Understanding Consumers of Food Products provides a standard reference for all those in the food industry concerned with product development and regulation.

Features of Understanding Consumers of Food Products:

• develops an understanding of buyer behavior to assist in developing successful products
• recognizes the diversity between consumers and shows how to cater for their needs
• covers cultural and individual differences in food choice
• discusses public health and methods to change consumers’ preferences for unhealthy foods

Part 1 begins with a comprehensive introduction and analysis of the key drivers of consumer food choices, such as the environment and sensory product features. Part 2 examines the role of consumers' attitudes towards quality and marketing, and their views on food preparation and technology. Part 3 covers cultural and individual differences in food choice as well as addressing potential 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 4. The final section concludes with advice on developing coherent safety policies and the consumers' responsibility for food production and consumption.

Contents

Part 1: Key Influences on Consumer Food Choice

Food choice: an introduction

• Intake versus preference
• Motivations, frames of reference and the psychological categorization of potential foods
• Preference versus liking
• The opportunities for choice
• Situating the person in the food choice situation: temporal perspectives
• Biological, cultural and psychological (individual) influences
• Stable features: demographic characteristics and traits
• Momentary features: state variables
• Features of foods that influence food choice: the person-food interface
• An important and novel approach to the total food choice situation

Sensory influences on food choice and food intake

• Sensory perception, preference and food intake
• Development and stability of food preferences
• Dynamics of liking; sensory specific satiety and boredom
• Sensory preferences and food intake in children and the elderly
• Sensory perception and preferences in relation to obesity

The impact of context and environment on consumer food choice

• How context/environment is studied: laboratory versus natural studies
• Contextual variables
• Meal context: putting variables together

Theories of food choice development

• The importance of models of food choice development
• Learning theories
• Motivation theories
• Cognitive theories
• Validity of measurement methods
• Integration of the theoretical approaches

Perception of risk, benefit and trust associated with consumer food choice

• Research into consumer food risk perceptions
• Implications for food risk communication and public involvement in policy development
• Implications for risk management

Part 2: product Attributes and Consumer Food Choice

Branding and labeling of food products

• The role of brands in the consumer decision process
• The brand and its sources of value
• Brand management
• Labeling

How consumers perceive food quality

• Defining food quality
• Five propositions on how consumers perceived food quality
• The total food quality model

Consumer attitudes towards convenience foods

• Definitions of convenience and convenience foods
• Consumer forces driving the convenience food market
• Usefulness of lifestyles in understanding demand for convenience: food-related lifestyle
• Food-related lifestyle research in Ireland and Great Britain
• Convenience food lifestyle segmentation in Great Britain
• Segmentation and product development for convenience foods

Outsourcing meal preparation

• Literature and conceptual model
• Data and methods
• Results

Consumer attitudes to food innovation and technology

• Methods and models for analysing consumer attitudes to food innovation and technology
• Outline of consumer attitudes to food innovation and technology
• Understanding consumer choice
• Understanding consumer attitudes to innovation and technology for food product development

Consumer attitudes towards organic foods

• The expanding organic market; consumer led or product driven?
• Factors influencing organic purchase
• The price premium

Part 3: Diversity in Consumer food Choice: Cultural and Individual Difference

Life experience and demographic variables influencing food preferences: the case of the US

• Measuring and defining demographics and life experiences
• Measuring and defining food preference
• U.S demographics and food preferences: past current and projected trends
• Implications for food preferences and product development

Cross-cultural dimensions in food choice: Europe

• The importance of understanding cross-cultural dimensions in food choice
• Cross-cultural dimensions of healthiness and food choice
• Cross cultural dimensions of food choice
• Cross-cultural dimensions of other factors in food choice
• Understanding cross-cultural dimensions in food choice for food product development

Gender differences in food choice

• Food choice and consumer health
• Methodological considerations for gender differences in food choice
• Understanding gender differences in food choice for food product development

