|Consumer’s perception of food quality and its relation to the choice of food |
|Master thesis |
|Master of Science in Marketing |
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|DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING AND STATISTICS |
|HANDELSHØJSKOLEN |
|AARHUS UNIVERSITET |
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|Author: |
|Rosica Lazarova |
|Supervisor: |
|Athanasios Krystallis |
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|July 2010 |
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ABSTRACT Quality of food is an extremely important aspect of human life and people become more and more concerned about nutrition, food safety and environmental issues that determine their acceptance of food products. Therefore, the thesis examines the consumer’s perception of food quality and its relation to the choice of food by reviewing existing research works from the world academic literature. The thesis describes what quality is and then it gives a more detailed description of perceived quality. The main models in the academic area of food quality perception are explored and relevant empirical researches are given as examples in order to connect theory with reality. Special attention is given to the Total Food Quality Model, since it is considered so far the only one in the academic literature that gives exhaustive dissection of the consumer’s quality perception processes. The researches discussed are chosen according to the elements of the TFQ model and thus, they describe the constructive parts of the model and its applicability to reflect the perception processes of consumer’s food quality judgments. The thesis focuses on physical characteristics of the food products, as well as abstract (intangible) food characteristics combined in four food quality dimensions – health, taste, process and convenience, to examine their effects on quality evaluation and purchase. Accordingly, the discussed research works are structured around these four quality dimensions giving a more elaborated analysis of the judgmental processes. The work concludes with recommendations for further research on the factors, namely cultural, social, demographical, and consumer segmentation that appear to have constant influence on the consumer’s food quality perception processes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1 Problem Statement & Research Questions 2 Methodology & Delimitation 2
PRODUCT QUALITY 3 Approaches to product quality 4 Perceived quality 5 Types of food quality 6 Approaches to analysing perceived quality 7 Economics of information approach 7 Multi-attribute approach 7 Hierarchical approach 8 Integrative approach 9
MODELS OF THE QUALITY PERCEPTION PROCESS 9 Shapiro’s model 9 Olson’s model (1972) 10 Empirical research on Olson’s model related to food 12 Critics on the Olson’s model 12 Wimmer’s model (1975) 13 Empirical research and critics on Wimmer’s model 14 Kupsch et al.’s model (1978) 14 Empirical research and critics on Kupsch et al.’s model 15 Steenkamp’s model (1990) 15 Personal factors 17 Situational factors 18 Empirical research on Steenkamps’s model 20 Andersen’s model (1994) 22 Empirical research on Andersen’s model 24 Steenkamp and van Trijp’s model (1996) 24 Empirical research and critics on Steenkamp and Trijp’s model (1996) 25 Poulsen et al.’s model (1996) 26 Empirical research and critics on Poulsen et al.’s model 27 Grunert’s model (1996) 27 Heuvel et al. ’s model (2007) 29 Empirical research on Heuvel et al.’s model 30
QUALITY DIMENSIONS AND CONSUMER SEGMENTS 31 Quality dimensions 31 Consumer segments 33 Uninvolved food consumer 33 Careless food consumer 34 Rational food consumer 34 Conservative food consumer 34 Adventurous food consumer 35
EMPIRICAL STUDIES RELATED TO TFQ MODEL 35 Hedonic dimension 35 Health dimension 44 Functional food 48 Genetically modified food 53 Process dimension 58 Convenience dimension 63
DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 68
REFERENCES 73

INTRODUCTION

Recently European food consumers have become very demanding about quality and show willingness to pay more for better quality products (Steenkamp, 1989). In this connection, better quality has become one of the most important strategic priorities facing the food industry. The buyer’s markets nowadays require that companies improve product quality from the consumer`s perspective. That is, in these highly competitive markets, companies must become market-oriented and make the focus on the consumer as part of their strategy. So to say, the companies have to translate consumer demands regarding food quality into physical product parameters that will actualize the desired quality in the best way. From the consumer`s point of view, quality is all that the consumer wants to get out of the product and the perceived quality, when traded off against price and other costs, will be a major determinant of food choice. Consumers’ perception of quality is considered a pivotal determinant of product choice (Zeithaml, 1988). Perceived quality is the consumer’s judgment about a product’s overall excellence or superiority. Perceived product quality is a global assessment ranging from “bad” to “good”, characterized by a high abstraction level and refers to a specific consumption setting. Quality of food is an extremely important aspect of human life and people become more and more concerned about nutrition, food safety and environmental issues that determine their acceptance of food products. Good quality of food has not a constant definition but varies according to the food category and to the consumers’ preferences. Food quality can be described by but not limited to wholesomeness, freshness, nutritional value, texture, smell, color, fragrance, and flavor. In addition to the intrinsic characteristics of the product, food quality can be evaluated by the brand, shopping environment, price, origin, production processes and so on. In the academic literature, there have been proposed several models (discussed later in the current thesis) that attempt to describe consumers’ quality perception processes by a particular mixture of quality cues. Each one elaborates on the previous ones by adding an additional quality cue, which contributes to the better understanding of consumer’s quality evaluations. There has been proposed, however, only one model, which specifically focuses on quality perception of food. This is the Total Food Quality Model proposed by Grunert et al., (1995). It is essentially the only one in use in the food area and will hereby receive more exhaustive discussion.

Problem Statement & Research Questions

The purpose of the current thesis is to give an overview of the existing research works on consumers’ food quality perception and food choice from the world academic literature and outline existing relationships between the two constructs. It will provide an understanding of how consumers perceive food quality and why they choose the food they do. It will specifically describe the already developed models of perceived quality processes and discuss their applicability and adequacy in reflecting the way consumers perceive food quality and consequently making food choices. More specifically, the overall objective will be achieved by addressing the following research questions. • How do consumers perceive quality? What constitutes quality? How can quality perception be explained? • To what extent physical characteristics of the product will affect the quality evaluation and the purchase? • To what extent other characteristics like brand, origin, price, will affect the consumers’ quality evaluation and purchase? • Is there a trade-off between perceived quality and price and what is it? • Do quality expectations correspond to quality experiences? • What roles play demographics and cultural characteristics of consumers in the perception of quality? Can we generalize research results?

Methodology & Delimitation

Overall, the methodological approach of this thesis intends to elaborate on theory and adduce accordingly corresponding empirical research. The elaboration of theory part will examine frameworks and models relevant to the topic, which will mainly highlight literature on quality perception and will thus set the underlying structure of this thesis. Furthermore, previous studies in the field of food quality perception with a reference to the Total Food Quality Model will be investigated and analyzed. The findings will provide comprehensive knowledge on the existing studies exploring consumers’ evaluation processes of food quality and will direct the academic community in adapting the known models, developing new frameworks and thus making the analysis of food quality perception more complete. The thesis will start by presenting the concept of product quality and quality perception, followed by descriptions of the quality perceptions’ models. Then, the work will give a more detailed focus on the Total Food Quality Model presenting relevant empirical data, which will describe the various elements of the model according to four major quality dimensions – health, taste, process, and convenience.

PRODUCT QUALITY

Product quality has become a main topic of discussion in Europe and the United States. This is so because quality serves as an important criterion for consumers when purchasing food products and it builds customer value and satisfaction (Steenkamp, 1989). As a consequence of customer value and satisfaction, quality contributes to market share and return on investment. Therefore, companies are making adjustments in product designs, manufacturing processes, and marketing strategies to improve product quality. Thus, in the long run the most important single factor affecting a business unit’s performance is the quality of its products and services, relative to those of competitors (Buzzel & Gale, 1987). Quality has been defined in many different ways and every single definition contributes to better understanding of the concept, though researchers has not come up yet with a universal concept definition. Quality has been variously defined as value (Abbott, 1955), conformance to specifications (Levitt, 1972), conformance to requirements (Crosby, 1979), fitness for use (Juran, 1988), loss avoidance (Ross, 1989) and meeting and/or exceeding customers’ expectations (Grönroos, 1983). The fact that there are so many definitions of quality roots in the diversity of perspectives from which quality has been analysed (Steenkamp, 1990). “Quality is a jewel with many facets, and it is important when using the term, to define, explicitly, or implicitly, with which facet one is concerned” (Cowan, 1964, p.7). Based on prior literature, Reeves and Bednar (1994) provide a framework for explaining the concept of quality consisting of four different aspects, which will be just shortly outlined here: quality as excellence, quality as value, quality as conformance to specifications and quality as meeting and/or exceeding customers’ expectations.

Approaches to product quality

According to Steenkamp (1989) four major approaches to explaining the concept of quality are identified: (1) the metaphysical approach of philosophy, (2) the production management approach, (3) the economic approach, and (4) the behavioral or perceived quality approach of marketing and consumer behavior. The first approach focuses on the being of quality. The production management approach look into standardized manufacturing procedures, quality control, and quality costs. The economic approach examine the quality from an economic point of view, such as quality competition, market equilibrium within a situation of product quality variations, and consumer behavior towards products with objective quality variations both when the consumer is perfectly informed and with incomplete knowledge. The behavioral or perceived quality approach gives attention to the quality perception process; that is, how consumers make judgements regarding the quality of a product when they are imperfectly informed. In addition, this approach takes into account the influence of personal and situational variables on the quality perception process. Overall, each of the four approaches is important because each of them explains different aspects of quality; although independently developed from each other, they are interrelated. Figure 1 shows that the perceived quality approach can serve as input to the production management approach. The production management approach maintains that the product specifications should be based on the needs of the consumer. The relationship between these two approaches - the perceived quality and the production management approach, is influenced by the economic approach, because quality relates also to costs and to the level of profits of the firm. At the same time, the economic approach could learn a lot from the other two approaches, in developing better theories on the behaviour of the firm. The metaphysical approach is rather abstract, but “provides a bedding in which the other approaches are situated” (Steenkamp, 1989). This approach contributes to the perceived quality approach by drawing attention to the immaterial face of the product.

Figure 1. Relationships between the four approaches to product quality

[pic] Source: Steenkamp (1989)

Studying the quality from the point of view of the consumer is imperative, since it is the consumer, who decides which product to buy. This necessity is underlined by the ‘quality perception gap’ (Morgan, 1985) that exists between manufacturers and consumers. Trijp and Steenkamp (1996) considered the possibility to bridge this ‘quality perception gap’ by proposing a quality guidance approach, which relates perceived quality judgements to physical product characteristics. The approach consists of three steps (1) identification of quality judgments, (2) disentanglement of the quality judgments into perceptions on intrinsic quality cues and quality attributes, and (3) translation of the consumer perceptions into physical product characteristics. The goal of quality guidance is the formulation of technical product specifications that are related to consumer’s quality perception. Researchers in the ‘perceived quality’ (Garvin, 1984) approach use the term perceived quality instead of just quality to underline the fact that it is the consumer’ perceptions, needs, and goals that play important role in the quality judgements. In this thesis, the terms (perceived) food quality and (perceived) quality are used interchangeably.

