Data Analysis Branding and brand loyalty in fast-food in UAE

Posted: January 4th, 2023

Student’s Name

Professor’s Name

Course

Date

Data Analysis Branding and brand loyalty in fast-food in UAE

Results and Findings

This chapter presents the finding of the study. It starts by describing the demographic characteristics of the participants and their fast-food choices. After that, the findings of the analysis of the brand loyalty and personality questionnaire items are presented.  

Demographics of the Participants

Of the 143 people that participated in this study, 76.9 % of them were male, while 21.7 % were female, as summarized in figure 1. Therefore, the patrons of fast-food outlets were dominated by makes, despite three respondents choosing not to disclose their gender.

Figure 1. Gender distribution

In addition, the participants in the study comprised mostly of people above 40 years old, who made up 37.1 %, as illustrated in figure 2.

Figure 2. Age distribution

Also, most of the participants were engineers in the aviation industry (21.7 %), students (7.7%), stay-at-home mothers and domestic workers (5.6%), and administrators (5.6%). However, several other professions were represented, including banking, education, accounting, healthcare, hospitality, and the public sector. 

Brand Preference

McDonald’s was the most popular fast-food outlet by attracting 42.7 % of the participants, while Burger King was the least preferred (8.4 %), as shown in table 2.

Figure 3. Choice of favorite fast-food eatery

The fast-food outlets appealed to different age groups of their regular patrons, as illustrated in figure 3. McDonald’s appealed most to the participants aged between 18-24 and 25-34 years by attracting 34.4 % and 31.1 % of its patrons, respectively. Contrastingly, Starbucks was preferred most by those aged between 18-24 years (30.8 %), while Subway appealed most to those above 40 years old (57.7 %). In turn, Subway was preferred the least by the younger consumers aged between 18 and 34 years old. 

Figure 4. Age distribution of patrons preferring each of the fast-food outlets

In the same breath, although the eateries were frequented mostly by male consumers, most female consumers (48.4%) preferred McDonald’s, while only 3.2 % of them opted for Burger King, as illustrated in figure 5.

Figure 5. Distribution of female clients across the different fast-food outlets

Moreover, of the female clients that preferred McDonald’s, most (34.4%) were aged between 25-34 years old, while the least (13.1 %) were in the 18-24-years age bracket.

Figure 6. Age distribution of McDonald’s female clients

Although the customers working in engineering professions were overrepresented in the sample, they preferred to purchase their fast-food mainly from McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King. Specifically, 23% of McDonald’s customers were in the engineering profession, making up 9.8 % of the clients from all professions. Similarly, Pizza Hut attracted 29 % engineers from its enthusiasts, while Burger King’s clients comprised of 33.3 % from engineering.

About half (50.3 %) of the fast-food enthusiasts visited their favorite outlets once a month, while only 7.7 % frequented them a couple of times in a week, as detailed in figure 7. Similarly, as many fast-food client had visited their favorite outlets in the previous week as in more than a month prior to the study. Speciifically, 39.9 % and 37.1 % visited their favorite outlets in the previous week and more than the preceding month, respectively, while only 23.1 % had frequented their choice fast-food in the period between the previous week and month.  

Figure 7. Frequency of visiting the favorite fast-food outlet

Comparing the consistency of choice of fast-food outlets between the male and female perticipants, was done by performing a chi-square test, and the findings are summarised in tables 1 and 2. The chi-square values indicate consistency in the responses of the male and female participants. Although the female participants were fewer than the males, their perceptions about McDonald’s were informative because of the large number of participants it attracted from either gender.

