Students Perception On Fast Food Consumption

Malaysians were first introduced to fast foods when A&W established its first restaurant in 1963. Consumers’ acceptance of fast foods has been increasing. This is manifested by the proliferation of fast food outlets in Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur, such as Mc Donald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Grandy’s, Pizza Hut and Shakey’s Pizza. Especially during the past ten years. These restaurants are franchised outlets that serve standardised western style menus, prepared according to strict specifications and charge fixed prices.

Nowadays, many Malaysian are becoming increasingly more westernized and pursuing greater convenience when eating out. For these reasons, fast food restaurants have become especially popular among adolescents. In fact, the main customer group of fast food restaurants is students. Primary school student will request for fast food such as Mc Donald, KFC or Pizza Hut when they spend their family day with parents. While for teenager, they love fast food because it’s a nice place for them to hang out with friends and chit chat with.

Several dietary factors inherent in fast food may cause a variety of negative health effects, including obesity, hypercholesterolemia, cardiovascular disease and some cancers due to massive portion of fast food, high energy density, palatability (appealing to primordial taste preferences for fats, sugar and salt), high content of saturated and trans fat, and low content of fibre. In order to induce students to have a correct understanding of the problems associated with fast food and to form a good dietary habit, it is necessary to realize how they perceive the influence of fast food on their health and nutrition. The purpose of this study is to examine Malaysian student’s perceptions and towards fast foods. A better understanding of the behavioural and psychosocial factors associated with eating fast food could provide useful descriptive information for potential intervention development.

LITERATURE REVIEW

This research paper is not undertaking as a substantial survey either of brand building or of consumer experience. Nor is it seeking the perception of student to fast food. Brands enhance human daily life. Consumer’s experience of using their familiar brands is more comfortable. This is because the essence of branded eating in fast food restaurants, albeit inflected culturally in different direction. Students consume the same brand as they friends did. This had brought out the trend among students which fast food restaurant is a place to hang out.

According to Schlosser (2001) with increased mobility and the sprawling of urban areas people spent more time commuting to work. This was coupled with an increasing presence of women in the workplace thus leading to less time allocated for food preparation at home. At that stage, some three quarters of the family food budget was initially spent on fast food meals. Quick to capture the changing nature of the business, the fast food industry has also changed the face of the food chain in the last decades. Changes in food presentation and preparation were derived from technological improvements that facilitated the preservation of both uncooked and precooked foods.

The advent of the microwave helped with the rapid preparation of food. As well as food preparation, the presentation of food also went through transformation. Outlets that were relied highly on staff and the use of crockery or cutlery gave way to a strong ‘eat with your fingers’ emphasis. In addition to this, technological advances in packaging allowed the ultimate use of disposal of materials made of plastic, cardboard and polymers. These came in tandem with a drive towards uniformity of expectations, which included not only the presentation of the food itself, but also radical changes to the fundamentals of traditional restaurant (Schlosser 2001).

Rault-Wack and Bricas (2002) propose that food is also a powerful medium for the construction of cultural and collective identities. Therefore, by establishing a corporate identity through the use of architectural symbolism such as red tiles and neon arches (Jackle and Scalle, 1999), the overall result meant that a particular name would be immediately associated with a particular product and service. As a result a strong brand association and identification was established facilitating the formation and consolidation of strong corporate identities. In the UK, fast food preparation and presentation thus follows the American model which created a strong cultural and collective identity. The model has provided the consumers with uniformity and repeated experience (Schlosser 2002).

According to Anita Goyal and N.P. Singh survey, “Consumers’ perception on fast foods in India” had mention that after the liberalisation policy that came in force in 1991. Fast food industry grown in India as multinational fast food providers have set up their business either jointly with Indian partners or independently. From this journal was seeks to estimate importance of various factors affecting the choice of fast food outlets by Indian young consumers.

According to the findings of the recent online survey from AC Nielson is among the top ten markets for weekly fast food consumption among the countries of Asia-Pacific region. Over 70 % of customers consume food from take-away restaurants once a month or more frequently. Identifying the drivers for preference of one-brand over another, the survey results indicate that 66% of customers who consider hygiene and cleanliness their most important criterion for selection. 24% of customers decide making criterion to purchase a fast food brand offer and 22% rely on their perception of whether a take-away brand offers them healthy food options. Other than that, youngest consumers are looking for variety, price, speed, delivery service and location in America and for price and novelties as well. Older consumers are more concern to cleanliness, nutritional value, quality and taste.