Perceived quality

There are many definitions of perceived quality, though some of them lack theoretical rationale for the definition and cannot be used as a foundation of a theoretical model of a quality perception model. Some of the definitions are: “the degree to which a product fulfills its function, given the needs of the consumer” Box (1983, p.25), “the consumer’s judgement about the superiority or excellence of a product” Zeithaml (1988, p. 5) and “the rated ability of the brand to perform its functions as perceived by consumers” Kotler (1984, p.479). But the best known definition of perceived quality is “fitness for use”. Specifically, Steenkamp and Meulenberg (1986) found that perceived food quality is associated with keepability, wholesomeness, appearance, well-known brands, taste, price, and nutritional value. As already mentioned, the definitions of (food) quality perception include the consumer, since it is the consumer who makes the judgements of the (food) quality.

Types of food quality

There are four different types of food quality (Grunert et al., 1996). These are product-oriented quality, process-oriented quality, quality control, and user-oriented quality. Product-oriented quality is measured by means of food product’s physical properties, like fat percentage, muscle size of meat, sell content in milk, etc. Process-oriented quality is concerned with characteristics of the production process, which are not necessary mirrored in physical characteristics of the product, like the fulfillment of ecological and ethical production standards. Quality control refers to the extent to which product- and process-oriented quality remains stable at pre-specified levels. Finally, user-oriented quality is the subjective quality perception of a user. The four types of quality are interrelated. Specifically, the user-oriented quality will be affected by the other three types of qualities. In addition, the user-oriented quality is influenced not only by the physical characteristics of the product, but also by its price, the purchase situation, the type of the retail chain, etc. Much of the discussion on quality in the food industry is concerned with product and process-oriented quality and quality control, while the consumer evaluates and pays for subjectively perceived quality. Since product- and process-oriented quality can be measured at the product itself by physiological methods, it may also be called objective quality. The user-oriented quality can be measured only at the user, and can differ for the same product between users; thus, it may also be called subjective quality. Changes in the objective quality will lead to a better competitive position of the food firm, only if these changes lead to cost reductions for the participants in the food chain or if the changes in objective quality lead to changes in subjective quality (Grunert & Juhl, 1995).

Approaches to analysing perceived quality

There are a number of approaches used for analyzing user-oriented quality and some of them are economics of information approach, multi-attribute approach, hierarchical approach, and integrative approach.

Economics of information approach

In the discussion for subjective quality, economic theory on product quality is applied, which makes a major distinction between search, experience and credence characteristics (Darby & Karni, 1973; Nelson, 1974, 1970). Search characteristics are those that can be ascertained in the search process prior to purchase, such as the size of eggs or the color of meat. The experience quality dimension, e.g. taste, freshness of food, convenience, can be ascertained after the purchase as the product is used. The third characteristic cannot be ascertained in normal use. Such characteristics, as for example, whether vegetables were ecologically produced, or meat was produced using an animal friendly process, are not visible and cannot be validated by the consumer even after trying the product (Andersen, 1994). Health is a typical credence quality attribute, since there is no direct relation between consumption and effect. Thus, credence characteristics are based on credibility and trust. In conclusion, this approach does not provide a model for the quality perception process.

Multi-attribute approach

The multi-attribute approach considers quality as a multi-dimensional evaluation, such as the overall quality is described by a set of cues that are perceived by the buyer. A cue is defined as any informational stimulus about or relating to the product (Olson, 1972). A cue is a very broad concept, encompassing such various product-related aspects as price, brand name, color, and so on. The used cues are weighted so as to form the quality evaluation of the product. Consumers use quality cues, because food quality aspects cannot be sensory evaluated at the point of purchase (like taste, vitamin content, etc.). Quality cues are characterized as intrinsic and extrinsic cues (Olson & Jacoby, 1972). Intrinsic quality cues are part of and specific to the physical product – they cannot be changed without changing the essense of the product itself. The relevance of this type of cue for foods, particularly fresh food, is easily recognized. The appearance of fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and fish of the expected perceived quality. Depending on the particular food, shape, color, structure and size may serve as quality indicators as well. Extrinsic quality cues, on the other hand, are everything else that is related to the product or its production process. These are also called ‘image variables’ such as brand name, price, peer support and origin (Erickson, Johansson, & Chao, 1984). Extrinsic attributes are not product-specific and serves as a general signal for quality across different products. Price, brand name, and level of advertising are frequently associated with quality in research, although there are many other extrinsic cues useful for the consumer. Consumers prefer intrinsic attributes over extrinsic attributes in the formation of perceived quality judgements, and use the latter only if they do not feel competent to evaluate a product on its intrinsic attributes (Grunert, 1986; Steenkamp, 1989). Multi-attribute approach is the most often used approach to analysing quality judgements in consumer behavior but it also provokes a lot of critics (Grunert, 1989). One is that the importance of the attributes is assumed to be constant, although it may be dependent on purchase situations – as for example, the weighting of taste and convenience in a food product may be different for weekday and weekend use. Another critique is that the interrelationship of attributes is not taken into account – that is, all of the attributes are treated at the same level. For example, consumers may infer taste from price or healthiness from fat content.

Hierarchical approach

The two critics mentioned in the end of the previous subsection are considered in the hierarchical approach. It describes that consumers infer some attribute from other atributes. The most widely used model in this approach is the means-end chain model (Gutman, 1982). This model implies that consumers’ subjective product perception is established by associations between product attributes and more abstract, more central cognitive categories such as values, which can motivate behavior and create interest for product attributes (Brunsø et al., 2002). A product attribute is not relevant in and by itself, but only to the extent that the consumer expects the attribute to lead to one or more desirable or undesirable consequences. Means-end chains are the links, which a consumer establishes between product perceptions and abstract motives or values. For example, a consumer will inspect the colour of a piece of meat (a product characteristic) because s/he believes it to be related to the taste of the meat when prepared (expected quality), and the taste will lead to enjoyment while eating (abstract purchase motive).

Integrative approach

Finally, the integrative approach to analyzing user-oriented quality look at the determinants of experienced as opposed to expected quality and the technical product specifications, which will determine both the intrinsic quality cues the consumer can perceive and the quality finally experienced. Another focus is on the sensory characteristics of the product, such as taste, color, smell, which are regarded as an important mediator between technical product specifications, meal preparation and experienced quality. Further, the consumer`s expected quality evaluation will determine the consumer’s intention to buy only in relation to the perceived costs associated with the product, where costs can be both monetary and other costs. Finally, the focus is turned to consumer’s purchase motives, which are included in the Total Food Quality Model (TFQ model) discussed later in the thesis.

MODELS OF THE QUALITY PERCEPTION PROCESS

Shapiro’s model

Shapiro (1970) developed a model (Figure 2) that was the first one to classify the basic variables involved in the perception of quality and stipulate the relationships among these variables. This model puts also light on the role of the perceived quality in consumer choices. The major variable in the model is the ‘Likelihood of purchase’. The main trade off for consumers to arrive at ‘likelihood of purchase’ is between ‘price attitude’ and ‘perceived quality’. Perception of quality is dependent on ‘tangible, visible attributes’ and ‘price’. For example, if quality differences are perceived to be small (large) among products, price has no (a significant) effect on perceived quality. According to Steenkamp (1989), this model’s tangible, visible attributes are similar to Olson’s (1972) intrinsic quality cues, discussed in the very next model. Shapiro’s model is not conceptually and operationally useful and according to Steenkamp it was not used in other studies. Figure 2. Shapiro’s model of the variables involved in quality perception and product purchase

[pic] Source: Steenkamp (1989)

Olson’s model (1972)

Olson (1972) proposed the quality perception process to consist of two stages in which the consumer chooses some cues as indicators of product quality from a set of cues, and then combines their evaluations into one overall judgement of product quality. Olson developed a model, which specified the determinant factors involved in quality cue choice and cue impact on the overall quality judgment. This model tries to give an explanation to the way cues are selected and their importance in the quality perception process. The author suggests that the consumer will select this cue, which has the highest quality information content, given the consumer’s limitations of information-processing capacity and time. The crucial question is how does consumers determine the information value of a cue? The author describes that the consumer determines the information value of a cue through its predictive value (PV), confidence value, (CV) and the intrinsic-extrinsic dimension (I-E). The PV of a cue is “the extent to which the consumer perceives or believes that the cue is related to or is indicative of product quality” (Olson 1972, p.67). This implies that cue PV is assumed to be founded on the consumer’s perception about the degree of association between cue and product quality. The CV, on the other hand, is defined as “the degree to which a consumer is confident in his ability to accurately perceive and judge the cue” (Olson 1972, p.69). Depending on previous experiences and beliefs related to the different cues, PV and CV of cues may differ between consumers. Both PV and CV are hypothesized to exert a positive influence on the probability of cue usage, and on the magnitude of cue effects on quality judgements. Thus, the higher the PV or the CV of a cue, the more essential is that cue to the consumer in the quality evaluation process. PV and CV are independent dimensions of information value and all possible combinations between the two are possible. It is suggested, however, that the cue that will be used by consumers and have a strong effect on quality judgements, has both high PV and high CV. The I-E dimension consists of the already described concepts of intrinsic cues “which cannot be changed or experimentally manipulated without also changing the physical characteristics of the product itself” (Olson and Jacoby, p.169), and extrinsic cues, which are related to the product but are not part of the physical product. The concept of the intrinsic cue values is very similar to the Shapiro’s one - ‘tangible, visible attributes’. Thus, the relationship to the physical product determines whether a cue is intrinsic or extrinsic. If the physical product changes when the cue is manipulated, the cue is intrinsic. If the physical product does not change, the cue is extrinsic. The intrinsic-extrinsic dimension has no direct effect on the process of cue utilization. Olson and Jacoby (1972) hypothesized that intrinsic cues are used more often and have a greater effect upon quality perception than do extrinsic cues, given that both intrinsic and extrinsic cue are available to the consumer – a hypothesis shared later by Grunert (1986) and Steenkamp (1989). PV and CV of the intrinsic cues determine the use of the extrinsic cues. The researcher proposed that extrinsic cues will be used when the available intrinsic cues have low CV, low PV, or both. The interaction of the PV and CV can be seen on Figure 3.

Figure 3. Interaction between cue PV and cue CV as hypothesized by Olson [pic] Source: Olson (1972)

Empirical research on Olson’s model related to food

Olson’s model has not attracted considerable interest in relation to food products. Rudell (1979) has used the concepts PV and CV to predict cue usage by consumers. She investigated the relationship between a subject’s usage of a certain source of nutritional information and the PV and CV of that specific source of information. She found no significant effect of either PV and CV on the usage of any of the four sources of information.

Critics on the Olson’s model

First, it is important to underline that the model is useful if cues do not interact in the quality perception processs. Interactions between cues imply that the magnitude of the effect of a cue on perceived quality depends on the level of one or more other cues. Such a result, however, cannot be explained by cue PV and CV, which are assumed to be independent of the specific cue levels. Second, consumer might have difficulties in distinguishing between cue PV and CV. For example, Rudell (1979) found that of ten types of information concerning food products, ingredients rated higher on PV and CV than did price, advertising claims, brand name, and friends’ opinions. This, however, contradicts Olson’s assumptions of CV and PV independence, given the low level of nutritional knowledge in the USA (Jacoby et. al., 1977). This suggests that PV and CV cues are not as independent as Olson assumed. Further, quality attributes are not considered in the model (Steenkamp, 1989). It cannot explain why a cue has a large PV with respect to perceived quality. In addition, the model does not reflect the mediating role of the perceived risk, product experience, and socio-economic characteristics in the formation of quality perceptions.

