Abstract
In Benin Republic (West Africa), the public student restaurant of the University of Abomey-Calavi is being criticized for its irregular and poor service. Therefore, private restaurants have settled on the campus streets to fill the gap. Which food attributes and marketing services do students value most? How do those restaurants compare with the Agro Maquis reference restaurant, which presumably offers modern catering services? The study aims to reveal food marketing services, as critical drivers of food demand in a restaurant. Principal component analysis was carried out to identify types of private restaurants that have settled on the streets of the campus. This was done based on 13 marketing service attributes. The set of restaurants with the prevailing profile was tested for conformity with the reference one. 60% of the private restaurants comply well with cleanness and 70% with attractiveness/prettiness of the place. Also, 90% of the private restaurants addressed the time-saving need of consumers in a satisfactory manner and 60% were found efficient in terms of hygiene. Three main groups of restaurants were revealed. The one mostly represented is the one that takes into account: hygiene, seller and food presentation and packaging, guest care quality, diversity of services and service time. The conformity test shows that the dominant restaurants in the campus streets compare quite well with the Agro-maquis restaurant for most product attributes and marketing services. Outsourcing of catering service to qualified private restaurants in public universities should be implemented, based on track records of attractive marketing services. Key words: Food demand, food attributes, marketing services, private restaurants, students, Benin.
Highlights
An overview of agricultural marketing in AfricaThe dependency of African States on imported foods from overseas is growing, while domestic food productionIs low or lacking rewarding market outlets
The purpose of this study is to reveal the importance of consumers‟ choices based on marketing services and food attributes, as critical drivers of food demand by students in restaurants on the Campus of University of Abomey-Calavi, and to rate these restaurants
The findings of the principal component analysis (PCA) indicate that the private restaurants on the campus streets of University of Abomey-Calavi are quite diverse in the food marketing services they offer, the main types identified will be useful for defining selection criteria in the perspective of catering service outsourcing
Summary
An overview of agricultural marketing in AfricaThe dependency of African States on imported foods from overseas is growing, while domestic food productionIs low or lacking rewarding market outlets. An overview of agricultural marketing in Africa. The dependency of African States on imported foods from overseas is growing, while domestic food production. 2010; Honfoga et al, 2018) and structure-conductperformance (Adegbola et al, 2016) have have been brought back to the attention of policy-makers in Africa, with the aim of improving trade policies for better access of consumers to food. Considering the adverse effects of the 2008 food-and-oil crisis on the continent, the debate on the role of agricultural trade on Africa‟s food security and economic development has gained recently a renewed attention. Many researchers (Adegbola and Singbo, 2005; Ekpodilè and Honfoga, 2015) and development professionals emphasized the need for more processing of locally-produced raw agricultural products to capture higher added-value, to increase competitiveness and to reduce food insecurity and poverty. Yucheng et al (2015) diagnosed the relationship between advertising density, market share and sales profit in the dairy industry in China, and found positive or negative correlations depending on the periods when data on strategy variables (advertising density, market share) were paired with the outcome variable (sales profit)
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