An empirical investigation of the effect of menu icons to customer attention on family style restaurant menu

• Main Authors: Koa, Andrea Rachelle G., Mejorada, Cyrill Lawrence B., Yu, Alain Dominic A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2015
• Subjects: Menu design; Restaurants > Menus
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/8340
• Institution: De La Salle University

Menus have been known to be an informative business tool that affects the decision of the customer. It has different components and design element such as food name, labels and food description that provide information. One the menu components used is the menu icon, which is used to characterize food information independent form words. Icons have been used to compliment and provide emphasis to food items. It has also been identified in the focus group discussion that menu icons play a role in catching the attention of customers but has not yet been explored. Previous studies have not considered the size and location of menu icons that affect customers attention in a family style restaurant menu. Thus, this study is aimed to determine the optimal setting of a menu icon in terms of size and location presented in a family style menu. In this research the response variables to measure attention are the following: total glance time, number of glances and mean glance duration. In order to identify the icons to be used in the experiment, a comprehension test was adapted from the ISO 9186:2001. For the comprehension judgement test, a Pareto chart was made to identify the type of menu icons t be used in a designed family style restaurant menu. The screening resulted to 11 menu icons types and three menu icon designs were chosen to represent the menu icons. The second comprehension test was conducted in order to identify the comprehensive and non-comprehensive menu icons from the different menu icon design, following the ISO passing score of 67%. The comprehension test resulted to having five menu icons to represent each setting. With the final menu icons available, a prototype menu for the experiment was created. Menu layout was created based on the most common menu layout design. The experiment proper was conducted at the laboratory with 33 menu prototypes for the basic menu and the different size location settings. The menus were to be placed on a board during the experiment for data gathering. The Dikablis wireless eye tracking device was used to capture the participants eye movement. Participants were asked to imagine a restaurant setting and order food on the menus. A total of 66 participants were used for the study. Lastly, a post-interview was conducted to further gather data that will support the results of the experiment. Design of experiment was used to analyze the results of the experiment. The results of the study showed that size (p-value 0.0074 and 0.230) and the interaction of size and location (p-value of 0.0214 and 0.0283) is significant to affect the total glance time and number of glances respectively which are measures of customer attention. Furthermore, it is recommended to set the size of the menu icons to 0.35 x 0.35 inches and to consider the interaction effect of size and location at 0.35 x 0.35 inches located at the upper left of the food item. Understanding customer behavior is important in addressing problems on improving customer attention. The study has provided the settings to be considered on creating a family-style restaurant menu design using menu icons. This establishes theories regarding a family-style restaurant menu icons. This establishes theories regarding current menu design to catch customer attention that would eventually lead to food purchases.