The Relationship Between Perceived Health, Health Attitudes, and Healthy Offerings for Seniors at a Family Restaurant

Abstract

Personal health can influence all aspects of customer behavior and this influence is more manifest within the senior market segment. Health issues also greatly impact the restaurant industry. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate how health status and health attitude influence family restaurant selection criteria. In order to measure selfrated health status and health attitude for seniors, the Health Perceptions Questionnaire(HPQ) and the Perceived Health competence Scale (PHCS) were used. Most senior participants reported that health-related family restaurant selection criteria and food price were important when they select a family restaurant. Also, while the HPQ and the PHCS were not correlated with food price in the family restaurant industry, the overall results of this study revealed that health status and health attitude for seniors were positively correlated with health-related family restaurant selection criteria. This reflects that offering healthy meals on menus is more important for senior customers with a high level of health condition or health attitude than other senior customers. The results also showed that healthy senior customers who have a positive health attitude are willing to pay more money for their healthy menu items. Therefore, in order to maximize their profits, managers and operators of family restaurants need to keep creating healthy items for their menus and promote those items to the segment of the senior market which has a high level of health condition or health attitude.