Local cuisine image dimensions and its impact on foreign tourist’s perceived food contentment in Delhi

ABSTRACT

This study intends to determine the dimensions of local cuisine image by classifying the vital cuisine traits that are used by foreign tourists for their local food assessment; and inspect any variances in the perceived local cuisine image of Eastern and Western tourists (based on their country’s geographical position from India). It applied multivariate and descriptive statistics for analysing the data of 419 foreign tourists in Delhi. 24 factor items were used to measure the tourist’s perceived image of local cuisine which were subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis in order to reduce them into a smaller set of underlying constructs. Results indicated that all the foreign tourists were very much satisfied with their overall food experiences in Delhi. Further, they also positively evaluated four perceptual/cognitive dimensions of local cuisine, i.e. Food authenticity and culture; Emotional food image; Freshness & taste; and Nutritional value & digestibility. The dimension of Price & quality of food was found to be worst perceived amongst the foreign tourists. Overall, this study provided an improved knowledge about creating a destination cuisine image from the foreign tourists’ outlook, and how this notion can be used to efficiently market and envisage the exclusivity of a destination like India.

KEYWORDS:

• Local food
• gastronomy
• cuisine image
• India
• food authenticity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vikas Gupta

Vikas Gupta is an alumnus of Amity University, Uttar Pradesh, India and holds a Ph.D. in Hospitality. He has rich and extensive experience of teaching for more than 13 years in both India and abroad with renowned names such as Café Coffee Day, Fiji National University, Amity University and Various Central and State IHM’s in India. He is presently working with Amity University, Noida, U.P as an Assistant Professor in the fields of Hospitality. He is widely published in National and International Journals including Emerald SCOPUS indexed journals such as International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, British Food Journal, Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, Tourism Review, Worldwide hospitality and Tourism themes, Journal of Wine research and International Journal of Tourism Cities.

Hiran Roy

Hiran Roy is a Lecturer of International School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Vancouver, Canada. He holds a PhD in Management from University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Prior to joining to academia he worked extensively (over 26 years) with hospitality business industry as an Executive Chef in different continents. Hiran is also a recipient of a New Zealand Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan Award. His research interests include sustainable local food systems, local food marketing, city branding, and sustainability. Hiran's work has been published in a variety of leading academic journals including Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, Journal of Foodservice Business Research, and International Journal of Tourism Cities.

Pornpisanu Promsivapallop

Pornpisanu Promsivapallop has Ph.D. in Hospitality Management and is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism, Prince of Songkla University, Phuket Campus. His research interests include gastronomy tourism and travel risk perceptions.