Food away from home of middle-income earners: Empirical evidence from the three major cities in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia have achieved high income growth and experienced rapid urbanization and changes in socioeconomic and demographic structure. Family income as well as demographic factors influence demand for food away from home. At the same time food service facilities also showed the rapid growth. It is expected that there will be significant changes in food away from home consumption in Malaysia. The objective of this paper is to analyse middle income household expenditure patterns on food away from home in the three major cities of Malaysia (George Town, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru) that have a high cost of living. Therefore, a survey has been carried out in the three cities and the total number of observations used for the estimation was 473 observations. A censored Tobit model was applied to quantify the responsiveness of household expenditure on food away from home. The results indicate that on average, the household income and number of children below 12 years old in the household are the significant factors that affect the household expenditure on food away from home. There is a significant difference between the Chinese and Malays in their spending pattern on food away from home. Meanwhile, family size, gender and age of household head were statistically insignificant. It is recommended that the government should strengthen the enforcement of price control regulations in order to avoid high inflation in food price, as well as monitoring the quality of food served by the sellers in order to encourage people to consume healthy food.

Exploring Social Capital Influencing Entrepreneurial Process Among Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Malaysia

“…Malaysia indeed is known as food heaven, which prompts many immigrant entrepreneurs such as Thais to open their restaurants in the country. In addition, a growing eating-out culture (Latimaha et al 2018;Roseman 2006) has contributed to the success of immigrant entrepreneurs in the country.…”

“…Eating-out has become prevalent in the Malaysian lifestyle (Latimaha et al 2018). The habit became popular among local consumers due in large part to the boom in various ethnic restaurants making it possible for customers to enjoy different and distinctive exotic fares as captured in this quotation: "I observe that Malaysians enjoy eating out with their families and friends.…”

A Cohort Analysis of Food Expenditure Away From Home in Turkey

“…In previous literature, FAFH consumption decision varies according to potential variables such as age, education level, income, gender, time constraint, opportunity cost, region, urbanization, race, wealth, household type and household size (Prochaska and Schrimper, 1973;McCracken and Brandt, 1987;Yen, 1993;Byrne et al, 1996;Jensen and Yen, 1996;Nayga, 1996;Mutlu and Gracia, 2006;Jang et al 2007;Bai et al, 2010;Tan, 2010;Liu et al, 2012;Haq et al 2014;Liu et al, 2015;Ogundari et al 2015;Cupak et al 2016;Blick et al 2018;Latimaha et al 2018;Terin, 2019). A great deal of literature has investigated both the socio-demographic and the economic characteristics of households on FAFH consumption using different methodologies.…”