Factors influencing enhanced consumption of western fast food brands in Pakistan

Abstract

Consumers’ preferences and eating habits change over time. Every culture has its own unique tastes and savour that they fancy. The local tastes of a country vary from place to place within a country or outside its geographical boundaries. People of Pakistan are food lovers and they have witnessed an emerging trend of fast food brands like McDonalds, KFC and Hardees in the previous years, which have shifted their eating habits from the traditional food towards these brands. Consumers now prefer these fast food brands as a means of socializing, convenience in terms of cooking, dine out experience, privacy, food taste and quality. As more and more people are shifting towards the cities and a rapid urbanisation process is taking place, consumers demand fast food as a means of blending in the lifestyle prevailing in the cities. This lifestyle is known as westernisation of local trends. When consumers demand fast food, fast food MNC’s see a window of opportunity for investing in countries like Pakistan and thus, new fast food chains are opened meeting the demands of the local consumers. The research study focuses on creating a framework for understanding the relationship of various factors such as urbanization, dine out experience and social factors on the emergence of fast food brands like McDonalds, KFC and Hardees in Pakistan. This research paper is quantitative in nature; where as the type of study is deductive and therefore conclusive. It is concluded that factors such as socialising, urbanisation, taste and convenience have a positive relationship with emergence of fast food brands and hence enhanced consumption of fast food. On the contrary, it has been seen that social status does not act as a contributing factor in this research.