Consumers are more likely to order certain foods if that is what their friends are ordering.
October 29/Champaign, Ill./Huffington Post -- Consumers are more likely to order certain foods if that is what their friends are ordering, says a new University of Illinois study. The study, "I'll Have What He's Having": Group Ordering Behavior in Food Choice Decisions," was presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Food economist Brenna Ellison, Ph.D., analyzed lunch receipts from a restaurant in Stillwater, Okla., over a 19-week period in 2010. The restaurant was divided into three different sections: the control group with guests receiving menus with only the item and price, a section that gave guests calorie counts for each entrée, and a third section that had both calorie counts and a traffic light symbol that indicated caloric ranges. Diners had a choice of 51 different options that had anywhere from 50 to 1,540 calories.