Purpose

The study selected five small-scale food operations as visual stimuli and eye-tracking experiment was conducted with 36 female participants in a laboratory setting. Heat maps were used to visualize viewers' visual attention on the storefronts. The eye-movement data were analyzed using one-way repeated ANOVA to identify a significant difference between stimuli in terms of average fixation duration, fixation counts and revisits. An independent t-test was also used to examine statistical difference among text and image in menu board. The significance cut-off of p-value was set to <0.05.

Design/methodology/approach

The exteriors of food-service establishments are major business representation. However, few studies have been conducted to examine customers' visual processing toward small-scale restaurants. The present study accordingly aims to discover customers' different levels of attention to the frontage in food stands through eye tracking, which would be practical for future owners to plan their exterior shop design.

Findings

The findings can be summarized as follows: First, upper board shows the highest level of attention, suggesting an optimal location of menu board for grasping customers' attention. Second, customers also gaze the inside of a store along with the food on display, which are related with food hygiene and the perception. Third, textual information on menu boards tends to attract more visual attention than those of images. Overall, the current study indicates various customers' attention toward the location of menu boards as well as the type of visual information on menu board.

Originality/value

The results of this study make a new insight into customers' viewing behavior toward exteriors of food-service establishments. This study is one of the first attempts to explore how customers distribute visual attention to the exterior images of food stand by using eye-tracking technology. The findings of this research thus enrich the food-service literature and offer meaningful discoveries on customers' visual behaviors. For example, this study suggests that customers tend to be attracted to textual information on menu boards rather than graphical ones.

中文翻译：

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通过眼动追踪研究顾客对食品中视觉信息的感知

目的

该研究选择了五个小规模的食品操作作为视觉刺激，并在实验室环境中对 36 名女性参与者进行了眼球追踪实验。热图用于可视化观众对店面的视觉注意力。使用单向重复方差分析来分析眼动数据，以确定刺激之间在平均注视持续时间、注视计数和重访方面的显着差异。还使用独立t检验来检查菜单板中文本和图像之间的统计差异。p值的显着性截止值设置为 <0.05。

设计/方法/方法

餐饮服务机构的外观是主要的商业代表。然而，很少有研究调查顾客对小规模餐厅的视觉处理。因此，本研究旨在通过眼动追踪发现顾客对食品摊位正面的不同关注程度，这对于未来的业主规划他们的外部商店设计是可行的。

发现

研究结果可概括如下：首先，上板显示出最高的关注度，表明菜单板的最佳位置以吸引客户的注意力。其次，顾客也会同时注视店内和陈列的食品，这与食品卫生和感知有关。第三，菜单板上的文字信息往往比图像更能吸引视觉注意力。总体而言，目前的研究表明，不同客户对菜单板的位置以及菜单板上的视觉信息类型的关注。

原创性/价值

这项研究的结果对顾客对餐饮服务机构外部的观看行为提供了新的见解。这项研究是首次尝试使用眼动追踪技术探索顾客如何将视觉注意力分散到食品摊位的外部图像上。因此，这项研究的结果丰富了餐饮服务文献，并为客户的视觉行为提供了有意义的发现。例如，这项研究表明，客户往往会被菜单板上的文字信息所吸引，而不是图形信息。