1.

Introduction
Obesity is an issue that has impacted dramatically the developed world. During the last
decades this issue has been intensified, attacking not only adults but kids as well (Let's
face the real, 2014). According to O'Dea and Eriksen (2011) obesity is defined as the
excess of body fatness and overweight to weight in excess of a weight standard (p. 3).
It is believed that nearly 70% of the Australian population will suffer of this epidemic by
2025 (Naughton, 2016), and this issue is costing annually more than $ 55 billion in terms
of loss of productivity, health system cost and carer cost (Australia Bureau of statistics,
2013). To understand its cause, it is essential mention some human behaviours such as
sedentary lifestyle, junk food consumption or stress. This research seeks to understand
the consume behaviour of Australian families at food courts, to identify patterns that can
impact the development of bad habits in early australian generations.

2. background information

Name Date of observation Time of observation Place of observation

Saturday 20/08/2016 Garden City
Fang Tang Sunday 21/08/2016 11:30am13:oopm Garden City
Xueting Li Saturday 20/08/2016 16:0019:00pm Sunnybank
Princy Jadeja Wednesday 24/08/2016 1 pm 3 pm Carendale

Timetable

Food courts is a mixed place, which provide different style food, and it attracts many
people form different countries sit here to choose food for lunch or dinner, so it is a good
place to observe the customer behavior. In additional, at weekend, parents always take
their children to food courts, which is convenient to observe the difference behavior
between mother and father, and get more information to know the factors that affect the
customer behavior.

The way of data collection mainly comes from the former research and this observation.
The former researches provide a basic understanding and some useful points about how
to observe the customer behavior. From the observation, about the majority of parents
take their children look around to compare different food, 30% parents just pay more
attention on the fast food, and they were waiting in line to check-out and other fathers or
mothers sit here and discuss with other children.

Research objectives:
The reason why parents choose fast food at food courts
Whether culture has a significant influence on customer behavior
personality traits

Findings
The reason for choose fast food
From the observation, most parents prefer to fast food for themselves and children, such
as KFC, Hungry Jacks, there are several reasons about why the majority customers
choose fast food, including the price, convenient, or follow others, which are associated
with motivation. According to Sheth, et al (1999), customer demands and customer
motivation are the main factors that affect he customer behavior, and motivation is from
the demands. When parents searched food for lunch or dinner, this is their physiological
need, but they make decision to purchase fast food is depend on motivation, therefore,
they would like to consider the price, and advertisements or just follow other people.
The impact of culture on customer behavior
Culture is an important factor that affect customer behavior, and people from different
countries, which is difficult to get enough information to research and should spend much
time to understanding their behavior (Mattila, 1999). According the observation,
Australian parents always purchase fast food for the whole family, they chose the
different sets, including chips, burgers and soft drinks.However, Asian parents often think
fast food dont suitable for lunch or dinner, they would like to buy rice with vegetables or
noodle. In additional, Australian parents and Asian parents are all communicated with
their children, but they have different attitude, Australian parents respect the opinions of
childrenand make them have opportunities to choose the food they like, Asian parents
often think fast food isnt health and refuse.

Personality traits
In observation, there also have some difference among parents, for instance, some
mothers take their children look around and contact with staff or other customers to
know which food is popular, but others just walked to the fast food check-out counter
directly, because many people are in waiting line, and some parents preferred to take
away for children and purchase other food for themselves. The personality traits have a
significant effect on customer behavior, there are several different types of customers,
such as extensive type is easily attracted by the advertisements and promotion, Fixed
customers are aways purchase the same products, random type is easily affected by the
environment and other customers behavior (Brown, Mowen, Donavan & Licata, 2002).

Research Opportunity
After analysis the data through a deep observation, there is one interesting question that
emerge in the research. It is evident that the target audience observed in this study
possess positive associations with colors, shapes, animals and cartoons. Therefore, it
was possible to conclude the preference of happy meals of McDonalds and chicken and
buffalo fries of Hungry jacks among them. These fast food organizations have been
persuaded kids through showy boxes. As a result, kids are adopting habits that might
have strong repercussions in their health condition. That is why, we would like to propose
a next research in order to observe whether this trend persist in organic food (Showy
packing). it is believed that early age of life is ideal to establish habits that might persist
during all life (Tips for helping kids, 2008), so if this trend persist with organic food
would be possible adopt it to change bad eating habits.

Marketing Implications
It is a very tough task to get a best suitable marketing implictaion for this problem, as we
have seen above that this is not just a matter of recent times. We observe obesity over
decades and to get a solution we can have intervention combined wih social marketting,
mass media, counselling for weight loss programs that could help overweight issue (The
dutch national plan of action)

Conclusion
Through analysis the observation of customer behavior, we would like to be in support of
World health organization, who suggests healthier food consumptions, have areas of
physical activities, limit advertisements of some food to children, give them good
enviornment at school, help them develop healthy eating habits from childhood. (World
health organization)

Reference
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