Children and food choice

• Importance of understanding children’s food choices
• Physiological influences on food choice
• Mechanisms involved in the acquisition of food preference
• Stages of acquisition of food liking in children
• Parental and other social influences on food choice
• Extrinsic influences on food choice
• Understanding children and food choice for food product development

Understanding Asian consumers of food products

• Principles of cross-cultural data collection
• The importance of culture
• Eastern philosophy and religion
• Diet – health beliefs (food as medicine)
• Cultural flavour principles
• Factors affecting food choice in Asian consumers
• Genetics
• Sensory perception and preference
• Predicting consumer behaviour
• Guide to undertaking Asian consumer research

Part 4: Consumers, Food and Health

Liking, wanting and eating: drivers of food choice and intake obesity

• Terminology: liking, desire and preference
• Obesity, food liking and choice
• ‘Palatability’ and food intake
• Food ‘wanting’ and intake
• Behavioural discrimination of food liking and wanting in (obese) humans

Consumer attitudes towards functional foods

• Functional foods and their role in diet
• Functional foods – a new category of products or new alternatives within existing product categories
• Acceptability
• Implications for developing and marketing functional foods

The priorities of health and wellness shoppers around the globe

• Study background
• Why shoppers choose the foods they eat
• The ‘health active’ shopper
• Segmenting health active shoppers

Consumers, communication and food allergy

• Communication needs
• Mitigation strategies
• Case study on the application of genetic modification for allergy prevention
• Ethical issues regarding different mitigation strategies

Consumers of food products, domestic hygiene and public health

• Consumer food safety research
• Consumers’ knowledge of food hygiene
• Consumers’ attitudes to food hygiene in the home
• Consumer hygiene behaviour
• Changing attitudes and behaviours

Changing unhealthy food choices

• Importance of changing unhealthy consumer food choices
• Factors inhibiting healthy food choices
• Mechanisms to change unhealthy food choices
• Implications for food product development

Part 5: Consumer Attitude, Food Policy and Practice

Social factor and food choice: consumption as practice

• Food consumption: from individual choice to social practices
• Food consumption as sets of practices
• Eating as a practice
• De-structuration of contemporary eating practices
• Norms and expectations: the notion of a proper meal

Developing a coherent European food safety policy: the challenge of value-based conflicts to EU food safety governance

• The three levels of risk debates
• Divergent notions of nature as primary drivers of public food risk controversies
• Regulatory and institutional reforms at EU-level: indirect responses to third level concerns
• Some suggestions for making value conflicts operational for food-risk management

Science, society and food policy

• Human ‘well-being’ or human progress
• How to approach societal change
• The challenge to policy makers
• The challenge of changing perceptions of acceptable risk
• Citizens input to the decision-making process

Planned promotion of healthy eating to improve population health

• A simple model for planned promotion of population health
• The epidemiological analysis: a selection of issues in diet, nutrition and population health
• Determinants of healthy food choice
• Interventions to promote healthy eating

Public engagement in food policy

• The issue of public engagement in food policy
• The concept of public involvement
• Ways of involving the public in policy formation
• Advantages and disadvantages of public engagement

Food, citizens and market: the quest for responsible consuming

• Background of consumer concerns
• The distinction between consumer and citizen
• Different consumer concerns
• Trust: the need for a reliable answer
• Have consumers a responsibility for public goods?
• Looking behind double standards
• A quest for responsible consuming

The ethics of food production and consumption

• The importance of ethical considerations in food choice
• Current consumer attitudes towards ethics of food: some trends
• Ethical arguments against and in favour of consumer’s responsibilities
• Ethics of consumer concerns
• Dilemmas and barriers which prevent the food sector restructuring itself according to ethically acceptable measures
• Implications for food product development: representatives, transparency (labeling), fair taxation and pricing
• Diversification of food, farming and styles

Index

click here to see books • videos • cd-roms of related interest