Wimmer’s model (1975)

In his model of the quality perception process presented from an information processing perspective (Figure 4), Wimmer (1975) hypothesized that quality judgments are performed cognitively by consumers by integrating the acquired and processed information with information already stored in their memory. Information acquisition and processing happens in interaction with motives and attitudes relevant to quality perception. Health-conscious consumer, for example, will acquire all possible information about the nutritional value of a food product and weight it in their quality perception process.

Figure 4. Wimmer’s model of the quality perception process [pic] Source: Steenkamp (1989) According to the author, there are three sources of quality information: quality attributes, intrinsic quality indicators, and extrinsic quality indicators. In contrast to Olson’s definition, intrinsic quality indicators are not part of the product but are related to the product itself (price, brand name). Extrinsic quality indicators are, for example, advertising, magazines, and all external sources providing information about the quality of the product. Thus, what Olson called ‘extrinsic’, Wimmer marks as ’intrinsic’ and vice versa. In a very general formulation the model states that quality information is processed to arrive at perceived quality judgements and this judgement is formed in interaction with relative motives and attitudes.

Empirical research and critics on Wimmer’s model

The model has never been tested (Steenkamp, 1989) and its concepts are very general, poorly defined, and the interrelationships among them are not identified.

Kupsch et al.’s model (1978)

Kupsch et al. (1978) (Figure 5) proposed a model, which combines elements of information processing theory and multiatribute models. It states that the formation of quality judgements starts with the recognition of a problem, which, on the other hand, leads to search for information. Perceived quality risk is hypothesized to have a positive impact on the intensity of information search. The acquired information is stored in the memory of the consumer. The consumer selects some parts of the information to develop evaluative criteria, criteria weights and beliefs, which helps against information overload. Criteria weights and beliefs form the ‘information structure’. The authors identify also intrinsic, extrinsic, and unobservable criteria. The first two are directly observable by the consumer and serve to provide product ratings for the unobservable criteria. The development of evaluative criteria and criteria weights depends on the purpose, for which the product is bought. These evaluative criteria and criteria weights are used in the overall quality judgement. In the quality perception process, personal and situational factors are taken into consideration. This is the first model to include the perceived quality risk into the perceived quality perception. In addition, this model considers personal and situational factors to have influence on the formation of quality perceptions. A weakness of the model is its largeness and generality in the concept formulation.

Figure 5. Kupsch et al. model of the quality perception process

[pic] Source: Kupsch et al., (1978)

Empirical research and critics on Kupsch et al.’s model

“An empirical test of the complete model appeared neither possible, nor was it our purpose,” the authors stated. They explored the importance of extrinsic, intrinsic, and unobservable criteria in purchasing a product, but the results proved not be very clear (Steenkamp, 1989). The model assumes to a large extent substantial cognitive activity and involvement on the part of the consumer, who has to engage in extensive problem solving. The main purpose for development of this model was to investigate the quality perception process related to consumer durables.

Steenkamp’s model (1990)

Steenkamp (1990) extended the work of Olson (1972) by developing a more elaborated model where a distinction is made between quality cues and quality attributes, in particular: between extrinsic and intrinsic quality cues, and between experience and credence quality attributes (Figure 6). Quality cues are defined as “informational stimuli that are, according to the consumer, related to the quality of the product, and can be ascertained by the consumer through the senses prior to consumption”. Quality cues closely resemble Nelson’s (1970, 1974) search attributes. Quality attributes are the functional and psychosocial benefits or consequences provided by the product (Steenkamp, 1990) or in other words the cues used by consumers to infer experienced quality. They represent what the product is perceived to be doing or providing for the consumer. Quality attributes are unobservable prior to consumption. In other words, quality cues are what the consumer observes, and quality attributes are what the consumer wants. This can also be conceptualized as means-end chain. In means-end chain, the value of the means is determined by the value of the ends to which they are perceived to lead. In the current case, quality cues are important only to the extent that they are perceived to be means to achieve certain ends that are valued by the consumer, that is, the benefits or quality attributes. Cues can have different effects on different quality attributes. A cue need not affect the perceptions on a single attribute only. It may contribute to several perceptions in different ways. Further, a single cue is unlikely to be a perfect indicator of a particular quality attribute. Multiple cues must be taken into account to form perception of the product on a certain quality attribute. Steenkamp used Olson’s model (1972) to hypothesize that the effect of a quality cue on a quality attribute will be influenced by (1) the PV of the cue with respect to the attribute in question, (2) the CV of that cue, (3) the I-E nature of the cue. Finally, there are three ways to form perceptions about quality attributes and these are descriptive, informational, and inferential belief formation. Descriptive beliefs are all those beliefs that result from direct observation (via any of the senses) of the characteristics of the product. Inferential beliefs, however, are formed on the basis of the quality cues for which descriptive beliefs are formed. For example, the descriptive belief ‘this wine has been made in France’ may lead to the inferential belief ‘this wine is of good quality’. The third way to form perceptions about quality attributes is through informational beliefs, which are formed by accepting information about the quality attributes provided by some outside source such as friends, advertisements, and consumer magazines.

Figure 6. A conceptual model of the quality perception process

[pic] Source: Steenkamp (1990)

The quality perception process can be divided into three subprocesses: cue acquisition and categorization, quality attribute belief formation and integration of quality attribute beliefs. The subprocesses are influenced by personal and situational factors.

Personal factors

The most important personal variables affecting the quality perception process are (1) involvement, (2) prior experience with the product, (3) level of education, (4) perceived-quality risk, and (5) quality consciousness. Quality judgments might differ among consumers; therefore, it is useful to distinguish among several important personal variables that have an influence on the perceived quality. Involvement with products affects the motivation to process information about the product (Zaichkowsky, 1985). In this case, high-invloved consumers are assumed to use more quality cues, to attach more importance to intrinsic quality cues than low-involvement consumers. For example, involvement[pic]with[pic]food was related to a high pleasantness and buying probability for a particular food (Kähkönen & Tuorila, 1999). Higher levels of food involvement[pic]are associated with living with two or more friends, cooking for one’s self, having regular meals, and being older (Marshall & Bell, 2004). The same researchers claim that in relation to food involvement, more highly involved individuals tend to make healthier food choices. Prior experience is essential to the consumer’s ability to process information (Celsi & Olson, 1988). People with more prior knowledge about a product will process quality-related information at a more deeper, more abstract, and more elaborate level (Marks & Olson, 1981). By the same token, knowledgeable consumer might be less extreme in their overall quality judgements and tend to form quality judgements faster compared to non-knowledgeable consumers. Level of education plays also an important role in the information processing. Individuals with less education are less competent in information processing (Capon & Burke, 1980) and use less information in decision processes (Claxton, Fry, & Portis, 1974). In this case, less educated consumers will use fewer cues in the quality perception process and rely on cue information from personal sources rather than neutral sources of information (Steenkamp & Meulenberg, 1985). When quality risk is perceived, consumers use one or a few cues in the quality judgements as those that experience high risk use fewer quality cues in the quality perception process than consumer experiencing low risk (Steenkamp, 1989). Quality consciousness is defined as “A mental predisposition to respond in a consistent way to quality-related aspects, which is organized through learning and influences behavior” Steenkamp (1990: p.315). Quality consciousness is a motivational factor, posited to lead to consistent responses with respect to quality-related aspects, meaning that an individual exhibits approximately the same set of responses in different situations, and for different products. However, quality consciousness is not regarded as a generalized personality variable, but as a domain-specific concept. Quality consciousness is organized through learning (Steenkamp, 1989). Learning is based on previous experience with the product category, and on information acquired from commercial, neutral, and personal sources. Further, quality consciousness influences the weight of perceived quality of the product alternative. Findings show also that quality-conscious consumers attach more importance to neutral sources of quality information than consumers who are less quality conscious.

Situational factors

These can be defined as “all those factors particular to time and place of observation, which do not follow from a knowledge of personal (intra-individual) and stimulus (choice alternative) attributes and which have a demonstrable and systematic effect on current behavior” (Steenkamp, 1989). They might influence the formation of quality judgements through the influence that they will have on cue choice and cue importance, and on the importance and evaluation of the quality attributes. The most important situational variables are (1) the usage goal for which the product is purchased, (2) physical surroundings, (3) social surroundings, and (4) time pressure. The perceived quality of a product depends on the degree to which it fulfills the consumer’s usage goals. When the later are incorporated in the theory of perceived quality, this enables researchers to compare quality intersubjectively according to the degree to which the product fullfills its usage goals for different consumers. Usage goals determine the usage of quality cues and the relevance of the quality attributes in the overall quality judgements (Steenkamp, 1990). For example, when a product is purchased as a gift, cues like packaging and brand name, and an attribute like exclusiveness might be relatively important in the quality perception process, while for the same product, intrinsic cues and reliability may be more important when the product is purchased for personal use. The physical surroundings in which the quality perceptions are formed can affect these perceptions. For example, in the butcher shop, there is special lighting on the cooled displays to make the meat look better. Thus, the physical surroundings affect the total image of the store. The social surroundings affect the consumer in the purchase situation, when s/he knows that the consumptions situation will involve other people. For example, parents will always consider the nutritional quality of the food they will buy for their children. The time pressure variable is conceived in such a way that the consumer’s quality perception process will be affected by the time that an individual has available for making quality judgements in three specific ways (Steenkamp, 1989). First, in order to make the evaluation process more easy, consumers weight negative information more heavily when they are under time pressure than when they are under more relaxed conditions. Second, persons in time pressure use fewer quality cues. Third, consumers tend to categorize quality cues into acceptable and unacceptable when they are under time pressure. After the description of the personal and situational factors affecting each of the subprocesses, it is time to give a description of the model. The first step in the quality perception framework refers to the cue acquisition and categorization, a process by which the consumer selects cues on the basis of which further quality attribute beliefs are formed. A consumer chooses cues according to their importance and the importance of a cue is affected by the personal and situational variables (Steenkamp, 1990), the strength of the perceived relationship with quality attributes (Cox, 1967), the ability of the consumer to comprehend the cue (Olson, 1972), cue salience and vividness (Taylor & Thompson, 1982), cue availability (Peter & Olson, 1987), and and cue intensity (Aaker & Myers, 1987). The second step of the quality perception process includes the formation of experience and credence quality attribute beliefs. The author claims that experience attributes are weighted more heavily in the formation of perceived quality judgements than are credence attributes. The overall quality evaluation is further hypothesized to be based upon the perceptions of the products with regard to quality attributes. In summary, the distinction between quality cues and quality attributes enables researchers to clarify the effect that cues have on perceived quality in terms of the quality attributes and helps them develop new products and marketing strategies.

