benefits, the influence of friends, flavor and tastes, vogue
and fashion, effect of alertness and refreshment, sales and
advertisement, beauty benefits, religious beliefs, and atmosphere
and environment. Demographic data and items
concerning consuming frequency of tea and coffee are
also included.
The customers frequenting in teatime and coffee
shops in Kaohsiung and those shopping nearby were targeted
as the sample subject for the study. Twelve teatime
or coffee shops (see Table 6) that had more than two
branches where both tea and coffee beverages were available
were randomly chosen. The questionnaires reached to
a total of 322 sampled subjects. We obtained three hundred
sixteen valid questionnaires; however, six invalid
responses were discarded from the analysis.
4. Findings and Discussion
The presentation of the results and discussion proceeds
with the findings from the questionnaire survey for
evidence for the study’s research inquiries.
4.1 Do Most People in Taiwan Choose Coffee or Tea for
the Afternoon Teatime?
Does the demographic information influence significantly
the choice of the respondents in the decisionmaking?
The background information of the subject included:
gender, age, occupation, incomes and frequency of having
teatime (see Table 1).
The frequency of participants’ teatime habits was explored;
it was found that a majority of 50.9% had teatime
less than three times a week while 27.5% engaged in this
activity occasionally. Only a minority (7.6%) had teatime
every day, whereas approximately fourteen percent of the
participants had teatime more than three times a week.
Informal interviews also revealed that those questioned
might not have a habit of teatime every week, but that
they would if someone invited them, indicating that the
influence of friends would be strong.
To explore the relationships between the demographic
variables, correlation analyses (see Table 2) were
applied. The result showed that the male respondents were
older than the female respondents (p=.014). Males were
higher in their income earning than females (p=.002). It
was also males who were involved in teatime activity
more frequently (p=.002), and the respondents who were
older were at a higher level of income, instead of those
who were younger (p=.000).
In order to find the differences among respondent
subgroups based on occupation in relation to their age and
income level, chi-squared tests were pursued. As revealed
in Table 3, office workers across all age subgroups, except