhibiting food neophobia is more likely to protect an individual from consuming potentially harmful foods, while exhibiting food neophilia increases the likelihood of the individual trying a wide variety of foods. Although ethnic foods are considered potentially harmful to certain food neophobic groups, there has been little work in identifying the factors that contribute to acceptance of unfamiliar foods, or reducing the perceived risk of unfamiliar foods. Yet, in order to introduce new foods into the US market successfully, it is critical to reduce the fear of novel foods.

To reduce the perceived danger or harm associated with unfamiliarity, this study examines two external factors that may drive ethnic food acceptance cultural familiarity and information factors. Cultural familiarity with a cuisines country of origin is an external factor that reduces uncertainty towards novel ethnic foods. Popular cultural content including television dramas, movies, pop music and associated media can encourage learned safety. Pop culture can foster interest in a culture and provide consumers with a broader knowledge of the country, which can help to create a desire for ethnic cuisines. Different levels of cultural familiarity can therefore affect US customers with different levels of food neophobia.

Another food-external factor that may enhance ethnic food acceptance is information framing on menus, which can also reduce uncertainty (Eertmans et al., 2001). Prior research has shown that for customers with lower levels of knowledge and experience, visual information is generally considered appropriate. Thus, differences in food-related personality traits and familiarity with a food may alter which type of menu format is most effective. To fully understand the role of information and menu design in a restaurant setting, it is vital to comprehend which types of information effectively influence acceptance of ethnic foods across food neophobic traits.

Study objectives

This study intends to examine whether innate food-related personality traits (food neophobia), as well as food-external factors, such as cultural familiarity and menu framing, influence customers reluctance to try ethnic foods. Since Korean food is relatively novel in the US ethnic food market (Jang et al., 2009), this study examines American customers attitudes towards Korean foods.

Question

What 3-4 research questions are based on the study background and objectives provided above?