Empirical research on Steenkamps’s model

Steenkamp tested his model by conducting a study that involved two meat products, saveloy (a seasoned dry sausage) and gammon (Steenkamp, 1989). For each meat product two usage goals were specified. For saveloy the usage goals were ‘use on sandwiches’ and ‘use as snack’, for gammon they were ‘use on sandwiches’ and ‘use at dinner’. The following twelve quality attribute statements were developed:

- Taste - Tender - Juicy Sensory perception dimension - Natural - Fresh - Fat - Coloring agents - Unwholesome Perceived healthiness dimension - Salt - Bad for the figure - Keepable - Preservatives Keepability dimension

Sensory perception and keepabilty can be considered as experience dimensions since they can be ascertained upon consumption. The (un)wholesomeness of the food cannot be ascertained upon consumption, because health-related consequences are only revealed (if at all) after a long period of consumption. So, the dimension unwholesomeness is a credence dimension. Color and texture were the most important intrinsic cues for saveloy. Pink saveloy of fine texture was considered to be of especially high quality. Price and packaging were also of some importance. The cue levels unpackaged and higher prices contributed to quality image. The main effect of place of purchase suggested that the butcher’s shop was evaluated more positively than the supermarket. This was, however, valid only when the price was low. The effect of keepability on perceived quality was not significant. It was found that the quality attributes act as mediating or in other words, intervening variables between quality cues and perceived quality. Sensory perception was positively related, and unwholesomeness was negatively related to perceived quality. Sensory perception was found to be the most important quality attribute. For example, color was primarily valued because subjects thought that it said something about the sensory characteristics of the product. Color had also certain health connotations. The results, in addition, indicate that the quality perception process did not differ much between the two usage goals. In another study, Steenkamp (1989) found that price had a significant effect on perceived quality and on perceived sacrifice. Price was more strongly related to perceived sacrifice than to perceived quality. The results emphasize the classic economic role of price as a cost factor. In conclusion, the distinction between quality cues and quality attributes enables researchers to explain cue effects of perceived quality in terms of the mediating role of the quality attributes, and assist them in product development and the formulation of a marketing strategy. The model can be used to investigate which quality cues predict which benefits or attributes to consumers. Advertising could concentrate on those cues on which the brand rates favorably and that predict important quality attributes. Research on the relative importance of perceived quality compared to price in consumer decision-making indicates that quality is considerably more important than price. Thus, perceived quality plays an important role in consumer behavior. The model also draws attention on consumer segmentation, since consumer characteristics affect the quality perception process. Credence attribute perceptions are more uncertain than experience attribute perceptions. People have relatively much difficulty in inferring credence attribute perceptions. This means that consumers have difficulties in creating complete quality judgments. Quality consciousness was found to be the only variable with a significant effect on the relative importance of perceived quality.

Andersen’s model (1994)

Andersen (1994) developed a model based on Steenkamp’s framework for quality perception process, which focuses on the buyer’s process of quality detection (perception) in a specific buying situation (Figure 7). According to the author, the buyer chooses from a set of available cues with regards to previous experiences, preferences and general knowledge. In other words, consumers seek for experience and credence qualities in a food product, just like the qualities that Steenkamp uses in his model. Then, the buyer decides which of these quality and credibility indicators he wants to apply, and thus he forms expectations about the level of the individual quality characteristics, which are aggregated into an overall expected one-dimensional quality. Later expected quality and experienced quality may be compared and adjustments regarding the future quality evaluations, will be made. Anderesen questions the predictability of the quality cue with respect to the quality attribute. Redness, for instance, has a low predictive value when it comes to discerning between the taste of different sorts of apples, but for the lack of a convenient alternative it is still much used (Barzel, 1982). Thus, the consumer will infer the quality of the food according to the available cues and previous experience. Andersen also claims that buyers have difficulties in handling credence characteristics, because credence characteristics are related only to extrinsic quality cues, while experience characteristics are also supported by intrinsic quality cues. For him, experience characteristics of food will tend to come out better than credence characteristics. This means that in the experience-characteristics of food previous experience is a reliable source of knowledge, whereas it is much less useful in the credence-characteristics case.

Figure 7. A general model of the buyer’s process of quality detection [pic] Source: Andersen (1994) The quality detection process ends with evaluations of experiences with the product in the light of expectations. This may lead to reconsideration of prior experience, competencies and preferences in the light of experiences gained from a particular purchase.

Empirical research on Andersen’s model

Andersen did not test his model, so the assumptions on the experience and credence characteristics of food are not empirically validated.

Steenkamp and van Trijp’s model (1996)

The two authors fomulated the concept of ‘quality guidance’, which is an integrated consumer-based quality improvement philosophy that relates perceived quality judgments to physical product characteristics (Steenkamp & Trijp, 1996). They describe their model (Figure 8) to consist of two phases. The abstraction phase describes the relationship between the physical product characteristics and perceived intrinsic cues and quality attributes. Due to imperfect information about the physical product characteristics and limitations in the information processing capacity, the number of intrinsic cues and attributes is likely to be small. Further, a single physical characteristic may contribute to perceptions on several cues/attributes in different ways. For example, the coarseness of the texture in salami may contribute positively to taste perceptions, but negatively to perceptions of leanness. Moreover, multiple physical product characteristics must often be combined to arrive at an intrinsic cue/attribute perception. For example, the perception about the intrinsic cue ‘appearance’ of meat might be influenced by multiple physical product characteristics such as color, amount of intramuscular fat and moisture. The integration phase describes how intrinsic cue perceptions and quality attribute perceptions are integrated into a judgement about quality expectation and quality performance, respectively. They claim that quality expectations are important in inducing the consumer to try out the product, while quality performance is of paramount importance in stimulating repeat purchase behaviour. Quality experiences are formed on the basis of the product’s perceived performance on quality attributes, i.e. the functional and psychosocial benefits provided by the product. The two measures – expectation and experience, are indicators of overall quality.

Figure 8. An integrated model linking physical product characteristics to perceived quality judgements [pic] Source: Trijp and Steenkamp (1996)

Empirical research and critics on Steenkamp and Trijp’s model (1996)

The researchers applied ‘quality guidance’ philosophy to the case of blade steak (Steenkamp & Trijp, 1996). The main results of their study can be summarised as follows: (1) Expected quality increases with perceived attractiveness of appearance and freshness, and decreases with the amount of visible fat. For example, consumers’ evaluation of good appearance of raw blade steak increases with darker redness of the blade steak and decreases with the steak’s pH. (2) The presence of fat has a negative impact on quality expectations and a positive impact on quality experience. (3) Quality performance increases as tenderness becomes greater and decreases as the amount of non-meat components increase. Flavour did not exert a significant effect. (4) There is no significant relationship between quality expectation and quality performance. The ‘quality guidance’ model may be extended to include the effects of extrinsic cues such as advertising and brand name, since the model is concerned only with intrinsic cues. The ultimate goal should be to develop consumer-based models for quality enhancement, integrating the effects of physical product characteristics as well as other elements of the marketing mix.

Poulsen et al.’s model (1996)

Poulsen et al. (1996) elaborate on and extend the ’quality guidance’ model of Steenkamp and van Trijp. Poulsen et al. (1996) contribute to their model by adding to the integration part the so-called ‘quality formation’ process, which allows for better description of the relative contributions of expectations and experience (Figure 9). Quality conceptualization in this model is related to search and experience product characteristics. The quality formation part of the model consists of three latent variables: expectation, experience, and overall quality.

Figure 9. Quality guidance and quality formation [pic] Source: Poulsen et al. (1996)

Empirical research and critics on Poulsen et al.’s model

The model was empirically tested with butter cookies. The authors found that experience acts as an intervening variable between expectation and overall quality, which is in line with the results of Steenkamp (1989), where quality attributes operate as intervening variables between quality cues and perceived quality and quality attributes are observable only through consumption, as indicated already before. They also found that consumers put high importance to expectations in the quality formation process, which should indicate food producers to stress more attention to the first-hand impression of the food products. This model is useful for the food marketers because by knowing the structure of the quality formation process and magnitudes of the entering effects enables them to design more successful food products. The model, however, is limited in focus only on the integration and the quality formation process. Further, it is concerned with intrinsic cues only, and extrinsic cues like price, promotion and distribution will give a more detailed picture on the way they influence the quality formation process. The authors suggest also that a single, integrated model that encompasses physical product properties, sensory characteristics, consumer perceptions, and quality evaluations, be developed.

Grunert’s model (1996)

Grunert et al. (1996) have built further on the approaches of Steenkamp (1989) and Andersen (1994) and developed the Total Food Quality (TFQ) Model, depicted in Figure 10. The TFQM elaborates on the integration phase by including aspects like meal preparation and extrinsic cues, and also incorporates purchase intention, while the models of Steenkamp and Andersen focus much attention to the abstraction phase. All the models discussed up to now relate to physical product features and emphasize the sensory quality of foods and other benefits verifiable by the consumer. The important credence attributes such as safety, environmental quality, and health are recognized as important food choice motivations by consumers yet have received far less attention in these models. Grunert et al.’s (1996) model, however, includes such aspects as motives and values in the quality perception process, so that consumer food choice is better understood. The TFQ model can serve as an overall framework for the analysis of consumers’ food quality perception and its relation to intention to buy and to the design of food products (Grunert et al., 1996). It incorporates the explanation of intention to purchase, as a trade-off between give and get components, and the explanation of consumer satisfaction, as the discrepancy between expected and experienced quality (Brunsø et al., 2002). The model makes a distinction between “before” (the expected quality) and “after” (the experienced quality) purchase evaluations. Many food products has only search characteristics and the consumer will develop expectations about the quality when she makes the choice. The experienced quality, however, can be determined only after the consumption. In the “before” purchase part of the model quality cues are formed on the base of the available cues. From them, consumer try to evaluate expected quality. For example, consumer use the color of meat to infer tenderness or the consistency of yohgurt to infer taste. Of all the cues consumers are exposed to, only the perceived ones will influence the expected quality. The cues consumers are exposed to and those they perceive, are affected by the shopping situation, like the pressure of time when shopping, the available information in the shop, planned or spontaneous purchases. In the process of expected quality evaluation, the perceived costs will determine the consumer’s intention to buy the product, as costs can be both monetary and other costs. The autors add that price can be both a cost cue and extrinsic quality cue. According to the model, the desired quality of food helps satisfy purchase motives and values. That is, food products contribute to the achievement of desired consequences and values. For example, the label on the product and the information that it provides may create expectations about high eating quality, giving the consumer the feeling about exclusiveness and luxury. Values will influence the search of quality dimensions and the way different cues are perceived and evaluated. The ‘after’ purchase part of the model describes the experienced quality. Sometimes experienced quality deviates from the expected quality, particularly when the used quality cues has low predictive value, as already described. The experienced quality is influenced by many factors, as just few of them are the consumer’s mood, previous experience, the preparation of the product, sensory characteristics of the product. It is also true that the quality cues used to infer expected quality may also influence experienced quality (Grunert, 1997).

