This paper seeks to answer two main questions: whether restaurants using a national brand to capture customers in fact use original national ingredients for producing food and, in cases where original ingredients are not used, what is the economic rationale behind this choice? Specifically, the study focuses on Japanese restaurants in three Southeast Asian countries, using a theoretical model and an empirical investigation based on interviews and survey data collected through field research. Considering restaurants, their suppliers, and their customers, we show how a dual asymmetric-information problem exists, between suppliers and restaurants and between restaurants and their customers. The results indicate that a first reason for buying non-original ingredients—important especially for cheaper restaurants—is a desire to reduce costs. That said, the use of non-original ingredients occurs among all types of Japanese restaurants in the three studied countries. It does not depend on the presence of a Japanese chef or owner, nor on the share of Japanese customers. By contrast it does significantly depend on the reliability of the wholesale channel, and the resultant difficulties that restaurants encounter when buying original ingredients.

本文试图回答两个主要问题：使用民族品牌来吸引顾客的餐厅是否实际上使用原产的国产食材来生产食品，以及在不使用原产食材的情况下，这种选择背后的经济原理是什么？具体而言，该研究侧重于三个东南亚国家的日本餐厅，使用理论模型和基于实地研究收集的访谈和调查数据的实证调查。考虑到餐馆、他们的供应商和他们的顾客，我们展示了在供应商和餐馆之间以及餐馆和他们的顾客之间如何存在双重不对称信息问题。结果表明，购买非原装食材的第一个原因——尤其是对于更便宜的餐馆来说很重要——是希望降低成本。也就是说，三个研究国家的所有类型的日本餐馆都使用非原创食材。它不取决于日本厨师或老板的存在，也不取决于日本客户的份额。相比之下，它确实很大程度上取决于批发渠道的可靠性，以及餐馆在购买原始食材时遇到的困难。