Food Experience and Intention to Visit a Cuisine's Country of Origin: Evidence from Korean Cuisine Consumers in Malaysia

This study examines whether four dimensions of food experience are associated with Malaysian consumers' intention to visit the country of origin of a foreign cuisine. Building on the food-experience framework used by Pu et al. (2024), the study focuses on sensory, affective, behavioural, and intellectual experiences of Korean cuisine and models their direct relationships with intention to visit Korea. A cross-sectional survey produced 391 valid responses. The data were analysed using reliability analysis, Pearson correlations, and multiple linear regression. All four food-experience dimensions were positively correlated with visit intention. When entered simultaneously in the regression model, behavioural food experience (β = .181, p = .023) and intellectual food experience (β = .162, p = .030) were significant positive predictors, whereas sensory (β = .104, p = .237) and affective experience (β = .112, p = .225) were not. The model explained 25.8% of the variance in visit intention. These findings indicate that the four dimensions do not contribute equally to unique explained variance in this Malaysian sample. They also support further testing of evaluative mechanisms such as food attitude, cuisine image, and perceived authenticity rather than assuming that sensory and emotional responses translate directly into origin-country travel intention. For practice, Korean destination marketing can combine strong sensory presentation with participatory and culturally informative food experiences that encourage active engagement and learning.

Korean cuisine, food experience, travel intention, culinary tourism, country of origin

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