Cultural Shift towards Oriental Dishes in the UK
In recent years, the Chinese Food Culture has been actively adopted in the UK, and consumers have been shifting towards oriental dishes, offered with varying Asian cultures. This cultural shift has been accompanied by the increasing North Asian communities living in the UK, who celebrate their culture through food and festivity (Ramanathan and Ramanathan, 2016). The Chinese food industry has accepted this increasing fame and devised marketing methods to increase through British culture and introduce inclusivity and ethical embrace. Astute cultural awareness from customers is required that enables the restaurants to attract more customers, and ethnic Chinese restaurants in the UK must stay true to the ethnic principality (Moufakkir, 2019). For effective customer management, consumer cultural awareness of ethnic minorities is essential for allocating resources to enrich the customer experience with individual and specified consumer preferences. Through research analysis by Lin and Fu (2017), it is inferred that cultural literacy and consumer preference is essential for higher outreach and inclusivity within marketing practices.
An understanding of ethnic culture is deemed significant as with the rise of globalisation, physical boundaries have become diminutive. More companies and SMEs invest in ethical marketing and inclusive approach to attract a wider customer base (Zhang et al., 2020). Culture is defined through various researches as the cumulative comprehension of customer attitudes, beliefs and values, spatial and geographical relations (Arvizu and Saravia-Shore, 2017). The Chinese culture in Britain has observed modernisation, but the food industry has stayed in line with food provisions’ authenticity. The concept of Chinatowns within the UK has seeped through the whole of the UK, and more Chinese ethnic restaurants have been investing in promoting the vibrant culture.
The main aim of this research is “to assess the cultural awareness of consumers of the Chinese restaurants in the UK”, and the research has the following objectives:
- To scrutinise the significance of cultural awareness of the consumers in affecting their purchasing decision
- To investigate the influence of cultural awareness on the consumer behaviour in the Chinese buffet restaurants
- To examine the proliferation trends of Chines Buffet restaurants in the UK.
- To highlight the challenges and issues faced by the Chinese buffet industry and provide suitable recommendations for mitigating these issues
The in-restaurant consumption culture has gained significant attention lately as it is reported that 95% of British adults prefer to eat at a restaurant than a pub and 29% of the consumers visit a restaurant at least a month (Yen et al., 2018). Within Oriental cuisines, Chinese food has the most consumer base, as 94% of the Chinese food consumers found the restaurant offerings great and recommend it (Liu et al., 2020). The high popularity of Chinese food shows a wide expanse of consumers to be explored, while Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisines also have a significant fan base in the UK. With the proliferation of Oriental food culture, Chinese food has been the flag-bearer in the Oriental food revival (Min and Han, 2017). London welcomes people and business from every culture, and Oriental foods have also proven their rising status in the UK. The rise in the ethnic restaurants is pinned through the authentic Chinese flavours and food safety that allows the consumers to replicate the gratitude they receive from the restaurant owners. The diverse colour palette, aroma and varying texture of ingredients attract the consumers.
For cultural appropriation in the ethnic food industry, Kagan et al. (2019) note that a pragmatic approach must be undertaken, which follows the ideology-action-structure complexes to develop a robust understanding of the Oriental culture, as customers yearn for an assisting ambience within the authenticity of taste. With the accentuated cultural concern for the ethnic food restaurants, big and small business ventures aim to create a marketing strategy that derives its values with the consumer values and substantiates itself through cultural literacy and patriotism (Farrer and Wang, 2020). The prime objective for restaurants operating in a foreign market is to work with the adage of “think globally and act locally”, and work with the core Oriental values. The Etles Uyghur Restaurant in Walthamstow is an example of this authenticity, as it serves Halal Turkish-Chinese cultural food with hand-made Leghmen noodles and offers a menu that covers the various cultural aspects of the Uyghur Chinese populace (Lilius and Hewidy, 2019). With the added emphasis on diversity and ethnic representation in the UK, the display of ethnicity has been marked through foods, symbols, signs, and an overall restaurant culture (Zhu, and Wei, 2016).
Marketing Methods for Ethnic Chinese Restaurants
Chinese foods emphasise cultural history, as with evoking colours and tastes, the restaurants offer foods inspired from conceptual Five Elements and Yin-Yang, Chinese medicine, Confucianism, and national characters (Chen et al., 2019). Chines food is known to offer a nutritious offering to consumers through healthy and safe food preparation, which is analogous to the impulsive consumption of fast foods. Against fast food, Chinese food is considered a healthier option and British consumers have opted towards such options. The monolithic cuisine within the UK has been abolished with the wide proliferation of China’s gastronomic food diversification (Li, 2019). Although the valuation of originality in the representation of Chinese culture is significant for Chinese restaurants, consumer data by Wang et al. (2017) shows that higher diversity and a fusion of flavours is appreciated through reciprocated demand and good customer retention. With the added responsibility of experimentation, Chinese eateries have used campaigning methods, which encourage modern and quick eating for young consumers (Crick et al., 2016).