According Tony Wilson and Khor Yoke Lim (2005), fast food culture has become a trend in the world. Even the state of one’s health has become primary concern for consumer, but it does not affect the way consumers choose to eat. Having fast food becomes a part of student life. If current trend continue and forecast correct three quarters of today’s teenage will be overweight or obese by the time they turn in 40 years old. Malaysia fast food industry is growing and attributed with the changing in life such as leisure and people life more convenience compare to years ago. Consumer have been spending less of their budget on the grocery store while spending more of their food money is ending up in cash register at the restaurant and fast food outlets.

Besides that, convenience was another good perception view from public to fast food. Working adult willing to purchase fast food as their lunch or dinner due to its efficient for getting their meal and also its value packages which provided by fast food restaurant. Other than that, normally, fast food restaurant based in or near shopping complex or office building. This had build another good reason while employees are rushing for their lunch hour and they are much more prefer to have fast food in 15 minutes to enjoy for their one hour lunch time.

Nowadays, people are more concern to health condition compare to years ago. Therefore, in long term healthy eating will be effective in reducing the risk of community towards chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and certain types of cancer. Guidelines on fast foods are advertising to children and labelling of nutrient content. The increasing circulation of obesity among children is also a main reason. Nutrition labelling is to provide nutrition information on wrapper, brochure, pamphlet or posters of fast food. Consumers will be informed of the amount of the nutrients contains. Therefore, education towards consumer on the use of nutrition labelling information must to carry out to ensure effective use of the declaration.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

A problem statement is a clear concise description of the issues that need to be addressed by a problem solving team and should be created before they try to solve the problem. When bringing together a team to achieve a particular purpose provide them with a problem statement. In this student’s perception towards consuming of fast food, students believes that fast food are convenience and efficient. This is the factors that lead to the drastic increase in the statistical analysis on fast food consumption in Malaysia. This is because they had already set in mind fast food is convenient and less time consuming to purchase compare to a proper restaurants. Finally, fast food has become a basic social lifestyle as students treat a fast food restaurant as a place for gather and hang out.

Research Question

Research question 1: What is the perception of students on fast food?

Hypotheses 1: Fast food is convenient and less time consuming

Hypotheses 2: Fast food is place for gatherings and hangs out.

Research question 2: What are the factors that influencing fast food consumption?

Hypotheses 1: Fast food increases the obesity rate in Malaysian.

Hypotheses 2: Fast food’s foods are lack of nutrient and might causes health matters if consume in a long term.

Research Objective

The main objective of this research is to conduct a conclusive research to explore insights about students’ perception on fast food consumption. We want to know the student perception on fast food consumption and how this perception influencing them to consume a fast food as their meal.

This research is also to identify and analyze the factors that influencing student on fast food consumption. The factors that influencing students’ fast food consumption can be in terms of price of the fast food, nutrition of the fast food, convenience and lifestyle. Price of fast food is an economic factor that influence them the most whether to consume fast food. This depend whether they got extra pocket money which usually come from their parents. Nowadays, fast food is one of the foods that students consume every day. Nutrition of fast food is taking into consideration for students healthy. This research is also conducted to find out whether student consume fast food is because of the convenience to get the fast food and eating fast food is kind of lifestyle.

In short, the final analysis should give us what factors that influence the students on fast food consumption hence fast food restaurants can take the findings of this research as a guide to improve their services or make more profit.

Research Framework

Independent Moderating Dependent

Variables Variable Variable

Price of Fast Food

Student consumption of Fast Food in Malaysia

Student’s attitude towards Fast Food

Demographic

Nutrition of Fast Food

Convenience of Fast Food

This survey indicates that student’s consumption on fast food in Malaysia are affected by several variables which are price of purchasing fast food, trend or lifestyle of student, nutrition that contains and the convenience of the fast food. Refer to the framework, these 4 variables are important because either one of the variable will cause the perception of student to consume on fast food. Besides, all the variables had been affected by moderating variable, demography. The demography is include age, gender, income race and others demography that related to student consumption on fast food. Therefore, we take it as our independent variables for this research.

