Tourist’s preferences in selection of local food: perception and behavior embedded model

Abstract

Purpose

Locally derived foods from the lens of restaurant settings play an important source of tourist attraction. Surprisingly, research into this sector is quite scarce. The aim of the paper is to develop and empirically examine a conceptual framework on tourist’s preferences in selecting local foods. The framework includes tourists’ satisfaction, quality of food, tourist’s perception, purchase intention and purchase behavior among tourist’s selection for local foods.

Design/methodology/approach

The research is designed as quantitative in nature. A sum of 280 usable questionnaires was used from 300 distributed instruments by using convenient sampling techniques.

Findings

The results show that the relationship of tourist satisfaction and behavior is mediated by purchase intention, whereas tourist’s satisfaction and perception have a positive and significant impact on the intention of purchasing local foods. There is also a significant relationship between tourist’s satisfaction and perceived quality toward the tourist’s perception of local foods. Moreover, a significant relationship exists between tourist’s intentions and tourist’s purchase behavior.

Research limitations/implications

The study derived the purchase behavior dimensions of local foods by the tourists through literature and verified the conceptual model through empirical testing. Based on these findings, managers of local food restaurants require maximizing the purchase behavior of the visitors by considering satisfaction and perceived quality. In summation, they also should consider perception and behavioral intention of tourists. The limitation of this research relates to the sample, where data were collected from the major city of a tourist-friendly country. Future research could investigate the perceived value and gender variance as moderating variables in and between purchase intention and purchase behavior.

Practical implications

Managers and policymakers may use the outcome of this research as a guideline to understand the depth of tourist’s behavior. By identifying the antecedents of the behavioral factors may assist the managers to strengthen the restaurant’s competitive position within the industry. Finally, policymakers may use the research to assess tourists’ perceptions of local foods acceptability in promoting the nation’s culture to other parts of the world.

Originality/value

This work adds to tourism behavior research by exploring the effect of satisfaction, perceived quality, perception and intention on behaviors associated with local foods purchase behavior. In particular, the study highlights the relationships between tourist’s perception, perceived quality of local foods and satisfaction of local foods to measure tourist’s behavior through purchase intention for local foods from the perspective of restaurant settings, which have received less research attention.

Citation

Rahman, M.S., Zaman, M.H., Hassan, H. and Wei, C.C. (2018), "Tourist’s preferences in selection of local food: perception and behavior embedded model", Tourism Review, Vol. 73 No. 1, pp. 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-04-2017-0079