Who really values healthy food?
ISSN: 0007-070X
Article publication date: 12 October 2020
Issue publication date: 20 January 2021
Abstract
Purpose
When selecting manufactured foods, customers consider several product features. Given the contemporary trends of food consumption, the purpose of this paper is to determine the influence that some demographic and psychographic key variables have on the chances of a consumer belonging to a market segment characterised by health-related food preferences.
Design/methodology/approach
The food choice scale is revised to develop a multidimensional measure of the factors underlying consumer food choices. Data of 288 sampled consumers were used to validate the scale and to group consumers into four segments based on the value assigned to several food-product meta-attributes. Depending on these food choice values, the study identified four dissimilar clusters: utilitarian, protecting, toning and highly demanding.
Findings
Consumers use multiple attributes when choosing food products. However, emerging segments tend to prefer health-related attributes over utilitarian or conventional attributes, such as price, flavour or accessibility. The consumers of these segments tend to be older, more health conscious and more prone to psychological health risks.
Originality/value
Demographic and psychographic traits tend to drive trade-offs between health- and non-health-related attributes when considering food products. Several multivariate methodologies were innovatively coupled to characterize consumers based on their healthy food preferences and individual traits.
Keywords
Citation
Arroyo, P.E., Liñan, J. and Vera Martínez, J. (2021), "Who really values healthy food?", British Food Journal, Vol. 123 No. 2, pp. 720-738. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-04-2020-0328
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited