Characterisation of fresh fruit consumption in Spain based on food-related lifestyle

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe fresh fruit consumers in Spain according to their food-related lifestyle (FRL). Design/methodology/approach A random stratified sample of 500 people, representative of the persons responsible for household food purchasing and resident in Spain, was interviewed in 2017 using a revised and adapted version of the FRL instrument (Grunert et al., 1993). Questions about fruit purchasing criteria, consumption habits and demographics were also included. Factor and cluster analysis (Ward method) yielded four segments. Findings The segments identified are: “Total indifference (TI)”, small segment with disinterest in extra-domestic and social consumption, nutrition and innovation; “Little time to cook, concerned about nutrition and extra-domestic consumption (LICNE)”, the largest consumers of fresh fruit who show interest in nutrition and health, but no interest in the price of products, convenience foods or liking cooking; “Cooks and preference for natural products (COOKNAT)”, the largest segment, with a medium-high consumption of fresh fruits, who are related to cooking at home, natural products and a concern for the price-quality ratio; and “Unconcerned (UNC)” presents the lowest fresh fruit consumption and shows the lowest interest in natural products and some indifference to the other criteria. Originality/value The information obtained in this study gives interesting new insights for the marketing strategies of the fresh fruit suppliers to Spain and the Food and Public Health Administrations.

Psycho-Behavioural Segmentation in Food and Nutrition: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature

“…Study populations ranged from n = 73 to n = 3085 participants aged between 18 years and 85+ years. The majority of studies included both male and female participants (n = 28) [13,[26][27][28][32][33][34][35][36][37][39][40][41][42][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54], however one had females only [38], and one did not specify sex or gender [43]. The studies included were from a range of countries such as Australia (n = 4) [13,33,47,54], Chile (n = 3) [48][49][50], and Croatia (n = 2) [32,42], and were published in a range of journals from public health, nutrition, and social marketing disciplines.…”

“…The majority of studies (n = 22) recruited adult volunteers or did not specify whether participants were incentivised to complete the study [13,26,28,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]51,52], five studies paid or incentivised participants on completion of the study [27,47,53,54], and three studies recruited student samples from universities without stating whether they were incentivised or volunteers [48][49][50]. Inclusion criteria for the studies were variable, the most common criteria requiring participants to be at least 18 years old [26,34,35,37,42,44,46,47,[51][52][53][54].…”

“…All included studies used post-hoc segmentation, meaning segments were generated after data collection rather than pre-defined before the research study began. The number of segments varied between studies; most found three segments (n = 14) [26,28,33,36,38,40,41,[45][46][47]49,50,54], followed by four (n = 10) [27,32,34,35,39,43,44,48,53], two (n = 5) [13,28,37,51,52], and five (n = 1; Table 1) [42]. A majority of the studies (n = 24) used cluster analysis as their method of segmentation [13,[26][27][28][32][33][34][35][38][39][40][41][42][43]45,[47][48][49][50]…”

Mapping the Market Segments for the Consumers of Greek Cooperative Food Products

“…Cluster analysis has been used in many segmentation studies in the field of consumer food science, which has obtained meaningful results by using socioeconomic and demographic features [68]. However, food product choice is getting too complex to be exclusively explained by sociodemographic factors [69]. Thus, adding more complicated variables, such as consumers' values and attributes about products, could be useful when trying to group consumers into segments [67].…”

“…Three or four consumer segments are a typical result for consumer segmentation studies [67][68][69], which usually involves indifferent, dissatisfied, or even hater categorizations. On the other side, there are interested, involved, satisfied, seekers, or even lovers, while on the borderlines, there are groups of consumers who are ambivalent, unaware, and rational, and consumers in general who do not have not a clear and strong preference for the examined products, and consequently, their buying behavior is questionable.…”