 The acceptance of functional foods in Denmark, Finland and the United States: A study of consumers' conjoint evaluations of the qualities of functional foods and perceptions of general health factors and cultural valuesTino Bech-Larsen (),
Klaus. G. Grunert () and
Jacob Poulsen
No 73, MAPP Working Papers from University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, The MAPP Centre Abstract: Functional foods is a relatively new concept covering food products enriched with various kinds of (natural) substances (eg vitamins, minerals or probiotic cultures) or modified so as to provide consumers with an additional physiological benefit presumed to prevent disease or promote health, without them having to change their eating habits fundamentally. 2. Health is one of the most important choice criteria, when consumers purchase food products. The fact that most health consequences of food are long term and therefore inaccessible at the time of purchase, the evaluation has to be based on nutritional information, eg health claims and other more accessible food qualities, eg taste, appearance, and processing method (when disclosed) which consumers may associate with health in one way or another. Consumers’ acceptance of functional foods therefore depends on the health information available as well as on their associations between wholesomeness and other qualities of functional foods. 3. Experience with functional foods introduced so far has disclosed national differences when it comes to consumer acceptance. One explanation may be that legislation on health claims varies across countries; another explanation may be differences in cultural values, which possibly lead to different associations between wholesomeness and other quality aspects, such as taste, convenience and method of processing. 4. Using conjoint analysis and survey questions (n=1500), the aim of the study presented in this paper is to investigate whether there are differences in the acceptance of functional foods in Denmark, Finland and the United States, and to which extent they are related to differences in consumers’ nutritional knowledge, health associations and cultural values. The general results of the study indicate that Finnish consumers accept functional foods more readily than do American and Danish consumers. In all three countries, however, the results also indicate that consumers are more positive towards enrichments with well-known nutritional effects and that the use of health claims, which are restricted by law in all three countries, has a potential, positive effect on the acceptance of functional foods. Keywords: Consumer behaviour; evaluations; functional food; health factors; cultural values (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhb:aarmap:0073 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in MAPP Working Papers from University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, The MAPP Centre The Aarhus School of Business, The MAPP Centre, Fuglesangs Allé 4, DK-8210 Aarhus V, Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.