Consumer culture in traditional food market: The influence of Chinese consumers to the cultural construction of Chinese barbecue

Abstract

The rapid expansion of the traditional food market has led to more and more attention to cultural research focusing on consumers' attitudes towards traditional food. The topic of the development of Chinese barbecue into a corresponding food culture has been controversial and simultaneously, restricts the further development of the industry. Focusing on online reviews of Chinese barbecue from 2018 to 2021 as the research object, macro big data analysis combined with spatial economic analysis (kriging interpolation, spatial correlation analysis, center of gravity transfer, and spatiotemporal evolution prediction) were used to explore the results and regularities of its cultural construction. Taking 8002 online questionnaires and 40 interviews, the research paradigm of the micro questionnaire and interview combined with social network analysis (SNA) was adopted to explore consumers' attitudes toward the traditional food culture of Chinese barbecue. The study's findings indicated that from 2018 to 2021, Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, as well as the northeastern region represented by Heilongjiang and Liaoning, were the hotspots for Chinese barbecue. As Chinese barbecue centers spread, so did their influence on other regions and food culture circles. There are many regions that share a high degree of similarity with Liaoning's comments, and the ideological similarity of consumers in these regions is growing. The migration routes of Chinese barbecue centers were Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Tianjin and Beijing, Shanghai and Zhejiang. According to the heat prediction, it was found that the heat centers in 2022 and 2023 were Beijing, Shanghai and Zhejiang respectively. Through the verification of questionnaires and interviews, it was found that the Chinese barbecue culture has been developed and this influences people's food-related behaviors.