Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are: The influence of political identity on consumer dining choice

Food consumption and the choices made in restaurants are not matters of simple utility. As research and industry practice have revealed, consumer choices may be influenced by any number of factors. Not least of these is the menu. This paper investigates whether political identity as an aspect of social identity influences consumer behaviour in restaurants. A (3 × 2) multivariate analysis of covariance was employed to understand the relationships between the dependent variables and the three menu treatments. Results indicate a significant interactive effect of political identity and menu verbiage for both liberal and conservative respondents. Conservatives responded more favourably to affective menu verbiage, and liberal respondents responded favourably to sustainable menu verbiage. The paper also considers the covariance of identity importance and strength in the overall analysis. The results can inform restaurant operators as to two crucial needs of the consumer (ie menu quality and the ability to express one’s identity), which must be satisfied to influence consumer purchase behaviour. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection, which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.