Despite higher demands and customer retentions, the ethnic restaurants face several problems for successful and unhindered operation. The new immigration rules in the country have restricted authentic Chinese chefs to practise their culinary skills, and this has reduced the quality of ethnic dishes, as British-Chinese restaurants have offered products with a lower skill offering (Song et al., 2019). Local training institutions have been set up in London, including Tianjin School of Cuisine and Crawley College, but still, the restaurants have not employed Chinese chefs to overcome the skill barrier in the food industry (Crick et al., 2016). It has been reported that the Chinatown, which offered a wide range of ethnic Chinese foods, have been countered with the rise of street food outlets all over the country. The rise in local street foods has reduced the footprint of Cantonese consumption in the UK. The Chinese restaurants have been affected by the rapid decline of UK restaurants, reported to have declined at a rate of 7.3% (Thorpe and Yeh, 2018). With the increasing xenophobia in the UK about Chinese status and health concerns reporting, many researchers argue that consumers have raised concerns about the food safety and practice in the Chinese restaurants (Gao and Sai, 2020). Chinese ethnic restaurants are responsible for correcting the image through marketing practices that involve safe and healthy eating. Despite the increasing constraints, it is noted that Chinese food has been a top priority for consumers who order food online (Mok and Platt, 2020); however, many ethnic restaurants refrain from delivering online by overlooking the business prospects of online venture and E-commerce, and some of the restaurateurs argue that due to smaller businesses and takeaway services operating in the UK, it becomes economically inefficient for providing online services (Song et al., 2019). Through the successful application of E-commerce systems, the smaller Chinese restaurateurs can provide their Oriental offerings to demanding consumers. In the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, ethnic restaurants can provide extensive consumption options (Gao and Sai, 2020). Chinese ethnic restaurants have played an undeniable role in the Chinese food economy, and with the cultural diversification, the traditional restaurants have been a popular source of income for immigrant families.
Cultural Literacy and Consumer Preferences
The evaluation of the past studies has provided contradictory opinions regarding the awareness of the consumers in the United Kingdom regarding Chinese Buffet restaurants, and its influence on the consumer behaviour. Various studies have presented an argument that cultural awareness does not have any influence on the consumer behaviour in the restaurant sector. On the other contrary, past authors have also suggested that cultural awareness affects the purchase behaviour of the consumers. However, very few studies have been conducted that has examined the situation of the growth of the foreign cuisines for different based on their exposure and increase in awareness of the culture. Therefore, the current study aims to address this gap in the research through evaluation of causal relationship between cultural awareness and consumer behaviour among the UK consumers in the Chinese Buffet restaurants.
The research has proposed the use of pragmatism as the philosophical assumption for gathering evidence and examine the results (Parvaiz et al., 2016). Pragmatism selects methods and tools based on the needs of each of the research questions. In this case, the research focuses on examining the causal relationship between cultural awareness and consumer behaviour, which will require a primary quantitative data collection method. On the contrary, the proliferation trends of the Chinese buffet restaurants in the United Kingdom will be examined through secondary data collection of sources. Therefore, pragmatism facilitates in choosing both subjective and objective perspective, and a mixed method analysis (Mason, Augustyn & Seakhoa-King, 2022). Pragmatism considers possibilities of multiple realities so numerous methods can be used to solve the same problem.
The research will choose a mixed method strategy for gathering evidence for the proposed study. It will consist of a secondary qualitative analysis and a primary quantitative analysis. The quantitative analysis will include a questionnaire consisting of close ended questions (Oliva, 2019). These questions will be developed using a 5-point Likert scale which can effectively examine the cause-and-effect relationship between cultural awareness and consumer behaviour in Chinese buffet restaurant. On the contrary, the secondary qualitative analysis will evaluate past researches on the topic that includes peer reviewed journals, articles and web articles. It can facilitate in developing themes based on the pattern within the data set and identify the trends in the Chinese buffet industry.