Figure 10. The Total Food Quality Model [pic] Source: Grunert et al. (1996)

Heuvel et al. ’s model (2007)

This model is an extension of the Quality Guidance model and includes credence attributes perceptions of consumers, encountered during their buying behaviour. The extension of the model is concentrated in the integration phase of the model, where quality expectations and quality experience are formed. Quality expectations represent the purchase decision consumers face and are formed in the shop. The consumers can see, feel, and smell the products and use these stimuli (cues) to assess the quality of the product. Based on these observations, quality attribute perceptions can be asserted/inferred from these ‘distal’ sensory cues (the concrete extension of the model). These processes are integrated into the QGM to extend it also with credence attribute perceptions. Credence attribute perceptions are inferred from intrinsic and extrinsic quality cues. The healthiness of a tomato, for example, cannot be verified and is thus a credence attribute. What can be verified before consumption are the search attributes or otherwise called the quality cues of the tomato, like the size, color, and shape of the tomato. Consumers may infer healthiness perceptions from the color, shape, and size of the tomato.

Empirical research on Heuvel et al.’s model

The authors tested their model collecting consumer data among a sample of Dutch consumers who hold main responsibility for the food purchases in the household and eat tomatoes at least twice a month. The estimates of the structural parameters in the Extended Quality Guidance Model are represented in Figure 11.

Figure 11. Extended Quality Guidance Model: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 [pic] Source: Heuvel et al., (2007)

The study confirms that consumers’ credence motivations, particularly those related to health, environmental friendly production, safety, and naturalness are important determinants of consumer quality perception in-store. Further, the effect of product features on consumer preference is mediated by perceived consumer benefits. Although credence attributes cannot be verified by the consumer in-store, the results show that consumers do form perceptions about the healthiness of tomatoes from sheer appearance and consumers form these perceptions consistently. This suggests that consumers form attribute beliefs perceptions by means of inferential belief formation (e.g. Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Apparently, cues in the product lead to consistent appearances in the eyes of consumers. These cues in turn, can be exploited in food marketing and quality communication to optimize the product for consumers. The researchers found that there is a need for better identifying the ‘objective’ product features that matter in consumer evaluation of tomatoes. In the translation process from consumer wishes to product characteristics there is a need to identify strong relations between product features and consumer perceptions. They claim that sensory and instrumental features have limited predictive validity for consumer perceptions both in-store and upon consumption. As it was empirically shown already by Steenkamp and Trijp (1996) the influence of the quality expectation on the quality experience is very small. In the paper, the focus regarding the formation of attribute perception beliefs was on the inferential belief formation (Steenkamp, 1990). The informational belief formation is also important and has to be addressed in the future.

QUALITY DIMENSIONS AND CONSUMER SEGMENTS

Up to now different frameworks have been described for the analysis of food quality perception. In this part of the thesis, attention is focused on food quality dimensions and consumer segments, which differ according to their food-related lifestyle. Later in the thesis the perception of quality dimensions will be described through empirical works with relation to the Total Food Quality Model.

Quality dimensions

According to Steenkamp, Wierenga, and Meulenberg (1986), four dimensions are identified in their research covering thirteen food products. These are nutritional value (correlations with attributes like protein content, vitamin content and nutritional value), additives (correlation with preservatives, artificial flavour and colour additives), energy (correlation with attributes like fat, protein and caloric content) and sensory (correlating with smell, appearance and taste). The food products differ considerably with respect to the importance attached to the four dimensions. Grunert et al. (1996) identified other four quality dimensions, which more or less coincide with those that were shortly described above. They are called taste and appearance, health, convenience and process. The important dimension of quality for consumers is related to the hedonic characteristic of food, which is presented by taste, and appearance and smell. This hedonic characteristic can only be ascertained after consumption and therefore, it is called experience characteristic of food. Health has become a very important food characteristic to consumers and they consider it as important as taste. Consumers form preferences for this food characteristic motivated by expectations for a longer, high-quality life (Roininen, Lähteenmäki, & Tuorila, 1999). This characteristic of food quality is related to the way consumers perceive food to affect their health. This dimension includes functional qualities of food, but also safety and risk-related issues. The health quality of food is a credence characteristic, because consumers cannot establish the consequences for his/her health right after consumption, so the consumer needs to trust this characteristic. Consumers consider convenience as an important experience quality dimension of food but it means much more than just ease of purchase or quick consumption. According to Les Gofton, consumers perceive the quality dimension convenience as such that saves time in the overall meal process: planning and purchasing, storage and preparation of products, consumption, and the cleaning up and disposal of leftovers (Gofton, 1995). Finally, consumers are also interested in the way food is produced, that is the production process dimension of quality. This characteristic covers organic production, production that takes into account animal welfare, and production with no genetically modified organisms. Those consumers that pay attention to the process dimension of food quality focus on the naturalness of the food. Just like the health dimension, process dimension is a credence characteristic, since the consumer has to trust various sources for the production-oriented quality of food. The all four dimensions of food quality are interrelated and sometimes overlapping but it depends on the food product. For example, consumers sometimes consider taste and healthiness of food to be positively corelated, in other times, they are negatively correlated. Such kind of assumptions are typical of consumer quality perception and they will be discussed later in the thesis. Also, none of the four quality dimensions is a search dimension (except for the cases when food can be tasted in the store before purchasing it). This means that consumers can only establish the quality of a particular food product only after consumption, not before or during purchase. Thus, purchase decisions are based on quality expectations. Quality expectations are formed based on previous experience with the product or on familiarity with the brand. Thus, quality expectations are inferred. In summary, hedonic and convenience quality are experience dimensions, because the consumer can experience the quality and use this experience in future purchases. Health and process dimensions, on the other hand, are credence characteristics of quality and the consumer cannot experince the quality. Therefore, the last two dimensions are a question of credible communication. The effectiveness of communications depends on three factors: the credibility of the source, the receiver’s motivation and ability to process the information (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). Credibility of the cources will be further discussed in the development of the thesis.

Consumer segments

The importance of the four quality dimensions that were just described differ among consumers. That is, the process of food quality perception and consequently, the choice of food they make is individually defined. Although there are individual differences, people can be segmented according to specific traits that explain the way people relate food to the attainment of values. These traits, called food-related lifestyle (Grunert et al., 1996), are non-product specific and can be summarized as purchasing motives, quality aspects, shopping habits, cooking methods, and consumption situations.

Uninvolved food consumer

These consumers find life’s challenge in other areas than food. Their purchase motives for food are weak, and the interest in food quality is only related to the convenience dimension. They are uninterested in shopping, lack brand loyalty, and cannot perceive differences among different food products. Their price interest is also low. They mostly eat snacks, have little interest in cooking, and tend not to plan their meals. These consumers are, on average, young, single, living in big cities, with low-level of income.

Careless food consumer

These consumers share some of the characteristics of the uninvolved consumers in that they do not find food important and focus only on the convenience quality. However, they are interested in new products, but as long as they do not require new cooking methods. They are young, living in big cities, with more education and higher income in comparison to the uninvolved consumer.

Rational food consumer

These are the consumers who are most open to better quality food products with functional characteristics like, healthiness, naturalness, freshness. They look for a lot of information when shopping, which makes them easy to inform about product improvements. New products are not appreciated, so information about product imporvements should be communicated. The major purchase motives for these consumers are self-fulfilment, recognition and security. This segment is represented mostly by women with families, who live in medium-sized cities. This segment is considered to consist of highly critical consumers.

Conservative food consumer

The major purchase motive for these consumers are security and stabilty by following traditional meal patterns. They are very interested in taste and health aspects of food, so the convenience factor is not prioratized. This segment is difficult to win with new products or different marketing initiatives, because they have concrete preferences for food and shops. Consumers in this segment are least educated, living in rural areas and have generally low income.

Adventurous food consumer

This segment is represented by consumers who use food and cooking for self-fulfilment, expressing creativity and social purposes. They are not interested in convenience but insist on good food quality and good taste. They are interested in exotic food products and like to experiment in cooking. These consumers are young and members of large size family. They have the highest education, high income and live in big cities. *** In the section that follows, the food quality dimensions will be more broadly described through a focus on studies that can be referred to the TFQ model, so that to reflect its applicability in the description of the perceived food quality process.

