The sweet spot in the eye of the beholder? Exploring the sweet sour spots of Asian restaurant menus

ABSTRACT

Research on consumer reading (i.e., visual patterns) of Asian restaurant menus is new territory for academic research. This study is the first attempt to scrutinize consumers’ visual patterns toward restaurant menus varied by the combination of page orientation (landscape vs. portrait) and menu script (horizontal vs. vertical). Based on existing menus, four distinct versions were created and tested on 54 participants, while collecting eye-tracking measures. After applying the two-way ANOVA, we found that page orientation, menu scripts, and their interaction do not cause a significant impact on the average total fixation time of the participants. Contingency table tests and the one-way ANOVA reveal that a sweet spot and sour spot exist on three of the four menus studied.

对亚洲餐厅菜单的消费者阅读（即视觉模式）;的研究是学术研究的新领域. 这项研究是第一次尝试仔细研究消费者对餐厅菜单的视觉模式，这种模式因页面方向（横向与纵向）;和菜单脚本（水平与垂直）;的组合而变化。在现有菜单的基础上，我们制作了四个不同版本的菜单，并在54名参与者身上进行了测试，同时收集了眼球跟踪的测量数据. 在应用双向方差分析后，我们发现页面方向、菜单脚本及其交互作用对参与者的平均总注视时间没有显著影响. 列联表检验和单因素方差分析表明，在所研究的四种菜单中，有三种存在甜点和酸点.

KEYWORDS:

• Sweet spot
• sour spot
• fixation duration
• tea restaurant menu