To significantly reduce the volumes of food currently wasted in industrialized countries, tackling food waste on the household level is paramount. While awareness campaigns and economic incentives are important measures, it is crucial to look beyond individual decision making and scrutinize how contextual factors frame consumer lifestyles in ways that intensify the issue of food going to waste. This paper addresses the role of material contexts-in particular, infrastructures and Technologies- in the shaping of food shopping and storing practices and thus consumer food waste. It presents an in-depth, qualitative study with 24 Austrian households, conducted from November 2016 to February 2017. Data were collected through food waste diaries, semi-structured interviews and a total of 16 focus group discussions. In line with other studies, we find that food waste is a largely unintended outcome of entangled daily routines revolving around food, such as meal planning, grocery shopping and food storing. The characteristics of food retail infrastructures-in terms of accessibility, density and type-shape these routines and thus potentially influence excess food purchases. Food storing practices as well depend on the characteristics of domestic infrastructures and co-evolve with technologies used for storing food. Unraveling the interconnectivity between material contexts and household food practices can inform policy, product design and food retail development and thus has implications for reducing consumer food waste.

Désormais partie intégrante de notre quotidien, le numérique figure au cœur d’un nombre croissant d'activités. Les pratiques de magasinage n’échappent pas à la règle. Si les recherches en marketing qui explorent ce phénomène sont nombreuses, notre examen de la littérature met en évidence deux écueils récurrents : d’un côté, une tendance à morceler le numérique en mettant l’emphase sur une technologie spécifique et, de l’autre, une mise en retrait de la façon dont les individus se saisissent de ces ressources et les intègrent à leurs habitudes d’achat. Dans ce contexte, nous nous appuyons sur la sociologie des usages et, plus particulièrement, sur le concept de numérimorphose, pour donner du corps à l’usage des ressources digitales et apprécier les transformations engendrées par leur intégration plus ou moins durable aux pratiques de magasinage. Compte tenu de la diversité des pratiques d’achat, nous prenons le parti de nous focaliser sur une entrée empirique relativement peu abordée en marketing : les courses. Afin de nous positionner au plus près des individus lorsqu’ils assurent l’approvisionnement de leur foyer et rendre compte de leurs comportements effectifs, nous optons pour une méthodologie qualitative. Notre analyse aboutit à la mise en évidence d’un cadre analytique pour apprécier la numérimorphose des courses qui se décline sur trois axes : (1) le cadre communautaire qui aborde les courses en tant que pratique collective ; (2) le cadre spatiotemporel qui aborde les courses en tant que pratique située ; (3) le cadre marchand qui aborde les courses à partir de la relation entre l’offre et la demande. / Deeply embedded in our daily lives, digital technology appears as an essential component of our era. In our mind, this phenomenon is largely addressed by marketing research but remains affected by several limits. On the one hand, we notice that most researches focus on a specific technology. This results in a partial approach of practice’s digital shift. On the other hand, we argue that researches approaching digital shift in a larger scope fail to give social thickness to the use of technology. With this in mind, we adhere to the principles of « sociologie des usages » theoretical framework to enlighten the integration of digital devices into shopping practices. In order to face theoretical challenges related to the practice’s digital shift we introduce the concept of digimorphosis in marketing research. Given the diversity of shopping practices, we propose an application of the concept to grocery shopping. In order to position ourselves as close as shoppers, we opt for a qualitative methodological positioning. Here as well, the challenges related to the digital shift require reconsidering the techniques traditionally used to collect data, bring new ones and combines them to enrich our understanding of shopper’s behavior in a connected world. Our analysis leads to the identification of a three axes analytical framework designed to appreciate the digimorphosis of shopping practices: (1) the community axe which address shopping as a collective practice; (2) the spatio-temporal axe which address shopping as a situated practice; (3) the mercantile axe which address shopping as a practice based on value creation.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:12:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcelo Castaneda de Araujo.pdf: 2211859 bytes, checksum: ed2e943bbeb885785f5e8072e3e1d4ea (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-03-08 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The practices that may characterize a potential greenerism and politicization of consumption arise from the perception of the impact of standards and levels of consumption in the global environment. From the 1990s, certain practices of consumption started being socially and environmentally responsible. This research had as general objective to reflect on greenering processes and the politicization of consumption and everyday life in the contemporary Brazilian society, emphasizing the multifaceted field of food. The shopping practices of organic food, especially from those individuals who are not organized collectively in social movements configure the object of the research. The main reason for its development was the gap in Brazilian social science in relation to studies on the