Understanding Consumers of Food Products

Lynn Frewer, Hans Van Trijp

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781845690090
• eBook ISBN: 9781845692506
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Ciencia de los alimentos

In order for food businesses, scientists and policy makers to develop successful products, services and policies, it is essential that they understand food consumers and how they decide which products to buy. Food consumer behaviour is the result of various factors, including the motivations of different consumers, the attributes of specific foods, and the environment in which food choices occur. Recognising diversity between individual consumers, different stages of life, and different cultural contexts is increasingly important as markets become increasingly diverse and international.The book begins with a comprehensive introduction and analysis of the key drivers of consumer food choices, such as the environment and sensory product features. Part two examines the role of consumers' attitudes towards quality and marketing, and their views on food preparation and technology. Part three covers cultural and individual differences in food choice as well as addressing potentially influential factors such as age and gender. Important topics such as public health and methods to change consumers' preferences for unhealthy foods are discussed in part four. The final section concludes with advice on developing coherent safety policies and the consumers' responsibility for food production and consumption.Understanding consumers of food products is a standard reference for all those in the food industry concerned with product development and regulation. - Develop an understanding of buyer behaviour to assist developing successful products - Recognise the diversity between consumers and learn how to cater for their needs - Covers cultural and individual differences in food choice

Part I

Key influences on consumer food choice

1

Food choice: an introduction

P. Rozin University of Pennsylvania, USA

For the readers of this book, or even their acquaintances, human food choice probably brings to mind something like the following scenario: a person is faced with some foods, and has the option of trying them and choosing one or more to consume. In fact, that is a rare event in our species. A more generous set of images of food choice might be the following:

1. standing in front of an array of products in a supermarket, grocery store, or more traditional market

2. sitting at a restaurant and looking over the menu choices.

Note that in neither of these situations is a person actually tasting foods and deciding which one is to be selected. Tasting and choosing occurs in two other situations:

3. eating at home, if there is an array of food, one might taste a few of the options, and decide to consume more of some rather than others

4. in the laboratory or in communal food tastings, an individual may try two or more versions of a product, and report which one tastes best.

All four of these cases involve food choice. However, most food choice, and almost all food intake in the world occurs in situations other than these. Minimal amounts of food are eaten while one is shopping (1) or perusing a menu (2). At most home meals in the world (3), there is virtually no choice on the occasion about what is to be consumed. Laboratory food choices or communal tastings (4) are very rare events around the globe. In short, our vignettes of food choice are the tip of a food choice ‘iceberg,’ and an even smaller part of all of the occasions in which food is consumed in the world. We must remember that less than 20% of the people in the world live in what are often called ‘developed’ countries. Many people in the world, especially in less developed countries, grow or raise some of their own food. Eating at restaurants is a relatively rare event in the less developed world. And home meals in the less developed world do not usually include choices.

Even in the developed world, many situations in which food is consumed involve choice only in the sense that there is an option of whether to eat or not. One of the major aspects of food choice has to do with the number of alternatives. At the limits, there is one, with the choice of whether to eat/purchase or not, and at the other extreme are the 50+ flavors in some ice cream parlors, or the 50+ varieties of a particular type of product available in some supermarkets.

Consumption and purchase provide the two major frames that encompass most cases of explicit food choice. Purchase can be in a market or restaurant. In the purchase situation, choice is usually made without direct experience of the products. It may well be that true choice (more than one alternative) occurs more frequently in the purchase than the consumption situation.

Food choice presumes some sort of temporal and spatial unit (Rozin and Tuorila, 1993; Meiselman, 1996). The normal or basic unit is the dish or serving, as when we decide whether to have string beans or broccoli, a medium rare or well-done steak, tea or coffee. But in restaurants we often choose platters (a specified meat dish, with two designated vegetables), and we sometimes even choose a whole meal combination. The meal can be considered an alternative to the dish as the fundamental unit of consumption and food choice (Meiselman, 2000; Pliner and Rozin, 2000). Rarely do we actually choose which bite to take, as in a tasting or when offered a wide variety of foods. More critically, in the developed world, one might make ‘indulgent’ choices on weekends or special occasions, to be ‘compensated’ or ‘neutralized’ by more ‘prudent’ choices for the normal weekday meals (Sobal et al., 2006). For the most part, food choices are made of what we will call dishes, and that is the framework we will presume for much of the treatment of choice in this chapter.