Price

The price is a component of an exchange or transaction that takes place between two parties and refers to what must be given up by one party (example: buyer) in order to obtain something offered by another party (example: seller). Price factors are said to influencing most of the student’s perception is because of the allowance from their parents are very minimal and students perception in purchasing fast food are believed to be expensive and not full filling. Sometimes, student will purchase fast food because of the price is reasonable for certain portion of the fast food. Therefore, the price is the perception of the student in fast food consumption.

Attitude

Besides, attitude is also an independent variable for the student perception on fast food. Attitudes is kind of manner, disposition, feeling posture of the body to expressive of an action, emotion regards to a person. This can be show that student attitudes towards Fast food are treating Fast food restaurant as a place for gatherings. Students nowadays like to hang around with friends at fast food restaurant compare library; they think that this is a part of their life or so called “cool”. Besides, student for high institution will spend more time at fast food restaurant to do their assignment, surf net, chit chat with their friend and so on, where all these activities can be doing at home, library or any parts of the campus.

Nutrition

Nutrition is nutrients in food, how the body uses nutrients, and the relationship between diet, health and disease. This is important to know what is the nutrition of the fast food contains and found out there is a poor nutrient value from the fast food. It is not only contains a very high calorie in some certain amount of fast food, it contains high monosodium glutamate (MSG), as a food additive and is commonly marketed as a flavour enhancer that is bad for health if it is highly consumed and fast food is of the leads to obesity among teenagers these days. Do students now a day refer to any nutrition labels before they purchase fast food and will the student aware of health if they have their fast food frequently? So, nutrition is very important for student perception on fast food that might influence student consumption to have fast food.

Convenience

Following is convenience of fast food. Convenience is anything that is intended to save resources (time, energy) or frustration. Convenience is one of the factors that most students do go for fast food as they think fast food is very convenient and less time consuming. In the students mind set of fast food is a place for everyone to visit there at anytime anywhere. Compare to a normal restaurant which need to wait for long queue just for waiting waitress to serve and order. However, fast food just need a few minutes where students can enjoy their meals without wasting time and energy. This is why fast food brings convenience to student.

Research Methodology

In this research, our main finding is factors that cause students’ perception from higher education institution in the fast food consumption. Most of the students are having pocket money that provided by their parents, money that students spend will automatically been limited due to amount of parents give to them, so we want to find out that price will change student perception in fast food area. Besides price factor, we also will focus on the convenience and attitude of students that influence their perception on fast food consumption. In addition, current condition in nutrition or health knowledge is also important to us to know that students will be affect by the nutrition knowledge when they want to consume fast food.

Why

So, we can use our finding to exploit our knowledge on perception of students on fast food consumption and it may also useful in future too.

Population Sampling

Students who consumed food obtained in fast food restaurants in Malaysia.

Sample Sampling

Our sample is students from Higher education Institutions.

This is because, student in higher education level, their minded is much more mature to make decision.

While our target number of students is 100 for direct collect survey which just for Wilayah Persekutuan and Selangor. This is because; higher education institutions are more locating in these 2 areas. But we not set a target for our online survey, this is because online survey hard to us to estimate it and we also have confidence that we sure can get many respondents. So, after conduct the online survey we just know that how many of respondents gather in online.

Technique

We will use survey method to collect or gather our data, due to the reason of survey is the easy way to give students to answer comparing with others techniques that quite complicated; moreover it is the inexpensive way to gather form a potentially large enough to respondents. Often they are the only feasible way to reach a number of reviewers large enough to allow statistically analysis of the results.

We had separated our questionnaire into 5 parts, which are Demographic, Price, Convenience, Life Style and Nutrition. In addition, scale technique that we use is Likert scale. So, in the part of price, convenience, attitude and nutrition, we can get their response of perception of the higher level educations’ students in fast food view. While before the 5 part that previous mention, we also set questions to get some basic information about students’ perception on fast food consumption. For examples, which fast food restaurant are students’ most to consume.

Where or location

Fast food restaurants that around the higher education institution

It can give us great chances to gather our survey from our target respondents which are students of high education institution. Besides the reason, it will give us more or accurate feeling from students to answer to the survey, such as Seri Kembangan Mc-Donald, Cyberjaya Domino Pizza.

Online Survey

Nowadays, all the students form higher education institution are online, no matter is their academic purpose, for fun or else they also spend a lots of time in online. So, through online survey, we can collect survey faster and easy. Reason of us to run 2 ways of survey is that we can gather different data or view of respondents when they are not from the same type of groups. For example, online respondents that do not consume much may have different view such as perception of price is higher compare with respondents which direct fulfill in the fast food restaurants.

