Consumer psychology for food choices: a systematic review and research directions

Abstract

Purpose Consumer food behavior has received considerable attention from marketers, researchers and regulators. With the rising obesity epidemic worldwide, the existing literature and previous reviews provide a limited understanding of consumers’ unhealthy food choices. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate consumer psychology for food choices in terms of mental processes and behavior. Design/methodology/approach This systematic literature review analyzed 84 research papers accessed from the Web of Science database and selected high-quality marketing journals. A detailed analysis identified themes arranged in an organizing framework. Gaps, limitations, convergence and ambivalent findings were noted to derive future research directions. Findings Major themes in the literature include food marketers’ actions (food stimuli and context), environmental influence (micro and macro) and consumer psychology and personal factors, leading to food choice related decisions. The antecedents and consequences of food choice healthiness are summarized. Several studies converged on the benefits of health motivations and goals, food literacy and customizing meals bottom-up on food choice healthiness. Research limitations/implications This review helps researchers gain state-of-the-art understanding on consumer psychology for food choices. It presents ambivalent and converging findings, gaps and limitations of extant research to inform researchers about issues that need to be addressed in the literature. This review presents future research questions to guide research on critical issues. This literature review contributes to marketing domain literature on consumer’s food well-being and overall well-being. Practical implications This review offers actionable insights for food marketers, policymakers and nongovernmental organizations to drive consumer demand for healthier foods, focusing on food labeling, food environment, message framing and raising consumer awareness. Originality/value This review offers current understanding of consumer psychology for food choices focusing on healthiness, an aspect lacking in previous literature reviews.

Turkish Consumers’ Purchase Motivation towards Erzurum Stuffed-Kadayif with Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) at the Dessert Retailers

“…Especially, the local food image and cultural values impacting the consumers' purchase decisions are shaped by appealing motives of the product, price, and communication mixes under cultural integration. Previous researches also informed that the food image and value under culinary culture linked firstly with the various combinations of the major extrinsic product motivation drivers on consumers' local food purchase decisions (Chong et al, 2022;Khan and Pandey, 2022;Liu et al, 2022;Topcu, 2022;Giannoutsos et al, 2023;Kaçmaz et al, 2023;Kumar et al, 2023).…”

“…Of these studies related to the food image and value on consumers' local food purchase motivation, Kushwah et al (2019), Akay (2021), Kadirhanoğulları et al (2021), , Khan and Pandey (2022), Apak and Gürbüz (2023), Huddleston et al (2023), Kumar et al (2023) and Perumal et al (2023) highlighted that the cultural attitude, the region of origin, food brand, advertising, food packaging and labelling, optimum pricing, social media platform, consumption ethically and culinary culture, social responsibility consciousness affected positively consumer perceived local food image and cultural appreciation (subjective value) linking with the cultural integration on their local food buying intentions at the food stores or online platforms, and thus there was a strong correlation among local food image and cultural appreciation under the cultural integration, and it could be also provided a major contribution to sustainable food consumption with the local or the region of origin in the context of cultural integration.…”