The purpose of this study was to investigate Chinese customers' perceptions of Korean foods and their satisfaction toward Korean cuisine restaurants. The subjects of this study were 202 Chinese individuals who visited Korean cuisine restaurants in Shanghai, China. The subjects viewed Korean foods as favorite foods and perceived them as fresh and seasonal, and mostly composed of cereals and vegetables however they did not view Korean cuisine as good for health. As compared to customers visiting a Korean restaurant for the first time, those who had visited Korean restaurants previously agreed more strongly with the following items: 'Korean food has a beautiful color', 'Korean food is familiar', 'Korean food smells good', 'Korean food is healthy', 'Korean food is nutritious', and 'Korean food is salty and spicy'. In addition, as compared to occasional visitors, frequent visitors of Korean cuisine restaurants more strongly agreed with the followings: 'Korean food has a beautiful color', 'Korean food is expensive', 'Korean food is healthy', 'Korean food is nutritious', 'Korean food is salty and spicy', and 'Korean food includes many fermented foods'. The subjects considered 'appearance of menu', 'variety of menu', 'nutrition of menu', and 'Chinese characters for menu and ingredients' as the most important attributes when choosing Korean cuisine restaurants. The frequent customers of Korean cuisine restaurants considered 'kind service', 'employee knowledge of Korean foods', 'operation hours of restaurant', and 'cleanliness of restaurant' as the most important restaurant attributes. In addition, the frequent customers of Korean cuisine restaurants were more satisfied than the occasional customers with the followings: 'nutritional quality of menu', 'quick service', 'cleanliness of restaurant', 'appearance and signboard of restaurant', and 'image of restaurant'. The implications of the data are discussed.
The purpose of this research was to investigate consumers' awareness and perception of the noble family food to popularize it. A total of 1,100 subjects lived in Seoul area participated in Web-based survey. Thirty eight percents of the participants were not even aware that there exists the noble family food and overall 63% of the participants merely have the idea of what the noble family food is. The impressions of the noble family food varied widely. Some of them were positive as the noble family food seems good for health and some were negative as it is not easy to cook. The results showed that many people are not interested in noble family food, however, there was a high behavioral intention to have it in their future meal plan. Participants responded that noble family food had not fully developed yet (mean=4.08), but it had potential to be world-wide excellent (mean=3.95). There was significantly high scored response that the noble family food should contain sanitary cooking process to popularize it (mean=4.16). Also participants addressed that it was necessary to use public relations through mass media (mean=4.02), and it required appropriate educational approach to the noble family food (mean=4.02). In addition, people perceived that traditional custom and the noble family foods were jointly connected by cultural events. On the other hand, there were low scored responses on developing of noble family food as a processed food to be generally accessible in daily life. In conclusion, the importance of public relations should be emphasized to popularize the noble family food. Also, increasing the number of places that sell noble family food would help to popularize it.