A study on dining-out trends using big data: Focusing on changes since COVID-19

This study examined consumers’ emotions and needs related to dining-out experiences before and during the COVID-19 crisis. This study identifies words closely associated with the keyword “dining-out” based on big data gleaned from social media and investigates consumers’ perceptions of dining-out and related issues before and after COVID-19. The research findings can be summarized as follows: In 2019, frequently appearing dining-related words were dining-out, family, famous restaurant, recommend, and dinner. In 2020, they were dining-out, family, famous restaurant, and Corona. The analysis results for the dining-out sentimental network based on 2019 data revealed discourses revolving around delicious, nice, and easily. For the 2020 data, discourses revolved around struggling, and, cautious. The analysis of consumers’ dining-out demand network for 2019 data showed discourses centered around reservation, famous restaurant, meal, order, and coffee. However, for 2020 data, discourses were formed around delivery, price, order, take-out, and social distance. In short, with the outbreak of the pandemic, delivery, takeout, and social distance emerged as new search words. In addition, compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic, a weakening trend in positive emotions and an increasing trend in negative emotions were detected after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic; specifically, fear was found to be the fear emotion.