For the secondary analysis of the data used in this research, the sources used are checked for reliability through the CASP checklist. The major sources used for this study will include Academia, Google Scholar, and Bloomsbury Food Library. The rationale for using these resources is that these directories have a wider range of articles that enable the author to take relevant decisions in this project. The research questions will be answered from the secondary analysis of collected data, and for decisive interpretation, a thematic analysis will be used. The sources used will be properly cited, and a scientific interpretation will be kept intact. The thematic assessment answers the research questions by enabling the user to refine their search and interpretation with specific objectives. On the other hand, in case of the primary quantitative data collected, the study will develop a questionnaire on Google form and will be sent to different consumers in the United Kingdom through social media handles. The survey results will be stored in an excel file that will kept safe till the purpose of the research is completed. The overall survey will take around 10 minutes to complete and participation in the survey will be voluntary. The questions will be segregated in two sections: Demographic questions and questions on cultural awareness, and consumer behaviour. The questionnaire will consist of 10 questions which will be developed using nominal, ordinal and ratio scale (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018). In terms of sampling, the research will collect data from consumers in the United Kingdom through social media, where the survey will be sent to 200 respondents. The research will use simple random sampling to choose respondents for the survey where randomisation will be used to avoid bias in the research.
Rise in Popularity of Oriental Cuisines
A thematic analysis of the secondary data will be performed that will aid in the reinforcement of the scope of this project. For the effective results, the sources CASP score will be checked before usage, and only relevant results will be included in the research. Harvard referencing system will be used to properly cite and reference the sources, and plagiarism or collusion of any form will not be exercised in this research project. Care will be taken while properly referencing the original author, and most relevant results will be considered during the research to substantiate the claims made in this research project. To extract the relevant data, several research keywords will be used, including “Chinese Restaurant”, ”Food Industry”, ”Consumer”, “Cultural awareness”. For the search’s effectiveness, conjunctions and other Boolean operators like “OR” and “AND” will also be used to widen the research horizon and calibrate the sources better. Only relevant sources will be used for this study’s scope, and any irrelevant results will be discarded. The inclusion-exclusion criteria enable the researcher to evade any irrelevant research and saves valuable time. The research will only use publications, and online articles published in English language and publications from other languages will be discarded. The exclusion of non-English articles is done to filter out the possibility of any misinterpretation due to translation errors. The data sources, which were published not more than five years before the publication of this project, will be used to extract the most relevant results for this study.
On the contrary, the quantitative data will be analysed using inferential statistics where SPSS will be used as the statistical tool for analysis. Initially, the data collected will be cleaned by checking for reliability and validity using the Cronbach’s alpha test. It will assist in validating questionnaire as it has not been used in previous researches. The reliability will be examined using the Cronbach’s alpha test whereas exploratory factor analysis will be used to check the validity of the data set (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018). Once the validity and reliability of the data set is improved, a descriptive statistics will be performed to examine the normality of the data set. A Pearson’s correlation analysis will be used to examine the relationship between the variables. On the other hand, a regression analysis will be conducted to develop a model that examines the causal relationship between cultural awareness and consumer behaviour (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018).
An author needs to consider the ethical considerations as this knowledge enables the author to take studious and professional decisions in their learning career. For this research project, the data will be used from credible sources, as mentioned in the section before, and the original scope of the sources used will be retained. No collusion of meaning will be performed, and through Harvard referencing style, all the publications, their respective publishing organisations and this research will add to the existing knowledge provided through secondary sources. The research will follow the data protection act of 1998 so the anonymity and privacy of the participants will be protected. To maintain the confidentiality of the participants, the participants will be provided unique identification code for protecting their identity (Barrow, Brannan & Khandhar, 2021). Moreover, a consent form will be developed so that the participation in the research will be voluntary. The respondents will be provided the option to participate and they can leave the study at any point in time. The respondents will not be compensated for participating in the research. The research will also avoid use of abusive language which may be offensive to the respondents.
Challenges Faced by Ethnic Restaurants in the UK
The research explores a wide variety of topics, from the proliferation of Oriental food in the UK to the country’s changing consumer culture awareness. The research uses both secondary and primary data analysis to achieve the research objectives. However, the research is only focused on the consumers in the United Kingdom, and Cultural awareness is being evaluate in respect to only Chinese culture. Moreover, the sample size for the current research will be small so the sampling error is expected to be large, which may affect the quality of the results.
The research project aims to develop comprehensive learning of the consumer culture awareness in a Chinese Buffet Restaurant and aims to understand the growing Oriental food industry in the UK. Chinese culture is diverse, and this diversity is exhibited in various foods offered in the buffet restaurants in the UK. Chinese street food and delicacies have proliferated vastly in the UK in recent years and continue to do so with the public’s accentuated consumption. The consumer culture awareness in Chinese restaurants is analysed in this research and aims to critically assess the key factors that create increased Chinese foods demand. It examines the relationship between the cultural awareness and its impact on the consumer behaviour using a statistical model which can provide a generalised idea of the way consumer behaviour changes based on the increase in cultural awareness of the consumers.
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