Japanese people and fast food restaurants
There are a lot of fast food restaurants in Japan and most people are fond of eating hamburgers, but each people goes to different kinds of them as every hamburger shop companies serve very uniquely, and there might be some relationships between the characteristics of people and the hamburger shop they use. In general, older people prefer more sophisticated shops and younger people like cheaper ones. And the former shop sometimes attracts more women than men. This results show that the each company’s effort to distinguish itself from the others is working in a way that different quality of people go to different hamburger shops.
Hamburgers are now one of the most popular foods in Japan, and there are now many hamburger shops. McDonald’s has over 3000 shops, MOS Burger has about 1500 shops and there are other large chains and local shops. Those hamburger companies are competing with each other and each company is trying to strengthen their characteristics in order to get more customers. In all the hamburger companies, McDonald’s and MOS Burger are major in Japan, and the difference between them is quite clear. At McDonald’s, hamburgers and other foods are served so fast that customers can get their foods soon after they ordered, and the prices of the foods are very low. The tastes of foods are, however, not so good. MOS Burger, on the other hand, starts to cook after receiving customers’ orders and serves hot and smelling foods, and the inside of the shops is sophisticated, yet the prices are a little expensive and it takes a little long to get foods. This difference might make people decide which shop they use, for example, those who are in a hurry or do not have much money will use McDonald’s and those who have enough money or want to eat delicious hamburgers will use MOS Burger. Therefore, it is expected that there might be some differences between the characteristics of people who use McDonald’s and those of people who use MOS Burger.
The main concept of this study is to observe the characteristics of the people choosing which hamburger shop, McDonald’s or MOS Burger, and to grasp what kind of people are likely to go to which of the two shops. I surveyed at the place, the west side of the Kannai station, where those shops are found at the same time in order to make people decide which shop to use only by these shops’ brands, without considering the location. From 11:30 to 13:00 at noon when people are likely to go to fast food restaurants, I counted the number of people and classified the data there. I classified the characteristics of people by three points, man or woman, wearing a suit or not, and their generations. The survey was made in two different days, on a weekday and a holiday, because most people found in a weekday were working people and on a holiday there were many families and casually dressed people.
433 people are found in all, 133 people on a weekday and 300 people on a holiday. As the Figure 1 shows, it is clear that the number of people who went into McDonald’s is much larger. There are some interesting points to be found. First there was some tendency in women’s choosing MOS Burger, as the Figure 2 shows, on the weekday the number of women were larger than that of men who visited MOS Burger. Second, there is a difference in the age distributions of both shops. The Figure 3 represents that younger people prefer McDonald’s older people prefer MOS Burger and no elderly people over age 60 used McDonald’s. The number of people who were wearing a suit was counted, but most women did not wear it and many men also did not wear it. Consequently, it did not seem to make any sense to consider about the data.
It can be said that McDonald’s is basically more popular than MOS Burger, especially for teens or early twenties. This might be because many people are busy or do not like to pay much money for lunch, and many young people have to live with little amount of money. Some people, however, such as women and elderly people who are said to be conscious of the tastes of what they eat were likely to go to MOS Burger. In other words, the result that each hamburger shops gathered people with different characteristics showed that their strategies of getting customers were working in a way.
In Japan with many kinds of hamburger shops, there are fast-food-loving residents with different preferences, and many hamburger shops trying to gain more profit. In this study, two major hamburger shops were picked up and the number and the characteristics of people who visited them were observed. Then it was found that each shops gathered different kinds of people in characteristics to some extent. At this survey I gathered the data only at one place for two days and on the holiday when I made the survey a baseball game was held at a nearby baseball stadium. So in order to confirm the tendency, it is required to take more time to make a survey and to gather data from more places. More detailed and confirmed result will represent Japanese food culture through hamburgers.