The Influence of Food Quality Attributes on Customers Choice of Food Service Outlets in Ilorin, Nigeria

Abstract

With a plethora of studies that have confirmed that food quality is vital to customer patronage of food service outlet, attention is lacking on the aspect (attributes) of food quality and their influence on patronage. This quantitative study designed a research instrument through an exploration of relevant past studies and experts’ opinion and used the same in data collection. After an empirical validation of the questionnaire through a pilot study which resulted in a reliability value of 0.869, data were collected from 685 non-randomly selected customers from seven purposely selected food service establishments in the study area. Findings show that all food quality attributes validated and examined were exceptionally influential to customers’ patronage of food service outlet. Accordingly, the topmost food quality attributes and their mean scores are food tastes (x¯ = 4.66, food appearance (x¯ = 4.56, texture/mouth feel when eating (x¯ = 4.53, portion size/quantity (x¯ = 4.51 and the presence of certain ingredient(s) (x¯ = 4.51. of all customers’ demographic characteristics examined, only marital status was significantly influential to their perception. This study recommends that food production staff should be trained to be able to deliver all the food quality attributes herein consistently to realise consistent customer choice of a food service outlet and that similar studies should be repeated in major cities across Nigeria so that tailor-made outcomes are available for an individual situation if required.

Keywords: Food Quality, Food Service Outlets, Food Quality Attributes, Customer Patronage, Ilorin

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