EMPIRICAL STUDIES RELATED TO TFQ MODEL

Hedonic dimension

This dimension comprises both the sensory food quality dimension of Steenkamp, Wierenga, and Meulenberg (1986) and the taste and appearance food dimension of Grunert et al. (1996). The philosophy of hedonism argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and that the main goal of the human existence is to maximize the pleasure. The hedonic quality dimension of food include appearance, smell, and taste. Taste is one of the major criteria for evaluating food products. Researchers claim that taste and pleasure are some of the most important predictors of food choice (Roininen, Lähteenmäki, & Tuorila, 1999). In order to make food choice the consumer has to have expectations about the hedonic quality of a food product. This is so, because the hedonic quality is an experience aspect of food and taste especially can only be ascertained after eating. Expectations can be formed on the base of available cues or information at the time of purchase (Olson & Jacoby, 1972). For example, price, packaging, purchasing surroundings and others are all cues that help consumers form expectations of taste. Or expectations can be based on previous experience with the product or if the product is branded and the brand is known. The following section will look at the formation of quality expectations in regard to the hedonic dimension and how expectations are related to experience. The presented studies look into how consumers use intrinsic and extrinsic quality cues in order to form expected quality about a food product. One thing is clear in the food domain that quality dimensions and applied quality cues are idiosyncratic to the product category investigated. In order to make purchase decisions, consumers have to form quality expectations. They infer quality through the use of cues. Expectations influence the hedonic evaluations of stimuli by producing either contrast or assimilation (Zellner, Strickhouser, & Tornow, 2004). Contrast is the shift in hedonic ratings of the stimulus in the direction counter to the expectation. Assimilation is the shift in hedonic ratings of the stimulus in the direction of the expectation. Depending on a number of factors including the strength and certainty of the participant’s expectations and the social pressures that are present in the experimental setting, the participant will either experience contrast or assimilation when rating the quality of food. Researchers have concluded that consumers choose meat based on intrinsic experience and search attributes like tenderness, leanness, juiciness, freshness, and the anticipated taste and nutritional value, which are inferred from the visual appearance of a particular cut of meat (Krystallis, Chryssochoidis, & Scholderer, 2007). The most important factors contributing to the way consumers perceive quality at the point of purchase according to the appearance of the meat are color, visible fat (Trijp & Steenkamp, 1996), and marbling (Bredahl, Grunert, & Fertin, 1998). Appearance of the product, however, does not bias the eating satisfaction. In particular, color and packaging does not affect taste experience (Carpenter, Cornforth, & Whittier, 2001). Visual intrinsic quality cues are of great importance to some consumers and they can have a role similar to that of quality certification. When combined with the choice of particular retail channels and the established personal relationship with the butcher, they can assist in decreasing the risk in the purchasing decision (Krystallis, Chryssochoidis, & Scholderer, 2007). Perceived fat and the place of purchase (butcher or supermarket) are identified as crucial quality cues, and particularly butcher is the preferred product characteristic for beef meat (Grunert, 1997). Fat is generally regarded as a sign of poor quality. In the same time, consumers indicate tenderness, taste and juiciness to be one of the important quality dimensions when evaluating beef. A certain degree of marbling, however, contributes to these quality characteristics. This indicates that consumers have considerable difficulty in forming quality expectations in a way that is predictive of later quality experience. This conclusion is also relevant to the studies conducted by Brunsø et al., (2005), Bredahl, Grunert, and Fertin (1998), Baadsgaard et al. (1993), and Grunert, (2001). Fat does not predict the quality aspects the consumer is interested in, although it is the major cue used to infer quality of meat. When they expect good quality, bad quality will result, and vice versa. Fattening-up has a significant effect on how respondents evaluate the appearance of the meat. In general consumers’ evaluation of expected quality decreases with increasing fattening up, mainly due to the stronger visual appearance of fat in the meat (Brunsø et al., 2005). Figure 12 illustrates how a sample of Danish consumers evaluated the quality of three types of beef while looking at the raw meat (quality expectation), and after consumption (quality experience) (Grunert, 2001). The three types of beef were from milk cows taken out of production differing in that the animals were fattened 0, 2 or 4 months before slaughtering. It can be clearly seen that the increased fat content in the meat, which is a consequence of the additional fattening months, has a negative impact on consumers’ quality expectations when looking at the raw meat, but increases the quality experience during consumption (Grunert, 2001). This means that the production system that includes breed, slaughter weight, and fattening of the animals affect their meat characteristics. Figure 12. Qualty perception of beef [pic] Source: Grunert K., (2001) Appearance as already implied, is poorly related to taste because their structural and compositional origins are different (Dransfield, et al., 2005). In re-purchase, associations with taste may dominate over appearance. In conclusion, consumers’ use of cues to infer quality are quite misleading, which explains why consumers often experience a low degree of correspondence between expected and experienced quality. The smell of food has also an influence on the experienced quality of food. The perceived smell can be influenced by other intrinsic quality cues, by aspects of the meal preparation process or by certain technical product characteristics. In a study, pieces of pork were obtained with three levels of Androstenone and Skatole – flavour components, which are known to be related to the smell that a certain percentage of uncastrated male pigs is known to emit during cooking (Grunert et al., 1996). The results are quite interesting. First, the intrinsic quality cues available at the time of purchase, namely color and fat content, do not have a significant influence on the experience quality after preparation, which adds an interesting perspective to the results from the study on quality perceptions of beef, where it was concluded that consumers dysfunctionally use fat content and color as major intrinsic quality cues at the time of purchase. Secondly, the smell, both during and after preparation, has an influence on experienced quality, but this influence is minor compared to the major quality aspects taste and tenderness. Freshness was found to be one of the main criteria for evaluating choice of food products (Bernués, Olaizola, & Corcoran, 2003). Storage of meat is also a very important attribute for consumers. This extrinsic characteristic is related to the freshness and hygiene of meat and, therefore, is a major cue for expected and experience quality. Overall, this study suggests that there are great differences in the appreciation of extrinsic attributes of red meat between European regions. This result confirms the importance of cultural differences in studying quality perceptions in meat, as suggested by Grunert (1997). Grunert makes an important suggestion on studying the quality perception of food in accordance to cultural characteristics, since different cultures show different patterns for perceiving food quality. The author implies also that quality cues cross-refer to one another, e.g. cut and color cues are used to infer fat content; fat and cut cues are used to infer costs. Further, consumers in low involvement situations and under high degree of habitualization may not form quality expectations (Krystallis, Arvanitoyannis, & Chryssohoidis, 2006). Although involvement in the meat selection process is very high, for a specific part of the sample meat purchasing tends to be a habitual process based on low search cost cues, such as good relation with the butcher or repeated selection of particular parts of the animal. A great importance is attached to buying meat from the butcher, which suggests that consumers would rather trust an expert in the choice of meat than themselves, which additionally increases the effect of uncertainty with regards to the formation of quality expectations (Grunert K. G., 1997). Baadsgaard et al. (1993) has identified that the place of purchase is a major extrinsic quality cue consumers use when evaluating the expected quality of a piece of beef. An explanation for this relation is that buying meat at the butcher’s can substitute for a quality assessment. Thus, consumers rely on extrinsic quality cues in situations of uncertainty, such as consumers infer high quality meat products from the extrinsic quality cue butcher. This conclusion supported also by Grunert (1997), is later confirmed by Grebitus and Bruhn (2008) who investigate pork quality with the help of concept mapping. This method enables the researcher to uncover relations between quality characteristics. The results show that consumers prefer intrinsic quality cues to predict experience (eating) quality attributes. In contrast to that, extrinsic quality cues are used to predict credence quality attributes. Food packaging plays also essential role in attracting consumer attention and generating sensory and hedonic expectations, which can affect their product perception and purchase decisions. Both colour and shape of food affect consumers willingness to purchase (WTP). Results of the study conducted by Ares and Deliza (2010) show the relevance of package characteristics (in the case of the study milk desserts), such as colour and shape, in creating sensory expectations on consumers, which could affect their product perception and acceptance. Package color affected expected flavour and expected texture of the desserts. Besides, participants also associated certain package shapes and colours with specific products, such as egg custard or low-calorie desserts. Thus, during product and package development it would be important to study which sensory expectations packages are able to create in consumer’s mind. Sometimes, packaging of food (for example meat) are less important to consumers (Bernués, Olaizola, & Corcoran, 2003). This attribute can be identified with convenience values. The fact that consumers are used to buy unbranded and, frequently, unpackaged meat, in contrast to other food products, can partially explain this phenomenon. Nevertheless, this situation is changing rapidly and adequate packaging of meat could have increasing importance for convenience-orientated consumers in the future. The influence of perceived origin on perceived intrinsic quality cues and expected eating quality is worth mentioning. For example, Portuguese consumers of quality labelled beef perceive the region of production as a signal of enhanced quality, leading to better intrinsic attributes such as colour and fat, and consequently to higher expected beef eating quality (Banović, Grunert, Barreira, & Fontes, 2009). Country of origin has a significant impact on the probability of choice of broiler meat (Pouta et al., 2010). Willingness-to-pay is substantially reduced when a non-domestic product is offered. On the other hand, a well-known label indicating local origin increased the superiority of the domestic origin. Origin, however, is not a good indicator of safe and healthy/nutritious beef and lamb (Bernués, Olaizola, & Corcoran, 2003). Specifically, the region of origin of food products affects consumer valuation in two different ways (Stefani, Romano, & Cavicchi, 2006). First, origin can act as a quality cue hinting to other characteristics of the good. Secondly, origin can affect directly the value of food due to its symbolic or affective role. In the case of spelt (Stefani, Romano, & Cavicchi, 2006), the narrower and more precisely defined the area of origin the higher the quality expectation of consumers supporting the role of origin as a quality cue. As to the purchase motives the study of Baadsgaard et al., (1993) on beef in England, France, Germany and Spain identified the following ones: Tradition and security – beef can be used to cook traditional dishes, which contributes towards a feeling of security Variation in everyday life – beef is extremely versatile; this not only enables it to be used in many different kind of dishes and on different occasions, but also to provide variation in everyday life Nice atmosphere and social life – suitable for family meals and guests Health and nutrition – beef is regarded as being healthy and nutritious Expected satisfaction – acceptable to family, children and guests Demonstration of cooking abilities – beef is good for proving both to yourself and others how good cook you are. Demonstrating status – highly suitable for festive occasions and for impressing people. Still another study (Prescott, Young, O’Neill, Yau, & Stevens, 2002) identified nine factors thought to be important motives in food choice: Health - contains a lot of vitamins and minerals, keeps people healthy, nutritious, high in protein, good for skin/teeth/nails, etc., high in fibre and roughage Mood – helps coping with stress, helps coping with life, helps relaxing, keeps awaken/alert, cheers up, makes feel good Convenience – easy to prepare, can be cooked very simply, takes no time to prepare, can be bought in shops close to residence, easily available in shops Sensory Appeal – smells and looks nice, has a pleasant texture, tastes well Natural Content – no additives and artificial ingredients, contains natural ingredients Price – cheap, not expensive, good value for money Weight Control – low in calories, helps controlling weight, low in fat Familiarity – means what people usually eat, familiar food is like the food people ate when they were children Ethical Concern – deals with the countries that the consumer politically approve; country of origin is clearly marked; packaging is environmentally friendly All of the abovementioned findings mean that consumers’ general perception of quality has an impact on the extent to which they think the food will be able to fulfill all these motives (Grunert et al.,1996, p.89). *** After the purchase, when preparing and consuming the product, the consumer will have a quality experience, which often will deviate from the expected quality. The relationship between quality expectation and quality experience is commonly believed to determine consumer satisfaction with the product and, hence, the probability of repeated purchases (Oliver, 1993). Product evaluation changes in the direction of expectations; that is, product experience is influenced by the product expectations (Lange, Issanchou, & Combris, 2000). Expectations formed from previous experience, or beliefs based on information about food’s taste or other attributes, play a profound role in consumers’ responses to sensory properties of foods. One model of the influence of expectations that has received empirical support, the assimilation model, suggests that the assessment of foods during tasting is ‘brought into line’ to match expectations. So when expectations are raised, the sensory acceptability of foods can be increased. Recent research on food choice has focused on expectations as determinants of preference and how they interact with, and modify, responses to the sensory properties of foods. In this respect, it has been found that information about nutritional qualities affects the acceptability of foods and that information on food ingredients and use, taste, or nutritional qualities increases the willingness to try novel foods. Using information that has been shown to impact on expectations and preferences (e.g. on taste, nutrition, image) may also be a means to gain acceptance for the introduction of novel flavours or foods to a culture (Prescott, 1998). Many factors influence experienced quality. These are the product itself, the way the product has been prepared and integrated into the meal preparation process, situational factors like time of day and type of meal, the consumer’s mood, etc. Thus, the producer has a little control over both expected and experienced quality, and consequently on consumer satisfaction with the product, because they are affected by numerous other factors. One of these factors is the brand. Banović et al., (2009) showed that extrinsic quality cues do indeed influence perception of intrinsic quality cues, with brand as the predominant quality cue. This finding is of great importance since the role of the brand in the perception of intrinsic quality cues in the case of beef has not been shown before. The fact that consumers use brand to perceive intrinsic quality cues, like colour and fat, indicates that they rely on the brand as a major quality cue helping them to reduce uncertainty of purchase due to the generally large biological variation in objective beef quality. Moreover, it also indicates to consumers that a brand represents a superior quality indicator, which not only provides consumers with additional information but also symbolizes certain beef quality positioning. When observing the direct influence of various quality cues on expected eating and health quality, brand appears to dominate the formation of expected quality. The generally significant influence of brand on perceived quality may also be partially explained by the fact that consumers has prior knowledge of the brand. Research evidence supports a positive relationship between brand and expected beef quality where brand is generally found to be a determinant of both expected eating and health quality among low and high familiarity consumers. The previous results have great similarities with the results of Bredahl (2003). The later show that consumers’ expectancies about health quality to be derived from extrinsic cues, while expected eating quality depended on the perception of a combination of intrinsic cues and extrinsic cues. For both expected health quality and expected eating quality, brand was the predominant cue. A significantly stronger brand effect occurred for consumers who are less familiar with the product category, whereas high familiarity consumers rely relatively more on intrinsic quality cues. This is consistent with the work of Rao & Monroe (1988), where they suggest that more knowledgeable consumers use intrinsic cues rather than extrinsic cues, and that prior knowledge facilitates the learning of new information. It should be noted that the relationship between expected and experienced eating quality is clearly higher for high-familiarity consumers, indicating that these are better at forming quality expectations, which are actually predictive of their later quality experience. This is in line with Zeithaml’s (1988) suggestion that consumers will use extrinsic cues when the quality is perceived to be difficult to evaluate. The brand, however, is an important extrinsic cue only when eating quality is considered. Health quality is a credence characteristic of products and it cannot be evaluated neither before not after the food consumption. Therefore, consumers who have high degree of product experience cannot evaluate the health quality of a food product. Depending on exposure, when people of different backgrounds see a given colored food or drink item, it may induce different expectations regarding what they think the food or drink item is going to taste like (Shankar et al., 2010). Shankar et al. (2009) report that consumers rate sugar-coated chocolate candies (multicolored M&Ms that were identical in taste) given a ‘dark-chocolate’ label as having a significantly more intense chocolate flavor than identical candies that were given a ‘milk chocolate’ label. This means that expectations generated by labeling or by giving the participant information about the stimulus before sampling have produced assimilation of the kind mentioned above. Also, the used labels should be carefully chosen in order to produce correct inferences for meeting the desired benefits. Further, use and effect of the label is different depending on the degree of product involvement (Poulsen & Juhl, 1999). A study on quality perception of fresh fish segments fish eaters according to how much they like serving fresh fish – “fish lovers” and “traditional fish eaters”. Respondents were given two types of information that will affect the quality perception process: first the odor and appearance of the fish (intrinsic cues), which are assumed to be related to the age of the fish, and second the label (extrinsic cues), which gives explicit information on age. For the traditional fish eaters, both their evaluation of odor/appearance and the label affect the quality expectation, but their evaluation of odor/appearance is not affected by the age of the fish. The fish lovers base their quality expectations only on their evaluation of odor/appearance, which is related to the age of the fish (the higher the age, the lower the quality evaluation). They do not use the label information. Generally, consumers perceive food quality as a two-dimensional construct, comprised of eating and health dimensions (Banović et al., 2009). Experienced health quality is explained better than experienced eating quality. Of course, quality perception of credence qualities is always a matter of inferences, whereas quality perception of experience qualities is a question of inferences that can be confirmed or rejected. Moreover, experienced eating quality dominates consumers’ future food purchase intention. The strong influence of this sensory aspect of experienced quality on future purchase intention may be explained by the fact that those quality aspects more accessible to the senses have more weight in the experience phase than those that are not, i.e. credence (e.g. health and nutrition). Subsequently, that is why consumers related eating quality to health quality in the experience phase.

