Purchasing Intentions toward Fast Food: The Mediating Role of Consumer Attitudes toward Fast Food

Abstract

We highlight the role of fast food awareness and the features affecting the intentions of individuals buying it. The fast food industry is developing rapidly, opening new doors for various stakeholders. The objective of the study is to identify the impact of knowledge of fast food on the desire to buy fast food, study its impact on fast food purchasing intentions, and uncover the effect of fast food attitudes on consumers' purchasing intentions and intention patterns. Several studies discuss the factors prompting fast food purchases, but convincing findings have not been reported. The previous research did not disclose some significant variables influencing consumers' fast food-related decisions, namely, knowledge and uniqueness-seeking qualities. The existing studies are centered on connections between facts about fast food and unique consumer traits (independent variables), attitudes toward fast food (mediator), and fast food purchasing expectations (dependent variable). The mediator between attitudes toward fast food and fast food purchasing intentions is family structure. In previous studies, the variables and connections were examined from a different perspective. The study's data were collected through a questionnaire, and 279 consumers frequenting well-known shops in Pakistan were sampled. To provide statistical evidence, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and multigroup moderations were performed. Knowledge of fast food and uniqueness-seeking characteristics were relevant both directly and through mediation when predicting fast food purchasing intentions. The hypothesized direction between attitudes toward fast food and fast food purchases was also significantly moderated by family structure. This study is the first of its kind and helps identify the fast food purchasing behaviors of consumers in developing countries. The shift from joint family systems to a nuclear family model is a particularly important change in the social experience of food.