During the last few decades the interest and demand for both healthy food and different beverages has increased the interest for healthy food and it is expected to continue increasing in the future. A strong reason for this is the desire among more and more people to live healthy and long lives. Because of this, the recent industry of functional foods has become increasingly popular as marketers aim to sell food products that can benefit a consumer’s health beyond a healthy or organic food products ability. “A functional food is, or appears similar to, a conventional food. It is part of a standard diet and is consumed on a regular basis, in normal quantities. It has proven health benefits…beyond its basic nutritional functions.” (Doyon and Labrecque 2008 pp.1147) In order for marketers to make the right marketing actions, a better understanding of consumer behaviour and attitudes towards functional food is needed. Without this information marketers will not be able to create effective marketing campaigns for functional food products. Consumer attitudes towards functional foods were looked at in four different factors/dimensions, reward, necessity, confidence and safety, and then each factors impact on consumer willingness to consume was measured.Purpose - The purpose of the study was to investigate consumer’s attitudes on functional foods and their willingness to consume functional foods.Method/Approach - A questionnaire was developed from a previous study (Lähteenmäki and Urala 2007) on consumer attitudes and their willingness to consume functional foods, using a combination of convenience sampling and judgment sampling.Findings- The data confirmed the results from previous studies that consumer attitudes play a role in impacting consumer willingness to consume functional foods, but also that the results cannot be generalized on all functional food groups or types.Conclusions – Each functional food category should be approached in a different way, from a marketing or advertising point of view and when marketing each functional food product. Different aspects e.g. Reward, necessity, confidence and safety should be highlighted for each individual food category in the packaging or advertisement to give the marketing strategy an advantage to increase consumer willingness to use that product. The study was found to collaborate with the previous studies conducted by Lähteenmäki and Urala (2007).Key Words – Attitudes, Consumer attitudes, Functional foods, Consumer behaviour
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-25950 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Somehagen, Jesper, Holmes, Charlton, Saleh, Rashed |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för marknadsföring (MF), Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för marknadsföring (MF), Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för marknadsföring (MF) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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