Table 1. Crosstabulation for favorite food outlet and gender

What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one) * Are you? Crosstabulation
			Are you?	Total
			Male	Female	Rather not say
What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one)	McDonald’s	Count	45	15	1	61
% within What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one)	73.8%	24.6%	1.6%	100.0%
% within Are you?	40.9%	48.4%	50.0%	42.7%
% of Total	31.5%	10.5%	.7%	42.7%
Burger King	Count	10	1	1	12
% within What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one)	83.3%	8.3%	8.3%	100.0%
% within Are you?	9.1%	3.2%	50.0%	8.4%
% of Total	7.0%	.7%	.7%	8.4%
Pizza Hut	Count	25	6	0	31
% within What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one)	80.6%	19.4%	.0%	100.0%
% within Are you?	22.7%	19.4%	.0%	21.7%
% of Total	17.5%	4.2%	.0%	21.7%
Starbucks	Count	8	5	0	13
% within What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one)	61.5%	38.5%	.0%	100.0%
% within Are you?	7.3%	16.1%	.0%	9.1%
% of Total	5.6%	3.5%	.0%	9.1%
Subway	Count	22	4	0	26
% within What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one)	84.6%	15.4%	.0%	100.0%
% within Are you?	20.0%	12.9%	.0%	18.2%
% of Total	15.4%	2.8%	.0%	18.2%
Total	Count	110	31	2	143
% within What is your favorite fast-food outlet? (Choose one)	76.9%	21.7%	1.4%	100.0%
% within Are you?	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%
% of Total	76.9%	21.7%	1.4%	100.0%

Table 2: Chi-square for relation between fast-food choice and gender

Chi-Square Tests
	Value	df	Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	9.395a	8	.310
Likelihood Ratio	8.206	8	.414
Linear-by-Linear Association	.695	1	.405
N of Valid Cases	143
a. 7 cells (46.7%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .17.

Brand loyalty

The questionnaire had 11 items dedicated to describing the brand loyalty of the participants.  Correlation analysis revealed a significant and positive correlation between the eleven items of brand loyalty. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was significant at the 0.05 level of confidence and ranged between 0.124 and 0.616. The only item whose correlation was not significant was that between intention to buy from the favorite fast-food outlet and the feeling of attachment to the favorite fast-food outlet and not any other brand.

Factor analysis revealed that three factors were extracted because they had an Eigenvalue that was greater than 1.  The first factor accounted for 25% of the total variability, while factors 2 and 3 accounted for 24.8 % and 15.5 % respectively, as summarised in table 3.

Table 3. Findings from the principal component analysis

Total Variance Explained
Component	Initial Eigenvalues	Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings
Total	% of Variance	Cumulative %	Total	% of Variance	Cumulative %
1	4.941	44.916	44.916	2.745	24.959	24.959
2	1.182	10.749	55.664	2.729	24.809	49.768
3	1.059	9.628	65.292	1.708	15.525	65.292
4	.828	7.529	72.821
5	.601	5.460	78.281
6	.566	5.147	83.428
7	.533	4.847	88.276
8	.398	3.616	91.892
9	.360	3.270	95.162
10	.301	2.737	97.899
11	.231	2.101	100.000
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

However, the scree plot in figure 8 indicates that the slope of the curve levels out after 2 factors and not three. This means that 2 central factors emerged from the brand loyalty items in the questionnaire.

Figure 8. Scree plot for brand loyalty factors

Tables 4 and 5 present the findings of the rotated components of the brand loyalty items. The findings revealed that only one principal component featured significantly and prominently in the items, indicating a high level of consistency and reliability of defining the brand loyalty of the participants.

Table 4. Component analysis for brand loyalty items

Rotated Component Matrixa
	Component
	1	2	3
I prefer to buy my fast-food meals from {{ Q2 }}	0.168	0.615	0.522
I think {{ Q2 }} has the best food offers at the present time	0.265	0.563	0.213
I prefer to buy {{ Q2 }} instead of other fast-food brands	-0.030	0.848	0.152
I buy from {{ Q2 }} because I really like it	0.567	0.515	0.128
I feel more attached to {{ Q2 }} than to other brands	0.636	0.513	-0.086
I am pleased to buy from {{ Q2 }} instead of other brands	0.475	0.686	0.004
I intend to buy from {{ Q2 }} in the future too	0.297	0.120	0.656
I intend to buy other products from {{ Q2 }}	0.072	0.126	0.837
I will recommend others to buy from {{ Q2 }}	0.822	0.058	0.276
I say positive things about {{ Q2 }} to others	0.763	0.113	0.343
I consider {{ Q2 }} my first choice when I want to buy fast-food products	0.587	0.519	0.134
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.  Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 10 iterations.

