PRIORITIES OF CONSUMERS FOR RESTAURANT PREFERENCES: A CONJOINT ANALYSIS STUDY ON GENERATION Z

Eating out is more essential than ever before in social life. Consumers are considering food as well as the other factors when preferring restaurants. In this particular study, Conjoint Analysis was used to determine the restaurant preferences of Generation Z who are supposed to be the largest consumer group of the future. A pre-test was addressed to 21 participants about 10 restaurant evaluation factors of the Taband scale (Sezgin, 2022), and the first three factors that were ranked the most importance were selected for the research. Finally, the first three factors that emerged as price/quality/location, food and atmosphere including 12 variables were presented to 172 Generation Z participants with 25 experimental design cards. The data obtained were evaluated with the Conjoint Analysis method and the benefit coefficients related to the factors were defined comparatively between the groups. According to the results of the study, although there are differences in the second and third preferences and rates of the groups, the atmosphere factor has always emerged as the first preference of the Generation Z.