consumers perspectives while social actors and the different uses they perform on their practices of consumption, especially the political use. The main questions included issues such as: Are the shopping practices of organic food perceived and experienced by consumers as a form of political action? In what ways do consumers deal with the discourses and responsibility charging for the environmental crisis? When seeking to answer them through an ethnography of the shopping practices of organic food in the city of Nova Friburgo/RJ and conducting in depth interviews with consumers, this research has identified an increased political autonomy of the individual against the public and private spheres, which occurs in the field of consumption. The shop of organic food is perceived and used as a repertoire of "romantic-individualistic" political action in the public sphere. These practices prove themselves capable of feeding bridges to citizenship, enabling the emergence of new collective engagement periods in a context of social reflexivity and global risk society. / As pr?ticas que podem caracterizar uma poss?vel ambientaliza??o e politiza??o do consumo surgem com a percep??o do impacto dos padr?es e n?veis de consumo no meio ambiente global. Com isso, a partir da d?cada de 1990, determinadas pr?ticas de consumo passaram a ser reconhecidas como sendo social e ambientalmente respons?veis. A pesquisa teve como objetivo geral refletir sobre os processos de ambientaliza??o e politiza??o do consumo e da vida cotidiana no ?mbito da sociedade brasileira contempor?nea, enfatizando o multifacetado campo da alimenta??o. Desta forma, as pr?ticas de compra de alimentos org?nicos, especialmente daqueles indiv?duos que n?o est?o organizados coletivamente em movimentos sociais configuraram o objeto de pesquisa. A principal justificativa para seu desenvolvimento era a lacuna existente nas ci?ncias sociais brasileiras no que se refere aos estudos sobre as perspectivas dos consumidores enquanto atores sociais e os diferentes usos que fazem de suas pr?ticas de consumo, em especial seu uso pol?tico. Os problemas centrais inclu?am quest?es como: as pr?ticas de compra de alimentos org?nicos s?o percebidas e experimentadas pelos consumidores como uma forma de a??o pol?tica? De que maneiras os consumidores lidam com os discursos e cobran?as de responsabilidades pela crise ambiental? Ao procurar respond?-las, atrav?s de uma etnografia das pr?ticas de compra de alimentos org?nicos na cidade de Nova Friburgo/RJ e da realiza??o de entrevistas em profundidade com consumidores, a pesquisa identificou um aumento da autonomia pol?tica individual no encontro das esferas p?blica e privada que se d? no campo do consumo. A compra de alimentos org?nicos ? percebida e utilizada como um repert?rio de a??o pol?tica rom?nticoindividualista na esfera p?blica. Estas pr?ticas se mostram capazes de alimentar pontes com a cidadania, abrindo possibilidades para a emerg?ncia de novos per?odos de engajamento coletivo em um contexto de reflexividade social e sociedade de risco global.

Food production has been shown to have considerable negative impacts on the environment. A means to reduce this is to choose organic products when shopping for food. Through the case of the EcoPanel, a web application prototype that visualises the organic proportion of the household’s food shopping, the thesis explores the intersection between design, reflection and sustainable food shopping practices. In order to contextualise the role of the EcoPanel, the text discusses the concept of food shopping practice, both from the perspective of social practice theory (SPT), and the more focused food choice perspective. The studies show that it is fundamental to understand the complexity of choosing food, and the habitual aspect of practice, in order to understand the role of reflection in food shopping practice, and consequently the role of a tool for reflective decision-making, like the EcoPanel. We have used a research through design approach to develop the EcoPanel prototype. In an iterative process we probed how the EcoPanel could be designed to be as relevant and accessible for the users as possible. Essential in the process were the iterative user feedback sessions. The way in which the users answered the questions from the sessions formed the guiding principles for the development of the design. A central question in the thesis is to explore in what ways the users’ access to their individual sustainable grocery data provided by the EcoPanel affects their food shopping practices. The studies include monitoring sixty-five users of the EcoPanel over five months, a survey regarding aspects of lifestyle and attitudes to food, and interviews with ten of the users. The long-term study shows an increased organic purchase level (17%) for the EcoPanel users in comparison to the reference group. We also see that when the users receive feedback on their organic food purchases through the EcoPanel, they can make more reflective decisions. This is shown to be highly relevant and creates meaning for the users in several different ways. From this result, in combination with the result of the long-term study, we can conclude that the EcoPanel contributes with support for more sustainable food practices. The last question in the thesis is to understand how SPT can be useful for design practice. SPT shows a view that goes beyond the traditional interaction perspective, and points to the importance of approaching complex issues, such as sustainability challenges, with an awareness that also includes social and cultural aspects of the context. As well as this view being pertinent when approaching sustainability issues, it also provides value to designers in their emerging roles of dealing with more socially embedded concerns, such as social innovation and design for public policies. / <p>QC 20160311</p>