A STUDY ON HAWKER-CENTRES AND FAST-FOOD CHAINS

Abstract

Hawker-centres play an important role by catering to the working people as well as to an increasing number of families who do not cook at home everyday. The number of people eating out is increasing, and their average expenses have also increased. Also, the number of hawker-centres and fast-food chains are on the rise. Hence, these two types of outlets will be competing with one another for the same eating out market. Are the people patronizing hawker-centres different from those who go to fast-food chains. This is the question which this study hopes to answer. The eating out market can be segmented into either fast-food chain users and hawker-centre users using a preference scale. These two classes of users are further segmented based upon the criteria of their demographic variables, psychographic profile, value systems, and eating patterns. Hopefully, these variables will be able to distinguish between a hawker-centre user and a fast-food chain user. The fast-food chain user was found to be younger, more likely to be a student and a female. This user also tends to eat out less often in a week than hawker-centre users. It was found that these two users do differ in their value systems. However, they do not appear to differ in their life styles, activities, interests, and opinions. Both users feel that an eating place should have the following qualities: friendliness of service, cleanliness, speed of service, variety of food, convenient, and offer good value for money. In conclusion, it can be seen that the number of hawker-centre users still outnumbered the number of fast-food chain users. This means that fast-food chains are still considered as not being able to provide Singaporeans with a "proper, traditional’’ meal. Fast-food chains are therefore considered to be supplementary to hawker-centres and not direct competitors.