Health dimension

In relation to TFQM, the discussion will continue with consumers’ evaluations of food health quality dimension and of health aspects that affect the buying decision. The perception of healthiness of food in general is influenced by a number of factors such as type and processing of raw materials, origin, production date, conservation method, packaging, use of additives, etc. (Bech-Larsen & Grunert, 2001). The concept of health discussed in the thesis reflects the consumers’ point of view and such aspects as nutrition plays an important role in the their health, although the consumer’s perception of nutrition might be different from that of the nutritionist. From the consumer’s point of view, health involves two dimensions: eating healthily and avoiding unhealthy food (Brunsø, Fjord, & Grunert, 2002). Eating healthily is related to healthy diet, functional foods, food with less amount of fat, and other factors related to health and nutrition. Avoiding unhealthy food, on the other hand, concerns food safety. Food safety raises a lot of discussion about diverse phenomena among which are salmonella, pesticide residues in food, risk from using genetic modification production methods and so on. It can also be said that food safety is the opposite of food risk. Health dimension, as well as the process dimension discussed in the next section, are credence characteristics of food products, since consumers cannot evaluate this quality neither before the purchase, nor after the consumption of the food product. Providing credible information, which consumers can understand is important for the success of the food products (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). The effectiveness of communications depends on three factors: the credibility of the source, the receiver’s motivation and ability to process the information. When the information concerns quality dimensions which consumers are interested in, it can be assumed that to some extent they are motivated to process the information, leaving ability and credibility as two other major factors. Ability to process is an important factor in the communication of credence quality dimensions. The marketing of functional foods is a good example of the importance of the ability factor. Although consumers are motivated to process health-related claims, they will not have the ability to understand the message of, for example, enrichment with omega-3 fatty acids, because they do not have the necessary nutritional knowledge. If a functional food manufacturer wants to emphasize the use of an ingredient, the ingredient could be declared using its scientific name but incorporating a health claim on the label, in order to achieve an association in consumers’ mind between the ingredient and its health effect (Ares, Giménez, & Gámbaro, 2009). When the information is presented in way that the consumer will be able to process is, the degree of persuasion will be higher and consequently the degree of perceived health-related quality will also be higher (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). Extrinsic cues play an important role in health quality evaluation of food (Bernués, Olaizola, & Corcoran, 2003). If labels, brands or other extrinsic cues verify the credence quality of health, then it becomes a search quality attribute in the shop. This means that the perception of the credibility of healthy food significantly enhances the intention to purchase. Nevertheless, the credibility of the information source is one of the main factors determining the perception of credence quality attributes and therefore, credible and reliable attributes and labels are needed. Health is related to basic life value and purchase motives. When judging food on this dimension, consumers neither can see it, nor can they experience it, but they infer it from more concrete intrinsic and extrinsic cues. For example, a study of consumers’ perceptions of fish and motives for buying seafood carried in Denmark in 1996 (Brunsø, Fjord, & Grunert, 2002), revealed that healthiness and physical well-being is one of the most important reasons why these consumer buy fresh fish, along with enjoyment. According to the particular consumers, the fact that fresh fish is an unprocessed product (a natural product), contains vitamins and minerals, and is low in fat are all attributes which contribute to wholesomeness and physical well-being. Thus, being healthy fulfills basic life values, the most important of which are good health, long life, the family’s welfare, high quality life, healthy body and physical well-being. Thus, the way consumers evaluate healthiness of food products can be described by naturalness, a low degree of processing, and low fat content. In other words, these are the typical cues, which consumers use to infer healthiness. Also, the research shows that eating healthily and health concept is subjective. Beliefs about the healthiness of foods significantly affects eating: perceiving food as healthy increases intake of that food (Provencher, Polivy, & Herman, 2009). Consumers regard it as normal to have a higher intake of healthy than of unhealthy foods. Furthermore, believing that food (in the particular study – cookies) are healthy significantly increased food intake among all participants. This suggests that norms can influence food intake. Product labelling is considered an important instrument for changing and influencing dietary habits and behavior (Barreiro-Hurlé, Gracia, & de-Magistris, 2010). Product labels currently allowed in the European Union’s legislative framework are the nutrition facts panel, nutrition claims and health claims. There is a positive link between nutrition label use and purchase behavior through the influence that the nutritional label use has on consumer values and perception. Regardless of the type of nutrition information provided, label use improves the overall quality of consumer diets. Label use is said to be influenced by: nutrition knowledge, individual characteristics, economic conditions and time constraints, health concerns and habits, product involvement, and other factors such as need for information and lifestyle. Consumers with higher nutrition knowledge are more likely to use nutrition labels when shopping for food. There is lack of consensus in the relations between household income and size and their impact on label use. Some studies say, there is a negative impact, still other say, there is a positive one. Health status and awareness, though, are recognized to have a positive impact. The importance given by consumers to price, nutrition, taste and convenience when shopping is used to capture consumer involvement with food products. Importance attached to price is negatively correlated with label use. Still, factors influencing label use also influence nutritional knowledge. In particular, education, sex, level of income and health status positively influence nutritional knowledge. In conclusion, the well informed consumer (that often reads the list of ingredients or assigns more importance to nutrition) will more likely use the nutrition label whereas the more price sensitive consumer is less likely to do so. Yet, the consumer more interested in specific nutrient intake will use the fact panel, those concerned with general health issues will use the claims panel, the same goes for those with a more hedonistic lifestyle. In terms of knowledge, it is clear that the use of the nutrition facts panel will lead to an increase in consumer knowledge, this does not apply to the claims panel. Consumers can be segmented according to perceptions of the meaning of health and each segment has different health-related motive orientation (Geeroms, Verbeke, & Kenhove, 2008). Health-related motive dimensions include energy, emotional well-being, social responsibility, physical well-being, achievement, outward appearance, enjoyment and autonomy. The first segment is Energetic experimenters, which perceive health mainly in terms of vitality and energy. They are the youngest segment, mostly singles, with an overrepresentation of males. Harmonious Enjoyers interpret health in terms of enjoying life and emotional well-being. Normative Carers perceive health as a social responsibility and are mainly concerned about physical well-being and security. Women are strongly over represented in this segment as well as people keeping the house, i.e. housewives/househusbands. Normative Carers are slightly older with a mean age of 43.3 years and 76.4% of them have children in their family. Conscious Experts perceive health in terms of achievement and outward appearance. These respondents deal with health in a very self-conscious way and strongly stress their own, independent capacities to keep control over their health. These are young professionals with the majority of them having no children in the family. Rationalists mainly focus on functional/rational aspects of the meaning of health. They are slightly older and most of them have a family to care for. Within this segment health is perceived in terms of autonomy, with a focus on finding the right balance and organising life between professional work and family. Concerning the associations of health-related motive orientations with convenience of food consumption, several significant differences were found between the five consumer segments. Energetic Experimenters and Conscious Experts show significantly more positive attitudes towards ready meals and more substantial penetration of ready meals, as well as higher consumption frequency levels could be identified. They believe to a greater extent that ready meals are not expensive, contain few additives, are something special, have a good taste and are not harmful for one’s figure. Normative Carers and Rationalists perceive the credence attributes (i.e. healthiness, nutritional value and shelf life date) as more important compared to the other segments and they attach higher importance to price. Within the category of sensory criteria, these two segments consider freshness as very important, as is also the case for Harmonious Enjoyers. In addition, Harmonious Enjoyers together with Energetic Experimenters attach greater importance to the taste of ready meals. Finally, status criteria (i.e. exclusiveness and brand name) are perceived as more important by Conscious Experts. The discussion on the health dimension continues with a focus on functional food – food, which is perceived to be health beneficial; and on genetically modified food – food, which is perceived to be related to a considerable risk for the health when consumed.

