Exploring heterogeneous differences between Chinese and Western customer preferences for restaurant attributes from online reviews

Abstract

Consumer behavior varies across different countries due to their distinct cultural backgrounds. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of this influence can greatly assist restaurant managers in achieving higher business performance. However, academic inquiry into cross-cultural differences in customer preferences for specific restaurant attributes, such as décor, food variety, and reservation, remains scarce, warranting further scholarly investigation. This paper analyses customer preferences for specific restaurant attributes based on aspect-level sentiment analysis of online reviews from Chinese and Western customers. We adopt ordinary least squares regression to analyze the impact of country on customer attention to different restaurant attributes and carry out quantile regression on customer satisfaction to determine the satisfaction variance in different service performance level. The results show that Chinese and Western customers demonstrate divergent levels of attention and satisfaction towards specific attributes. Specifically, Chinese customers exhibit higher interest and satisfaction in non-functional attributes, such as View, while allocating less attention to value-oriented attributes like Portion size of dish. Moreover, the impact of country on customer satisfaction displays heterogeneity, exhibiting a U-shaped variation across performance levels. To elucidate these differences, we delve into unique cultural elements in China, such as Confucian values and face culture, within the framework of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Our work delves into the specific attribute-level preferences of Western and Chinese consumers, highlighting the heterogeneity of these preference differences at different performance levels. It underscores for managers the importance of considering consumer preference differences in conjunction with their own service performamce levels.