Eating with the eyes? Tracking food choice in restaurant's menu
Publicated to:Food Quality And Preference. 110 104956- - 2023-08-07 110(), DOI: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2023.104956
Authors: Mora, Maria; Romeo-Arroyo, Elena; Chaya, Carolina; Gayoso, Lucia; Larranaga-Ayastuy, E; Vazquez-Araujo, Laura
Affiliations
Abstract
Digitalization is considered the industrial revolution of the 21st century, helping companies to become more efficient and value-driven. This trend also reaches the restaurant sector, being present in all its spaces and activities, from the kitchen to customer service. The present study aimed to determine if the eye-tracker is a suitable tool to predict diners’ choices in the context of a restaurant. Three menu presentations were designed for the study: a basic menu with the name of the dishes and the prices; a menu that included the same information of the basic one, and a descriptive information of each dish; and a menu with an infographic of nutrition-related composition. A total of 180 consumers participated in the study (n ≈ 60 per menu), who evaluated one of the menus presented on a tablet with an integrated eye-tracker. Then, consumers completed a questionnaire indicating their dish choice and their opinion about the menu. Results showed that, when basic or descriptive information was displayed, the eye-tracking could be used to predict consumer's decisions in the restaurant. A higher fixation duration resulted in a higher probability of choice when consumers looked at the basic menu and at the one with descriptive information, but the inclusion of an infographic with nutritional data diminished the prediction ability of the eye-tracker.
Keywords
Quality index
Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel
The work has been published in the journal Food Quality And Preference due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2023, it was in position 35/173, thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Food Science & Technology.
From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 4.07, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Nov 2025)
Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-11-02, the following number of citations:
- WoS: 4
- Scopus: 4