Impact of location-based social network applications on consumer cafes and restaurants preferences: An application in Trabzon

In recent years, with technology development, location-based social network applications have become an important part of people's lives. Users use those applications (e.g. TripAdvisor, Foursquare and Google Maps, etc.) actively to explore new places, new travel destinations, and so on. In the food and beverage sector, such applications allow users to look for new places along with ratings and reviews of those places. The main objective of this study is to specify factors that impact customer preferences of cafés and restaurants. Regarding this objective, in the preliminary study of this research, cafés, and restaurants in Trabzon city have the highest ratings and number of consumer reviews in TripAdvisor, Foursquare, and Google Maps were selected. Then content analysis has been performed on consumer reviews about selected places by the NVivo program. In the field study, 411 questionnaires were conducted both by face-to-face and online method among consumers who came to several selected cafés and restaurants. Descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and multiple linear regression analysis were applied by the SPSS program. In this study, services, food qualities and cleanliness, image, location, and convenience were found to have significant impacts on consumer preferences of cafés and restaurants. Atmosphere, ambiance, prices, and menu varieties did not show any impact on consumer preferences of cafés and restaurants.