Listening to Customer Kansei for Restaurant Location Evaluation

Abstract

Location plays a major role in outdoor atmospherics, which can provide an opportunity for the restaurant owner to create a strong first impression on consumers. This study investigated customer perspectives regarding the placement of cafés by employing a Kansei engineering–based approach. In this approach, the location-related features that are of concern to customers and Kansei words that are used by customers to express their impressions regarding a café’s outdoor atmospherics were identified through a customer survey and feature fatigue analysis. The associations between the location-related features and café impressions and their effects on customers’ visiting intention were also examined based on the stimulus–organism–response model. This approach achieved a customer Kansei–oriented location evaluation for cafés. The findings provide café proprietors a preliminary guideline for using location-related outdoor atmospherics as a strategy to produce the desired customer Kansei and reactions.