Attracting the millennial customer: the case of food trucks

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine millennial customer perceptions of food trucks and to identify factors that can foster their behavioral intentions pertaining to food trucks.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a sample of 247 millennial customers of various food truck vendors in the United States and was assessed using ordinary least squares regression analysis.FindingsFood truck image and employee friendliness were found to impact both customer satisfaction and word of mouth behavior; however, the other hypotheses were not supported.Research limitations/implicationsThere were two limitations. The first was that one of the constructs did not achieve the minimum average variance extracted. The second was that data collection was done in a single city in the United States; therefore, future research could overcome these limitations through a refinement of the construct’s items and targeting more cities.Originality/valueThere has been limited academic research on the millennial customer perceptions of the food truck phenomenon. This research addresses that gap through a field study that examines factors that contributed to the growth and popularity of food trucks among millennials