Geographical region as a factor influencing consumers’ perception of functional food – case of Croatia

Abstract

Purpose – In recent years, consumers have developed an interest in the type and the quality of food they eat. As consumers’ opinion is very important in identifying development strategy for food industry it seems justified finding out if geographical region had an influence on consumers’ opinion. Furthermore, this is the topic that is still under researched. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ perception of functional food (FF) relative to geographical region. Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaire based survey was conducted on a representative national sample with participants aged 18 and older (n=687). Participants were divided according to their place of residence taking into account difference in dietary habits, which created two geographical sets: Coastal (Adriatic) Croatia and Continental Croatia. Data were analyzed using univariate statistics and multivariate analysis as exploratory factor analysis, cluster analysis and principal component analysis. Findings – The results indicate that Croatian consumers are familiar with the term “FF” and that there are significant differences between two geographical sets of respondents (Coastal Croatia and Continental Croatia) in their willingness to pay for FF. Furthermore, research showed that there is a general lack of confidence in the information provided on the product labels especially in the continental region. The results have shown that “taste” and “price quality ratio” are the most important features in choosing the FF and are equally important to the consumers’ in both geographical region. Practical implications – Research results indicate a need for development of consumers’ confidence and need to focus mainly on educating consumers in label comprehension. This is particularly true for the Continental Croatia. Targeted advertising should take into account consumers’ preferences, confidence and label comprehension according to their geographical regions. Originality/value – The case study represents consumers’ opinion coming from different geographical regions (Coastal Croatia and Continental Croatia) regarding FF. In this research the most important attributes in choosing the FF were extracted.

Emerging trends in European food, diets and food industry

“…In general, the effect is positive when a "natural" match between the carrier and the bioactive ingredient exists, whereas the effect is negative for "unnatural" matches, such as omega-3 added to yogurt (Bimbo, 2017). Taste and price quality ratio are important factors in consumers' choice of Ffs (GajdosKljusuric et al, 2015). Product's brand, packages' features and convenience affect positively consumers' choices for functional food products (Urala & Laatemaki, 2003).…”

Identifying objective quality attributes of functional foods

“…Badrie et al, 2007;Bazhan et al, 2017;Crofton et al, 2013) and consumer attitude (e.g. Kljusuric et al, 2015;Markovina et al, 2011;Rezai et al, 2017;Schnettler et al, 2015). The purposes of those studies are similar.…”

“…Armstrong et al, 2005;Bazhan et al, 2017;Gok and Ulu, 2018), knowledge (e.g. Arens, 2018;Hasnah Hassan, 2011;Kljusuric et al, 2015;Lu, 2015), perception (e.g. Badrie et al, 2007;Bazhan et al, 2017;Crofton et al, 2013) and consumer attitude (e.g.…”

“…However, previous studies have found that some market segments voiced concerns over the health claims and distrust towards manufacturers (Bazhan et al, 2017), and compared with organic foods, the health benefits of functional foods were often discounted (Gineikiene et al, 2017). Some consumers opined that alterations to foods had compromised their taste (Gray et al, 2003;Kljusuric et al, 2015;Kumar et al, 2017).…”

Characterisation and composition identification of waste-derived fuels obtained from municipal solid waste using thermogravimetry: A review

“…Higher variability of SRF/RDF composition is observed among the recent studies noted in Table 1 (over the last ten years) rather than between Vainikka et al (2011) and Table 1 . This might be attributed to the different quality of SRF samples depending on the type of waste input and multi-stage processing configurations ( Sarc et al, 2019 ), seasonality ( Beckmann et al, 2012 ), geographical location ( Kljusuric et al, 2015 ), off-taker specifications ( Sarc et al, 2019 ), and/or the potential bias in composition determination. ‘Fines’, consisting of several materials with particle size usually defined by the cumulative passing <15 mm or less, constituting soil, dust, plastic fragments, glass, ferrous, organic, lythoid, ferrous, and other fragments ( Di Maria et al, 2013 ; Velis, 2010 ) can considerably affect the quality of SRF/RDF ( Nasrullah et al, 2016 ).…”