1.1 Intake versus preference

Our food choices, on the spot, as it were, are one of the determinants of what and how much food is eaten by our species. From the perspectives of economics, health, and commercial interests, the major question is, ‘who eats what, and how much of it?’ The relevant data come in a form such as ‘the average Irish person consumes x kg of potatoes in one year.’ A complete dietary survey, or a determination of all human food consumed by a group has almost all of the important economic information, and most of the health information. World-wide, we find that by weight, rice and wheat are the two most widely consumed foods. Important as this information is, it raises few questions for the behavioral scientist; it says people eat what is available, what they have traditionally eaten, and what they can afford.

These are measures of intake. They are very relevant to health, and obviously of direct relevance to the study of obesity. Behavioral scientists are often more interested in preference, the choice of A rather than B when both are available. It is natural to presume, in the present context, that A and B are foods, like broccoli and asparagus, and that the choice has to do with which one to eat. But for some purposes, it is worth considering a broader frame for the preference for A over B. Suppose A is broccoli, and B is watching a favorite television program, or a two minute massage, or a bottle of body lotion. People often make this type of choice, but for convenience, we virtually always frame choices as between comparable entities, in this case, between things to eat.

1.2 Motivations, frames of reference, and the psychological categorization of potential foods

There is yet another limitation to what we might call the frame of reference of preference. Consider the choice between eating broccoli or paper. Now note that the answer here would be easy and virtually universal, but reversed if we were choosing what to write on, rather than what to eat. So, in framing preferences about food, we assume that the choices are among available and generally acceptable foods in the context in which eating is the issue at hand. But the paper example is instructive, because prior to making a judgment about what to eat, in a restaurant, or at home, we have already circumscribed the relevant domain of entities to what we might call ‘edibles.’ Now this is psychologically interesting, because it isn’t obvious how any human being (or any animal) makes the fundamental distinction between the edible and the inedible. Human infants will put anything that fits into their mouth, and will swallow a wide range of things that adults would not consume (e.g., small coins, paper balls, feces) (Rozin et al., 1986). So, in a sense, the first and most basic categorization that a human or other generalist animal makes, perhaps the most important categorization in early life, is what is potentially edible and what is not. We don’t know how animals make this critical discovery. For humans it is easier, because the information is transmitted by parents and others, as a form of cultural wisdom. Paper, coins, wood and feces are just not food. The great majority of things we encounter in the modern world are inedible. We reject them as food not because we know they will taste bad, nor because we think they will harm us, but rather on ideational grounds; they are just not food. We can call this the fundamental distinction in food choice.

Our analysis of preferences led us to believe that there were three types of reasons for preferences and aversions (Rozin and Fallon, 1980). One was sensory/hedonic, most frequently, a reason based on flavor or texture, though sometimes on appearance. We classified foods that were accepted on these grounds as ‘good tastes,’ and those rejected on the same ground as ‘distastes’ (see Table 1.1). A clear example of a ‘good taste’ for Americans is chocolate. It is consumed almost entirely because of the sensory experience it provides. Common examples of ‘distastes’ for Americans include the frequent rejections by some of foods like Brussels sprouts, beer, anchovies or lima beans. A second reason for preference or aversion has to do with anticipated consequences. These often relate to health, but can also involve convenience or positive or negative relatively rapid postingestional consequences that may have minimal health influences. The category of food rejections based on anticipated consequences is particularly clear: these would be foods rejected because one might have an allergy to them, or based on beliefs about toxic effects of a particular food, or in a society in which obesity is frowned upon, foods that are high in fat and/or calories. We designated this category of foods as ‘dangerous.’ They are often appealing on sensory hedonic grounds, as for example, chocolate or ice cream for dieters. The opposite of ‘dangerous’ foods are ‘beneficial foods,’ consu...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright page
• Contributor contact details
• Preface
• Part I: Key influences on consumer food choice
• Part II: Product attributes and consumer food choice
• Part III: Diversity in consumer food choice: cultural and individual difference
• Part IV: Consumers, food and health
• Part V: Consumer attitude, food policy and practice
• Index