The Mexican consumer, reluctant or receptive to new foods?

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to measure the relative degree of rejection or reluctance to try new foods of the Mexican consumers. Design/methodology/approach – To measure the degree of acceptance or rejection that individuals have for foods that are unusual in their diets, a phobia scale was used to new foods developed by Pliner and Hobden (1992) Food Neophobia Scale (FNS). The authors also distinguished between individuals’ predisposition to taste new foods, “neo-phobic” (lower bias) and “neo-philic” (predisposition). Additionally social and demographic variables such as age, gender, monthly income level and marital status to discuss relations with the FNS scale were incorporated. Findings – The results have shown that Mexican consumers show relatively low levels of phobia toward new foods, but there may be differences in accordance with the characteristics of the environment, the proximity of another culture or urbanization level have a significant influence on consumer attitudes. Originality/value – In Mexico the development of new foods has increased, in a recent study 83 percent of respondents indicated they are interested in buying new foods on the market. Studies of novel foods phobia have been made in various international contexts, in Mexico, however, the exploration and understanding of consumer attitudes toward foods that are unusual in their diets is incipient. This study represents one of the first contributions in this regard and more so to focus specifically on the Mexican consumer.

Using projective techniques and Food Neophobia Scale to explore the perception of traditional ethnic foods in Central Mexico: A preliminary study on the beverage Sende

“…This value is acceptable in exploratory research (Hair et al, 2010). Salgado et al (2016) (Tuorila, Lahteenmaki, Pohjalainen, & Lotti, 2001). In contrast, other authors have reported that there are no differences in the level of food neophobia regarding this variable (Choe & Cho, 2011;Fernandez-Ruiz et al, 2013;Zhao et al, 2020).…”

“…The second part of the questionnaire was based on FNS (Pliner & Hobden, 1992), which is composed of 10 items that assess the degree of willingness or rejection to try new or unfamiliar foods among consumers. Generally, the items are assessed on a Likert scale from five to seven points, while at least five sentences of scale must be reversed for their analysis (Salgado et al, 2016) (Table 2). Some authors use the term "ethnic food" in the FNS to measure the intention or rejection for foods that have been introduced to new consumer markets where the population is unfamiliar with them (Choe & Cho, 2011).…”

“…To our knowledge, this is the first work that uses the projective technique of WA and the FNS. Furthermore, in Mexico the application of the FNS has been limited to understand the motives of food choices among consumers (Salgado et al, 2016). However, this work has some limitations that must be taken into account: its nature was exploratory, and the results only represent the population under study.…”

“…In the context of traditional ethnic foods, FNS helps understand the perception and motives to consume these food products. For example, Fibri and Frøst (2019) (Salgado, Camarena, & Díaz, 2016).…”

“…Cronbach's alpha (α). Later on, the sum of the score of the 10 items of the scale was carried out for each participant, this with a view to obtaining a score for food neophobia, which could range from 10 to 50(Salgado et al, 2016;Soucier, Doma, Farrel, Leith-Bailey, & Duncan, 2019). The factorial structure of FNS was examined by means of principal component analysis (PCA)(Fernandez-Ruiz et al, 2013)…”