مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد مصرف کنندگان جوان در رستوران فست فود – امرالد 2018

Restaurant meals, once an occasional family treat, now represent a significant amount of the daily nutrients children consume. The amount of food eaten by families, away from home, has been increasing for over 40 years (USDA, 2016). Food-at-Home refers to total grocery expenditures for food prepared by the consumer in their home, while Food-Away- from-Home (FAFH) includes all meals at fast food and full service restaurants, take-out, delivery, concession stands, buffets, cafeterias, and vending machines (USDL, 2015). In American households, 50% of the total food budget goes to FAFH (USDA, 2016), and over one third of American children consume fast food on any given day (Castro et al., 2016). This growing trend is not unique to US households. In Canadian households, 29% of the total food budget is spent on FAFH (Statistics Canada, 2015), in the United Kingdom it is 28% of the total food budget (Office for National Statistics, 2016) and in Australia, FAFH is 27% of the total food budget (Australia Bureau of Statistics, 2006). This trend, driven by convenience and the growing array of FAFH options, is unlikely to reverse itself in the near future. The current generation of young consumers is growing up in a culture of frequent family dining moments outside of the home. It is important to understand what these family dining experiences entail and how they may shape current food dining behaviours, in order to address the evolving needs of young consumers. Using an ethnographic approach, allows for the discovery of patterns in human behaviour in a real-life environment. This study contributes to the literature about family consumer behavior and meal time interactions with an ethnographic study that specifically explores these behaviours inside of a fast food restaurant. Using unobtrusive direct observation, structured observational data was recorded on the behaviours of naturally occurring groups of families with at least one child ≥2 to ≤12 years old, dining in fast food restaurants in Toronto, Canada. Emergent themes were grouped into three main categories: technology use, toys, and family behaviours.