ATTRACTIVENESS OF COFFEE SHOP IN A NEIGHBOURHOOD CENTRE : A CONSUMER PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Coffee shop as a real estate property has often been overlooked in research. However, coffee shop has been present in Singapore since the 1930s and has slowly evolved over the years to what it is today. In recent times, high investment cost for coffee shop owners and high rental cost for tenants have seen the increase in competition among coffee shops. This is especially so in neighbourhood centre where on average, three to four coffee shops are serving each neighbourhood centre. This prompts a need to understand coffee shop attractiveness. This study aims to determine the factors that affect coffee shop attractiveness from a consumer perspective. A sequential mixed method design was used for this purpose. An in-depth interview with 30 respondents from the 3 regional centres in Singapore was first carried out to identify attributes that can affect consumers’ decision to dine at a coffee shop. Next, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 300 consumers in Pasir Ris Drive 4 Neighbourhood Centre to understand the importance of factors affecting coffee shop attractiveness. The findings of the study indicated that 5 out of the 6 factors generated were important in influencing the attractiveness of a coffee shop. The 6 factors are ‘effort’ in consumer attributes, ‘enjoyment’ and ‘coffee shop feature’ in tenant attributes and ‘value-added features’, ‘comfort’ and ‘ancillary facilities’ in owner attributes. Each of these factors comprises of a few attributes from the respective categories. The findings from this study will help owners and tenants of coffee shop to enhance the attractiveness of their coffee shop by improving on the specific attributes.