The Effects of Self-Monitoring, Dining Companion, and Restaurant Segment on the Choice of Currency in the Restaurant Industry

Consumers, today, are presented with wider varieties of currency options for purchasing their products and services other than monetary currency. The current study examined two traits on the matter. The first trait, was the effects of consumers' personality (self monitoring) on the currency preference in restaurant industry. Secondly, the study explored whether differences in restaurant segments and companions were related to consumers' currency preferences. An experimental design was applied to test four hypotheses that reflected the research questions. A total of 450 respondents were included in this study. Descriptive statistics and multi-nominal logistic regression was performed with SPSS to analyze the data. Results of this study indicated that the effects of self monitoring and dining companions are significantly related to consumers' currency preference while restaurant segment has no significant impact on consumers' currency preferences. It showed that high self monitors are less likely to prefer the currency of points than wons compared to low self monitors. Moreover, consumers who dine with their high status companions are more likely to prefer to pay with wons only as opposed to points only than consumers who dine alone or with friends. Additionally, high self monitors dining with high status companions were found to be more likely to prefer to pay with wons only as opposed to points only than low self monitors.