Table 5. Rotated component analysis

Component Transformation Matrix
Component	1	2	3
1	0.659	0.649	0.381
2	0.061	-0.551	0.832
3	-0.750	0.525	0.403
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.   Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

Reliability

The reliability fo the brand loyalty items in the questionaire were tested using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, as sumamrised in table 6.

Table 6. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for brand loyalty items

Reliability Statistics
Cronbach’s Alpha	Cronbach’s Alpha Based on Standardized Items	N of Items
0.874	0.873	11

The Cronbach’s alpha is 0.874. This means that the Likert scale has a high level of internal consistency in describing the fast-food brand loyalty of clients. Similarly, the coefficient is high for all items in the questionnaire, indicating that their deletion would not change the reliability of the questionnaire, as revealed in table 7.

Table 7. Detailed consistency analysis after deletions and corrections

Item-Total Statistics
	Scale Mean if Item Deleted	Scale Variance if Item Deleted	Corrected Item-Total Correlation	Squared Multiple Correlation	Cronbach’s Alpha if Item Deleted
I prefer to buy my fast-food meals from {{ Q2 }}	23.0280	40.168	.633	.495	.859
I think {{ Q2 }} has the best food offers at the present time	22.8252	40.934	.532	.350	.866
I prefer to buy {{ Q2 }} instead of other fast-food brands	22.9930	41.218	.489	.408	.868
I buy from {{ Q2 }} because I really like it	23.1049	38.996	.671	.517	.856
I feel more attached to {{ Q2 }} than to other brands	22.7902	39.111	.623	.513	.859
I am pleased to buy from {{ Q2 }} instead of other brands	22.8951	39.376	.673	.591	.856
I intend to buy from {{ Q2 }} in the future too	23.5315	43.378	.450	.308	.871
I intend to buy other products from {{ Q2 }}	23.0979	42.357	.370	.267	.876
I will recommend others to buy from {{ Q2 }}	22.9580	39.364	.601	.543	.861
I say positive things about {{ Q2 }} to others	22.7762	37.823	.627	.578	.859
I consider {{ Q2 }} my first choice when I want to buy fast-food products	22.8671	37.553	.695	.566	.854

Brand personality

The questionnaire had 6 items dedicated to brand personality. All except one comparison between the items yielded a significant and positive Pearsons’ correlation coefficient. Notably, the correlation between item describing the brand as having a rugged personality and a sincere personality was not significant, although it was positive. Nonetheless, the person’s correlation coefficients ranged between 0.15 and 0.614. as illustrated in table 8. Although the perceptions of the sincerity, excitement, and competence personalities of the brand were significantly correlated at the 0.01 confidence level, those on sophistication and ruggedness displayed a low correlation coefficient. Moreover, the ruggedness personality was not significantly correlated, which is an indication of brand dissonance with that personality characteristic.    

Table 8. Pearson’s correlation coefficients for brand personality questionnaire items.

Correlations
		sincere	exciting	competent	sophisticated	rugged	If {{Q2}} was a person would it reflect your personality?
Sincere	Pearson Correlation	1	.614**	.400**	.291**	.150	.365**
Sig. (2-tailed)		.000	.000	.000	.074	.000
N	143	143	143	143	143	143
Exciting	Pearson Correlation	.614**	1	.453**	.472**	.341**	.380**
Sig. (2-tailed)	.000		.000	.000	.000	.000
N	143	143	143	143	143	143
Competent	Pearson Correlation	.400**	.453**	1	.309**	.224**	.213*
Sig. (2-tailed)	.000	.000		.000	.007	.011
N	143	143	143	143	143	143
Sophisticated	Pearson Correlation	.291**	.472**	.309**	1	.621**	.353**
Sig. (2-tailed)	.000	.000	.000		.000	.000
N	143	143	143	143	143	143
Rugged	Pearson Correlation	.150	.341**	.224**	.621**	1	.303**
Sig. (2-tailed)	.074	.000	.007	.000		.000
N	143	143	143	143	143	143
If {{Q2}} was a person would it reflect your personality?	Pearson Correlation	.365**	.380**	.213*	.353**	.303**	1
Sig. (2-tailed)	.000	.000	.011	.000	.000
N	143	143	143	143	143	143
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

The factor analysis of the brand personality tools revealed two main factors, as summarised in table 9 and figure 8.