Time or period

Most of the fast food restaurants are also have provide different package in different time or period, so we will separate 3 groups which are breakfast, lunch and dinner time slots to gather our survey, or it can also name as stratified sampling.

Although online method can be collect data faster, but we also need to use 1 month to leave at online, so that can gather more responses. Our 2 methods will be run together so that can gather survey in the faster way.

Questionnaire

[1]Gender : Male Female

[2]Age : ≤ 20 21 – 27 28 – 34 35 – 41 42 – 48 49 – 55

[3] Race : Malay Chinese Indian Others

[4] Course :

(Ex: BBA Marketing with Multimedia)

[5] Year of Study: (1, 2, 3, 4, first, second, third, fourth or others)

[6] Where do you live currently?

(Sri Kembangan, Cyberia or others)

[7] Income Level or Pocket Money:-

< RM1000.00 RM1000.00 - RM2000.00

RM2001.00 – RM3000 .00 RM3001.00 – RM4000.00

> RM4000.00

[8] Which fast food restaurant(s) you most consume? (May choose more than 1)

KFC MC-Donald Burger King Pizza Hut A&W Others:

[9] I choose fast food because … (May choose more than 1)

No Choice Delicious Easy to go Fast to get meal

Others:

[10] I frequently select fast food’s _______________as my meal set.

(May choose more than 1)

Breakfast Lunch Tea time Dinner Supper Others

[11] I choose fast food, when I am _____?

Rushing of Time Very Hungry Stress Others

[12] What do you think about the price rate for fast food in value meal?

Strongly Inexpensive 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Expensive

[13] What do you think about the price rate for fast food in ala cart?

Strongly Inexpensive 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Expensive

[14] How frequent do you add on or purchase a larger meal?

Not Frequent 1 2 3 4 5 Very Frequent

[15] How frequent do you redeem the voucher provided by fast food restaurant?

Not Frequent 1 2 3 4 5 Very Frequent

[16] Do you apply as a fast food restaurant member?

Yes No

If yes, do you use member card to get members’ privilege (such as redeem price)?

Yes No

If no, will you consider applying member card in the future?

Yes No

[17] Fast food restaurant’s location currently in town is best serving me.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[18] Fast food restaurant in shopping mall save my time in choosing food.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[19] I can easily search for fast food restaurant whenever I feel like buying fast food.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[20] I am willing to travel to a restaurant just to eat fast food.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[21] Fast food restaurant’s location would be a consideration for me to buy fast food.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[22] I will visit fast food restaurant more often if the fast food restaurant located nearby my house.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[23] I often use Drive-Thru service provided by the fast food restaurants when I am in a rush.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[24] Drive-Thru service provided by the fast food restaurants save my time in ordering fast food.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[25] I often use delivery service provided by the fast food restaurants.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[26] Delivery service provided by the fast food restaurants save my time in ordering fast food.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[27] Delivery service provided by the fast food restaurants delivered my order within the time period that they have promised.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[28] Counter service in fast food restaurant very fast in the speed in serving my order.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[29] Counter service in fast food restaurant is efficiently serving my order.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[30] I will visit fast food restaurant more often if the fast food restaurant serve my order in a shorter time.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[31] I like the concept where fast food restaurant open 24 hours a day.

Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree

[32] Do you know the nutrition contains in the fast food?

Yes No

[32] How do you know about the nutrition of fast food?

Word of mouth Parents

Education News paper

[33] Are you alert about nutrition the value of fast food?

Not alert 1 2 3 4 5 strongly alert

[34] Would you still consider consuming particular fast food, after referring to Nutrition Value Label?

Not consuming 1 2 3 4 5 strongly consuming

[35] Do you think fast food nowadays is nutrition?

Yes No

[36] How often do you visit the fast food restaurant in a week?

Every day 3 times

2 times Never.

[37] Do you agree on going to a fast food restaurant for a supper?

Yes No

[38] The most suitable place to organize a group gathering is…,

Pub Fast food restaurant

At home Others __________

[39] Do you think Wi-Fi is important to be implemented in a fast food restaurant? (Please state your reasons below.)

Yes No

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[40] Lastly, What came across your mind, when you hear the word FAST FOOD?

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