A decision support model for the assesment of consumer preferences: A case study on coffee house companies

Coffee beans, the seeds of berries from the Coffea plant, are roasted to prepare a brewed drink, namely coffee. This plant spread all over the world from tropical Africa and now it is cultivated in several countries, especially in the equatorial regions. After fully-grown, coffee berries are picked, processed, and dried. Then, their seeds are roasted. Depending on the desired flavor, this roasting is up to different degrees. According to the legend, the goat herder Kaldi living at the Ethiopian plateau noticed that his goats did not tired and sleep all night after eating coffee beans. He, inquired wise people about this secret of beans. Wise people threw the beans to fire and then a fascinating smell was spread out the room. Hence, Kaldi can be accepted as the first person discovered the coffee beans. Coffee cultivation and trade began on the Arabian Peninsula and spread in Persia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey by the 16th century. In addition, European people travelled to Near East and coffee reached Europe as a popular drinking. Turkish people met coffee in 1555. They discovered a new method of drinking coffee: the beans were being roasted over a fire and then slowly cooked with water on the ashes of a charcoal fire. Accordingly, Turkish coffee became popular and regarded as a vital part of Turkish traditional cuisine. Also, it is interesting that coffee began to replace the common breakfast drink beverages of the time after people, who drunk a cup of coffee, felt energized and improved the quality of life. For these reasons, coffee shops were quickly becoming centers of social activity and communication in Europe. It was proved that in the United Kingdom, more than 300 shops coffee houses were establidhed in London in 1750s due to the interst of celebrities. On the other side, coffee cultivation in the outside of Arabia become one of the biggest competition and coffee trees were produced worldwide. The most valuable export crops were coffee in the late 1800s. As well as making the coffee bean trade, the evidence of research has shown that moderate coffee consumption (or 3-5 cups daily) have many positive effects on human body such as prevented liver disease, improved memory and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Over the last 20 years, the habits, the priorities, and the diet of consumers have changed dramatically because of the modern life. Accordingly, these changes affected the preferences of consumers at food and beverage industry. Today, coffee is a new market for both national and international brands. Different types of coffee, e.g. instant coffee, have entered in Turkish daily life. Afterwards, international big coffee house companies launched in the market: Gloria Jeans in 1999, Starbucks in 2003, Tchibo in 2006, and Caffé Nero in 2007. In the meantime, a local brand, Kahve Dunyasi, entered into the market in 2004. Nowadays there are many local and global coffee house companies at the market. They have different marketing strategies: take-out existence; traditional tasting; offering beverages, snacks, and desserts; using renewable materials and energy. Understanding the economic and social factors as well as brand related issues related with these effects will sustain a competitive advantage for the brands in the industry. Therefore coffee house companies should understand the preferences of consumers as well. Assessment of preferences necessitates a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) approach as there are several, conflicting, weighted, and incommensurable factors affecting consumer preferences. In this study, the assessment of consumer preferences for coffee house companies in Turkey are taken into consideration. As the decision model can be represented as a hierarchy, to analyze it, Analytic Hierarchy Process, one of the most widely used multi-criteria decision method, is utilized. To determine the most appropriate coffee house company for the customers, first, evaluation criteria affecting customer preferences are identified based on a detailed literature review and expert opinions. The authors come up with a set of main criteria that includes financial aspects, product specifications, service characteristics, coffee shop characteristics, and brand image. The criteria of the financial aspects are determined as price affordability, availability of customer loyalty programs, and existence of sales promotion. Product variety, having its own products, deliciousness, freshness, and healthiness of the products, and finally the presentation of the products are the criteria that are considered as the product specifications. The attitude of employees toward customers, the type of service (i.e. self-service, service at a single point, specialized service), speed and accuracy of the service, and offering extra food or beverages without charging are the criteria related to the service characteristics. Among the coffee shop characteristics, there exist cleanliness, coffee shop design, relaxing and pleasant music, suitable illumination, beautiful and charming fragrance. Finally, as brand image criteria, brand awareness, fair trade, eco-friendly image, and being desirable among customers are taken into account. In accordance with iterative steps of AHP, after constructing the hierarchy, the authors pose the customers of coffee house companies pairwise comparison questions to assess the relative priorities of evaluation criteria as well as coffee house companies. Quota sampling is used and graduate students are taken as the target group of the survey. The questionnaire forms were sent to 130 students. 90 of them participated the survey and filled the forms completely. 30 % of the respondents were interviewed on the phone, 40% of the respondents met me in a a coffee shop and 10 % of respondents were communicated via Skype to explain every pairwise questions, criteria and sub-criteria. In addition, 20% of respondents answered questions alone because we did not find a time to meet and explain the questions. When the answers were considered in terms of consistency, 80 respondents were considered eligible to analyze the answer. While 35 of these 80 people are female, the rest is male. All participants are undergraduate and graduate students aged from 20 to 27. According to the results, the product specifications is found as the most important main criterion. Besides, the most preferred criterion for the participants of the survey is revealed as healthiness of the products (12.92%), followed by the attitude of employees toward customers (12.34%). On the other hand, the least preferred criterion for the participants is brand image (7.44%). Among alternatives, the most preferred coffee house is found as Caffé Nero (29.57%), followed by Starbucks (28.30%). Also, female and male respondents' answers were analyzed separately. The most important criterion for both gender is found as product specification (41.54 % for female; 26,65% for male). Although the most preferred sub criterion for female participants of the survey is revealed as healthiness of the products (16.09 %), followed by the attitude of employees toward customers (13.77 %); the most preferred sub criterion for male participants of the survey is price affordability (14,85 %), followed by freshness, and healthiness of the products (12.75 %). Also, the least preferred sub criterion for both gender is brand image (3.7 % for female; 12.98 % for male). Among alternatives, the most preferred coffee house is found as Caffè Nero (31%) and Starbucks (28%) by female participants and Starbucks (27.37 %) and Caffè Nero (27.17 %) by male participants. The least preferred coffee house for both gender is Tchibo (19 % for female; 21% for male) To explore how sensitive the preferences for coffee houses are to changes in the values of criteria and sub-criteria importance, we conducted sensitivity analysis was conducted. If we increase the product specification percentage from its original weight to 50.22%, ranking of coffee shop chains will change from Caffè Nero to Starbucks. When the product variety ratio is rose from 3.85 % to 10.36 %, the most preferred coffee house is changed as Starbucks, followed by Caffè Nero. Similarly, the weight of having its own products, healthiness of the products and relaxing and pleasant music is increased, the most preferred coffee shop chains is Starbucks. On the other hand, Tchibo is the most preferred coffee house provided that fair trade percentage is increased to 71.51%. If presentation of the products is increased from 2.45% to 73.75%, the most preferred coffee shop chain is Kahve Dünyası, followed by Caffè Nero. Sensitivity analysis could be provided that every chain tend to strenghten their weakness and improve own marketing strategies. The survey results can be generalized by expanding the participant group and interacting with other customer groups of the coffee house companies. Although criteria and sub criteria were determined after literature review, interview with coffee shop managers and coffee addicted people; new criteria and alternatives would be changed due to the changing in the customer expectations and conditions of life standards. If people, who live or work in different cities, answered the same survey or group of people is changed, results could be changed and compared with the current results to explain the different cultures and expectations. Provided that the prevalence of a coffee chain in the survey is taken into account in order to analyze results, the prevalence could be seen a profound impanct upon people's choices.