Table 9. Primary component analysis findings for brand personality items

Total Variance Explained
Component	Initial Eigenvalues	Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings
Total	% of Variance	Cumulative %	Total	% of Variance	Cumulative %
1	2.856	47.599	47.599	2.120	35.340	35.340
2	1.086	18.106	65.706	1.822	30.366	65.706
3	0.773	12.889	78.594
4	0.577	9.623	88.218
5	0.363	6.052	94.270
6	0.344	5.730	100.000
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Figure 8. Scree plot for brand personality factors

After performing a rotated component analysis of the brand personality items, sincerity, excitement, and competence emerged as the most significant principal components, as summarised in table 10. Sophistication and ruggedness were the second components of brand personality. 

Table 10. Results of the rotated component matrix of brand personality items

Rotated Component Matrixa
	Component
	1	2
… sincere personality (Down-to-earth, Honest, Wholesome, Cheerful)	0.866	0.045
… exciting personality (Daring, Spirited, Imaginative, Up-to-date)	0.783	0.331
… competent personality (Intelligent, Successful)	0.687	0.144
… sophisticated personality (Upper class, Charming)	0.273	0.834
… rugged personality (Outdoorsy, Tough) If {{Q2}} was a person would it reflect your personality?	0.062 0.454	0.904 0.421
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.  Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
77a. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.

The reliability test for the 6 brand personality items revealed a Conbach’s alpha value of 0.77 as summarised in table 11. this value is considered high enough to indicate internal consistency or reliability of the likert scale used in this study for determing the level of brand personality.

Table 11. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for brand personality items

Reliability Statistics
Cronbach’s Alpha	Cronbach’s Alpha Based on Standardized Items	N of Items
0.770	0.776	6

However, after the deletions of individual brand personality items and correcting for total correlation, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient still had a high value of over 0.7, as illustrated in table 12.

Table 12. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for brand personality items after deletion and correction

Item-Total Statistics
	Scale Mean if Item Deleted	Scale Variance if Item Deleted	Corrected Item-Total Correlation	Squared Multiple Correlation	Cronbach’s Alpha if Item Deleted
… sincere personality (Down-to-earth, Honest, Wholesome, Cheerful)	13.2028	9.332	.504	.425	.739
… exciting personality (Daring, Spirited, Imaginative, Up-to-date)	13.1818	8.953	.658	.508	.702
… competent personality (Intelligent, Successful)	13.4825	10.406	.439	.242	.756
… sophisticated personality (Upper class, Charming)	12.7762	8.668	.599	.475	.713
… rugged personality (Outdoorsy, Tough)	12.7902	9.322	.470	.404	.748
If {{Q2}} was a person would it reflect your personality?	12.7133	8.910	.457	.223	.757

Discussion

One of the objectives of this study was to define the link between the concepts of branding and loyalty in the context of fast-food industry in the United Arab Emirates. Before the link is described, it was critical to assess the reliability of the questionnaire, considering that it was administered online and was availed in two languages; English and Arabic. The questionnaire used a five-level Likert scale for its responses. Two conformations were used in the Likert scales, with the first having options ranging from ‘strongly aggree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ and the second ranging from ‘very likely’ to ‘very unlikely’. The statistical tests that assessed the description of the items and their appropriateness in unearthing the desired information about the perspective of participants related to fast-food brands included the Pearson’s correlation coefficient, factor analysis to determine dimensionality and the character of the variables, chi-square, and principal component analysis to determine the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.  

