Wang Shu. Studying behavior of consumers of catering services of Chinese enterprises (case of Tianjin)

The article highlights the problems of the official restaurant market in the People’s Republic of China. With the high growth rates of the catering market in China (mainly in the large cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Baoding, Linyi, Guangzhou), there is a decrease in demand for such services in the city of Tianjin. The rating of the popularity of restaurants in Tianjin in February 2022 is given. The problems that affect the decline in demand for catering services in the city are listed, experts’ studies are analyzed. The behavior of consumers of Chinese catering services is constantly evolving, it is influenced by a large number of factors controlled and not controlled by enterprises. The results of studying the behavior of the Chinese consumers make the basis for taking measures to influence the behavior, which will ensure the achievement of the intended goals at the lowest cost. The presented methodological approach to developing the proposals for managing the behavior of consumers of Chinese catering services includes the research process, structure of the questionnaire and the technology of processing the survey results in a static package. The research process includes four stages, the structure of the questionnaire presents questions that can describe three areas of the research: the preferred restaurants, factors influencing the consumer behavior at each stage of the purchasing decision, a portrait of respondents. The proposed technology of processing the survey results in statistical package includes descriptive (frequency) analysis and testing the hypotheses on the relationship between multiple and univariant variables by using Pearson’s chi-squared analysis. Verification of the proposed methodological approach was carried out on the basis of a survey of residents of Tianjin, China. The obtained results of testing the hypotheses confirm that the study should be conducted among the Chinese consumers of catering services in different cities of the PRC. The conclusions and study results are of practical interest for planning measures to influence the behavior of consumers of services of specific catering enterprises of the city.