Surfacing consumer psychosensory perceptions of a nonendemic food: The case of coffee in a tea culture

Abstract

Introducing a culturally unfamiliar food to a new market requires understanding local meaning. Local psychological associations with nonendemic food often remain masked from common research methods such as surveys and home interviews. We apply a localized adaptation of the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique to explore consumer psychosensory perceptions of nonendemic foods—the contemporary phenomenon of coffee's acceptance in Taiwan's tea‐dominated market. A purposive sample of 10 trial and 20 full study participants, avid coffee drinkers, ranged in age from 19 to 52. Participants were supplied with single‐use film‐based cameras that they carried about in everyday life to snap photos later used in structured interviews. Over 120 concepts were generated from a total count of 95,472 transcribed words. This resulted in six top‐level categories: emotions/feelings, flavor/taste/color, cultural integration, nature, eat/drink, and coffee type organized in hierarchies of meaning. Participants consistently associated coffee with the desire for relaxation, enjoyment, and nature. Practical Applications The revealed psychometric themes unearthed in this study suggest practical applications including informing market positioning segmentation strategies. In Taiwan's tea culture, findings show coffee plays a strong metaphorical role in consumers' psychology of escape and retreat from hectic daily life. Marketers of coffee should align with this theme rather than the standard Western messaging of energy and motivation boosting. This local metaphor provides coffee with a better opportunity for market adoption. Building on locally meaningful representations is key to market penetration and a strategy of glocalization that is fundamental to marketing of nonendemic food products. Successful diffusion of a nonendemic food product begins from a core group of dedicated loyal users, like the participants in the current study. By understanding the values these consumers associate with the nonendemic product, marketing managers can identify and select key features and meanings to emphasize in the product's design and marketing communications.

Reassuringly British: consumer engagement with domestic products and brands

“…Many studies within the disciplines of marketing and consumer psychology attempt to provide evidence that consumer behaviour, being the decision-making process of the consumer and their subsequent evaluation of products or services, can be influenced by past or present sentiments or events related to the nation-state, whether political, economic or social (Loxton et al, 2020;Deli-Gray et al, 2013;Viktoria Rampl et al, 2012). Whilst consumer attitudes towards domestic or imported goods are often believed to evolve slowly (Karimov and El-Murad, 2019), perceptions of a country, its people and its products can evolve quickly in response to rapidly changing sociopolitical or socio-economic actions, thereby rapidly changing consumer behaviours towards goods originating where periods of turmoil are occurring (Caskey et al, 2020). Such consumer affinity or animosity towards domestic or foreign products and the factors that facilitate them has received considerable attention within literature over time (e.g.…”

“…, 2012). Whilst consumer attitudes towards domestic or imported goods are often believed to evolve slowly (Karimov and El-Murad, 2019), perceptions of a country, its people and its products can evolve quickly in response to rapidly changing socio-political or socio-economic actions, thereby rapidly changing consumer behaviours towards goods originating where periods of turmoil are occurring (Caskey et al. , 2020).…”

Geographical indication labelling of food and behavioural intentions

“…First, meta-analytical research shows that most studies of GIL were conducted in European countries, Australia and New Zealand, or on the American continent (US, Chile, Argentina) (Santeramo and Lamonaca, 2020), but this research provides a case from east Asia. Additionally, tea is the target agricultural product in the current study and is highly integrated into East Asia, where olive oil and wines do not play as important a role as in European countries but tea is a mainstream (Caskey et al , 2021). Meta-analytical studies have revealed that a price premium exists across different studies, i.e.…”