• CRM연구
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.1-19
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• 2009

In an attempt to explore the consumption behaviors of customers regarding ethnic food restaurants the present study examined the effects of consumer characteristics, accessibility of ethnic food restaurants, product characteristics, and social factors on the customer behavior towards ethnic food restaurants, and further investigated the causal relationship between the customer behavior and his or her intent to reuse. A questionnaire survey was conducted approximately for a month with domestic consumers who had tried foreign cuisines. A total of 230 questionnaires were distributed and 215 questionnaires were collected, of which 210 were used in the final analysis excluding five due to inadequate responses. The finding of the study were as follows. First, of the consumers' lifestyles category the gourmet oriented did not yield significant effect on subjective norm or other consumption behavior, whereas the trend oriented had noticeable influence on both factors. Second, while consumers' diversity-seeking characteristic did not affect subjective norm, it affected consumption behavior of ethic food restaurants. The results seem to indicate that the diversity-seeking characteristic is more to one's individual attributes, rather than being influenced by others. Third, ethnic food restaurant's consumption accessibilities strongly influenced the subjective norm, suggesting that in using the ethnic food restaurants, the more convenient the accessibility is, the higher the possibility of use from influenced reference group. However, when consumers previously had not been exposed to ethnic cuisines, convenient accessibility was not able to overcome the barriers of consumer reluctance, nor directly shape positive behaviors. Fourth, while national uniqueness of ethnic food did not affect subjective norm, the uniqueness did have positive impact on consumption behavior of foreign ethnic food restaurants. Fifth, consumer's subjective norm positively influenced both consumption behavior of ethnic food restaurants and their intent for future use. Lastly, consumption behavior toward foreign ethnic food restaurants positively influenced consumer's intent for future use, indicating that it would be most imperative and effective to first help reinforce positive attitude in oder to encourage a more use of ethnic food restaurants.