The analysis of the questionnaire items revealed a high level of correlation between the responses provided by the participants. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was positive and significant for most of the items that sought to reveal the brand loyalty and brand personality towards the fast-food outlets in the United Srab Emirates. This is important because it indicates that the tool was consistent in capturing the responses of the participants. The strength of the correlation was low, as indicated by the low Pearson’s coefficient values. In turn, the tool was reliable, as demonstrated by the significant Cronbach’s alpha values for the items investigating the brand loyalty and personality from participants.

Therefore, their responses could be relied upon to reflect the success of the brand in triggering the intended feelings, attachment, and loyalty in customers. Overall, the questionnaire questions were constructed well enough to retrieve the true brand perceptions from the participants. This means that the responses provided by the participants could be trusted enough to reflect the level of success of the branding efforts by the fast-food chains in the country. These findings correspond to those of Markovina et al. (28), which revealed that a consistent understanding of the questionnaire items across multicultural and multilingual participants was pertinent for ensuring validity and reliability.

The results indicated that fast-food enthusiasts in the United Arab Emirates were aware of the foreign fast-food brands in their country. However, McDonald’s appeared to the most popular brand among these fast-food outlets. This can be attributed to the concerted branding activities by McDonalds that leverages its noticeable logo and popularity in the United States and across the world. It is likely that the large number of expatriates in the country caused this trend, considering that a significant number of them, especially those working in highly-skilled professions and high positions, were foreigners from western countries. Pizza Hut and Burger King were also considerably popular in the United Arab Emirates, but not as much as McDonald’s. This is a surprising finding considering that the Arabian Bridge (2019) had reported that Baskin Robbins enjoyed the most brand intimacy in 2019, although Pizza Hut and Burger King had considerable brand awareness among the Emirati. These publications did not mention McDonald’s as one of the popular brands in the UAE, findings that have been contradicted by this study.

Most participants expressed being loyal to their brands by indicating that they ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ with the brand loyalty statements in the questionnaire. Another significant proportion of the participants were unsure of their feelings about the brand because they responded as neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the questionnaire statements. These findings are echoed by Ukaj (2016), who reiterated the benefits of using closed questions in a questionnaire for determining the perception of brand from participants. The author was able to decipher the importance of brand recognition from the responses of the participants and support the positive effects of having strong brands in a highly-competitive marketplace.

The findings of brand personality revealed that most participants felt that the brand personality of the fast-food outlets resembled their own personalities, although another segment of the participants unsure about how reflective the brands were on their personalities. Notably, most participants related the fast-food brands with sincerity, excitement, and competence as their factor had values greater than 0.5 from the principal factor analysis results. The respondent did not feel that the brands communicated ruggedness or sophistication. This is consistent with the branding intentions of these fast-food chains, which are intended to capture the mass middle-class and working-class market segments across the world. Tsai, Chang, and Ho (111) demonstrated that the congruence of self-concept had a positive impact on the brand preferences of clients and their satisfaction. Customers preferred brands that reinforced a positive feeling about self and also those that reflected their own personalities if they elicited positive feelings.  In this case, it is likely that the fast-food enthusiasts in the UAE viewed themselves and fun-loving, excitement-seeking, cheerful, and down-to-earth and therefore, preferred to associate with brands that reflected similar self-concept characteristics.

Works Cited

Markovina, Jerko, Barbara J. Stewart-Knox, Audrey Rankin, Mike Gibney, Maria Daniel V. de Almeida, Arnout Fischer, Sharron A. Kuznesof, Rui Poínhos, Luca Panzone, and Lynn J. Frewer. “Food4Me study: Validity and reliability of Food Choice Questionnaire in 9 European countries.” Food Quality and Preference, vol. 45, 2015, pp. 26-32.

Tsai, Yi-Ching, Hui-Chen Chang, and Kung-Chung Ho. “A study of the relationship among brand experiences, self-concept congruence, customer satisfaction, and brand preference.” Contemporary Management Research, vol. 1, no. 2, 2015, pp 97-116.

Ukaj, Fatos. “The role and importance of brand in the marketing of small and medium-sized enterprises in Kosovo.” International Journal of Marketing Studies, vol. 8, no. 6, 2016, pp. 52-57.