Currently, a restaurant or a cafeteria is often used not only as a place to have a meal but also as a place to work, take a rest, or just kill time. This change has become significantly enhanced by the development and wider availability of wireless networking services that facilitate all types of internet interaction from recreational use to work from just about any place. At many self-service restaurants, customers can not only select their own seats but also move one or more tables together to create more space for themselves. However, when customers are allowed this freedom, it is not uncommon that other customers are inconvenienced because a single customer has taken up many seats, especially during peak operating hours.
The objectives of this study are to identify and clarify the characteristics of seat use and over-use behaviors based on customer behaviors in the food court of a shopping mall.
The observation target for this research was a food court in a large shopping center in Nagoya, Japan where customers are free to choose their seats and connect tables as they like. Activities besides eating and drinking, such as studying are also tacitly permitted by the establishment. The observation time was from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and included both crowded and relatively empty time periods. The observation survey was conducted on 13 weekdays and 10 weekends, and more than 600 groups and more than 1, 400 customers were observed. The observed items included customer age categories and gender (estimated by the observer), the number of group members, arrival and departure times, tables and seating choices, and the activities in which they engaged.
After observation, it was found that the customers ranged widely in terms of age, from young children (even less than 10-year olds) to senior citizens, with a large number of teenage customers too. There were many single customers on weekdays, whereas on weekends nearly all customers were in groups. The seats chosen most often on weekdays were the bench seats with the atrium to its back, with a slight difference in choosing bench or chair seating on the weekends. Also, looking at how customers tended to choose seats, they regarded the distance or nearness to other customers, which indicated that interpersonal distance had an effect on seat selection in this study.
Regarding extra seat usage, during the week people in age groups from teenagers to 40-year olds used seats for longer than necessary, with a shift on the weekends to teenagers and people in their 20s, especially teenagers. People who were engaged in chatting were the predominant long-users, with people studying on weekends spending inordinate amounts of time taking up space in the food court observation area during the hours of the study.
Taking up extra seats was observed much more on weekdays compared to weekends, and decreased significantly on crowded weekends. During the week men more than women took up more extra seats, which likely reflects a cultural norm regarding personal space. However, on both weekdays and weekends, single people and people 70 years old or older tended to take up extra seats for themselves. Interestingly, during the week, resting and reading seemed to require the most seat overuse, but studying took over the number one slot on weekends, followed by resting and reading. Again, the need for more interpersonal distance might be important to being comfortable resting and reading in such a public place.
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