Functional food

Functional food is typically marketed as one that contains technologically developed ingredients with a specific health benefit. There are many different definitions of functional food and they range from very simple ‘Foods that may provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition’ to the more complex: ‘Food similar in appearance to conventional food that is intended to be consumed as part of a normal diet, but has been modified to subserve physiological roles beyond the provision of simple nutrient requirements’ (Bech-Larsen & Grunert, 2003). The perception of healthiness of functional food concerns in particular the type of health claims enrichments, processing methods, and base products used. Health claims can alter the perception of the healthiness of the processes and enrichments involved in the production of functional food. Health claims are legislatively determined as physiological and as prevention claims (Poulsen J., 1999). Physiological claims describe how a functional enrichment affects the body, while prevention claims explain the desease, which is prevented by the enrichment. Physiological and prevention claims have a positive influence on consumers’ perception of the healthiness of foods (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). This conclusion is also reached later by Bech-Larsen and Grunert (2003). They assert that claims can be used to enhance consumers’ perception of the healthiness of functional foods. But the perception of the nutritional quality of the base product has the largest effect on the perception of food healthiness. For example, the base product ‘spread’ used in their study, which is inherently perceived as unhealthy, interacted positively with both kinds of enrichments (omega-3 and oligosaccharides) compared to the negative interactions between the latter and the orange juice and yoghurt (the other two food products used in the research). A likely explanation for this occurrence is that consumers perceive juice and yoghurt as healthy per se and their enrichment is devaluated. This means that the perception of functional food healthiness depends on the particular food and type of enrichment considered, implying that the acceptance of functional food might not be unconditional, varying with the type of product considered. So before launching a functionally enriched product, marketers should make a research on the attitudes towards the particular base product and the enrichment to be involved. In general, functional food that has a base product that is considered healthy per se might be more easily accepted by consumers. Within the European Union, Regulation EC (No) 1924/2006 (Commission, 2007) allows basically two types of claims to be made on foodstuffs: nutrition claims and health claims. The latter can be divided into functional health claims and reduction of disease risk claims. Generally, functional health claims outperform nutrition claims, and both of these claim types outperform reduction of disease risk claims (Verbeke, Scholderer, & Lähteenmäki, 2009). The worse evaluations of reduction of disease risk claims relative to nutrition and functional health claims suggest that the more one triggers, the more this may induce scepticism among consumers. Furthermore, these claims can act as negative reinforcement messages because they explicitly name a disease risk. Consumers may dislike being reminded of such risks or potential losses particularly in a food-related context where hedonic values and pleasure play an important role (Verbeke, 2006), and therefore respond in lower scores. However, consumers tend to prefer functional food concepts, which primarily communicate disease-related health benefits in carriers that have an image or history in healthiness, like margarine, yoghurt (Kleef, Trijp, & Luning, 2005). In this respect, physiology-based health benefits (e.g. heart health, osteoporosis, cancer) are preferred over the ‘softer’ psychology/behavior-based benefits, simply because negative information is more informative, attracts more attention and stimulates deeper information processing than positive information. Further, health claim perceptions primarily differ to the extent that they are personally relevant to the consumer in addressing an experienced disease state. Verbeke et al.’s study (2009) confirms that positive attitudes towards functional foods and familiarity with the concrete functional product category boost the claim type, whereas perceived control over own health and perceiving functional foods as a marketing scam decreased all product concept’s appeal (namely calcium-enriched fruit juice, omega-3 enriched spread, and fibre-enriched cereals). Claims convey to the consumer relevant information on food content and health benefits and as such, they facilitate consumers to make well-informed food choices. Consumer choices for functional foods depend on how consumers perceive and understand these claims. Therefore, nutrition and health-related claims have become regulated to avoid the use of unjustified and potentially misleading claims and to enhance healthy-food choices (Trijp & Lans, 2007). There have been identified three types of potential biases in consumer inferences from nutrition and health claims. First, the so-called ‘mere-label’ effect, which means that consumers overestimate products’ benefits of all food attributes just because of the mere presence of a claim, which is not necessarily a nutrition and health claim. The second effect is called ‘halo’ effect, which makes consumers generalize a positive perception of particular nutrient/ingredient to other nutrient levels not implicit in the claim (e.g. a claim for low cholestorol will lead to the implication of low fat). The third effect is the ‘magic bullet’ effect, which makes consumers attribute inappropriate health benefits to the product. Health claim per se is not likely to cause any unrealistic positive inferences in perceived product quality (Lähteenmäki et al., 2010). Health claims can be expected to increase perceived healthiness of products, but the increase will be moderate at best and the impact can also be negative when consumers are approached with claims containing ingredients and benefits they have not been exposed to before. Consumers do not readily accept the health information in the claim unless it is confirmed by their existing knowledge and beliefs. Health-related claims have the largest impact on perceived naturalness suggesting that consumers perceive added functional components as unnatural. Consumers tend to perceive functional food as unhealthy, because of the ‘unhealthy artificial additives’ and the enrichment methods used in the production process (Bech-Larsen & Grunert, 2003). Thus, perceptions and attitudes towards functional foods can be difficult to change, since they are culturally determined in the values of consumers. However, Schwartz (1994) ascertains that consumers’ attitudes to functional foods can be influenced by the cultural value ‘harmony’ and ‘mastery’. ‘Mastery’ entails active and self-assertive manipulation of the social and natural environment. ‘Harmony’, on the other hand, accentuates on the co-existence wth nature and rejects the manipulation of natural resources. Cultural impact on the perception of healthiness in functional foods should be investigated in details in order to uncover relationships, which will better describe the quality perception processes related to the healthiness of food. Apart from perceiving functional foods as unnatural, the consumers thought that functional foods would falsely compensate for an unhealthy lifestyle (Landström, Hursti, & Magnusson, 2009). The use of functional foods[pic]is considered to be justified when a healthy lifestyle is incapable of improving people’s health. Consumers perceive themselves to be in no need of functional foods. They think that the foods is meant for others, for those in unquestionable need. Health enhancement and health risk prevention through appropriate dietary choices are the most important motives for puchasing functional food (Krystallis, Maglaras, & Mamalis, 2008). On the other hand, the most important attributes of functional foods that affect their purchasing decisions are such as the product is ‘pure’, ‘safe’, ‘healthy’ and of a high ‘quality’. Taste expectation and experiences have been reported as extremely critical factors when choosing functional food (Poulsen, 1999). Acceptance of functional food has become more conditional, particularly with respect to taste, and monitoring taste emerges as an extremely critical factor for the future of functional food (Verbeke, 2006). Consumers have become, however, more convinced that good taste and healthiness are not necessarily to be traded-off against each other (Verbeke, 2006). Health-orientation, more than before, is the driver or motivation for being willing to compromise on taste. Willingness to compromise on taste increases with age (Verbeke, 2006). The increasing perceived importance of food for health, combined with the decreasing belief in health benefits from functional foods—which in the end translates into a lower willingness to compromise on taste — are evolutions that are indicative for a lower conviction that functional foods can constitute a part of a healthy and tasteful diet among the majority of consumers (Verbeke, 2006). Price and brand name attributes are also important to the consumer when considering the purchase of functional food (Krystallis, Maglaras, & Mamalis, 2008; Ares, Giménez, & Deliza, 2010). Further, consumers are not willing to sacrifice convenience, to risk in trusting unknown brands or to spend more money in order to purchase foods with functional characteristics (Krystallis, Maglaras, & Mamalis, 2008). Different gender and age groups showed different preference patterns for the functional foods (Olsen, 2003; Ares & Gámbaro, 2007; Verbeke, 2006; Poulsen, 1999; Bech-Larsen, Grunert, & Poulsen, 2001; Ares, Giménez, & Deliza, 2010; Ares, Giménez, & Gámbaro, 2009; Roininen, Lähteenmäki, & Tuorila, 1999; Krystallis, Maglaras, & Mamalis, 2008), which shows that it is important to take into account the influence of the socio-demographic variables when determinging the consumers’ perception of healthiness of functional food. For example, research results related to different perception of functional foods concepts with gender and age suggest the importance of segmentation and studying the perception of particular groups when designing functional foods (Ares & Gámbaro, 2007). Overall, young adults are more interested in energy enhancement attributes, such as added vitamins and minerals, while early-middle-aged emphasize more on disease prevention attributes, such as lower cholesterol and cardiovascular diseases risk reduction (Krystallis, Maglaras, & Mamalis, 2008). Nevertheless, it is suggested that knowledge and belief outweigh the impact of socio-demographic determinants on functional food acceptance (Verbeke, 2005). Finally, social trust is an important factor for the consumers’ willingness to buy functional food (Siegrist, Stampfli, & Kastenholz, 2008). Consumers who have trust in the food industry are more likely to buy functional foods. And trust is needed, because health benefits delivered by functional foods cannot be directly experienced. Consumers must believe the producers’ claims that their products deliver certain health benefits. Another factor describing consumers’ willingness to buy functional food is the reward obtained from using functional food (Urala & Lähteenmäki, 2004). In addition to the perceived reward, the necessity for functional foods affects positively the willingness to use functional food products. Further research about the influence of non-sensory variables on consumer perception of functional foods is necessary.

Genetically modified food

As mentioned before, health has two dimensions – eating healthily and avoiding unhealthy eating. The later is related to food safety and risk perception. Genetically modified (GM) organisms are one of the examples for risk perception, which have a potential risk without proven damage. GM foods represent new technologies that generate benefits in terms of cheaper production costs and food atribute enhancement, and costs incurred in the form of ethical and moral issues, unexpected allergic reactions, long-term health and environmental impacts (Roe & Teisl, 2007). The perception of these benefits and costs will determine consumers’ responses to the new technologies and consequently the success of the particular food products. Risks and benefits associated with the technology explain the attitudes towards the use of GMOs in food production (Bredahl, 2001). Consumer benefits are a precondition for consumer acceptance of a GM technology (Bredahl, et al., 2004). Health benefits do not as such increase consumer acceptance of such foods. Consumers’ rejection is so persistent that not even the introduction of GM foods with substantial consumer benefits can change it. In other words, substantial benefits, e.g. health related ones, are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for increased consumer acceptance. European consumers seem to perceive considerable risk in GM technology (Bredahl, Grunert, & Frewer, 1998). Consumers host negative associations with GM food, namely less healthiness, less enjoyment, morally wrong, harms nature, cannot trust, etc. (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). Indeed, being non-GM is regarded as a major benefit of foodstuff (Grunert et al., 2000). These beliefs about GM food are generally seen to inhibit the attainment of individual life values such as happiness and inner harmony, long and healthy life, quality of life and security, and the more social life values responsibility for nature and responsibility for the welfare of other people (Bredahl L., 1999). The perceived benefits are explained by the perceived risks, that is, the more risk consumers perceive, the harder it becomes to see any benefits, which means that simply stating the benefits will not succeed in changing consumer attitudes towards GM technologies. More importantly, the attitude towards GM in food production is deeply embedded in more general attitudes held by the consumers, in particular attitude towards nature and attitude towards technology. In other words, cultural determinants play an important role in the consumer’s approval of a specific technology, and that beliefs about its benefits and risks are rooted in more general knowledge and attitudes toward nature and technology and are therefore difficult to change. Specifically, Siegrist (1999) found that an individual’s assessment of gene technology is affected by both their world view and by their perceptions of benefit and risk of the technology. Because these views are also culturally constrained, it is possible that international differences in opinion toward GM food are embedded in these cultural attitudes. The perceptions of risks and benefits of GM food are not independently distributed (Costa-Font & Mossialos, 2007). Individuals that are likely to identify high risks with regard to GM food might be those who also identify lower benefits. Prior beliefs do not seem to be influential in determining perceptions of the risks and benefits of GM food. Knowledge of science, though, significantly affects perceptions of benefits, whereby the larger the individual knowledge of biotech-related facts generally, the larger the perceived benefits of GM food. This points out that there might be a ‘fear of the unknown’ underlying individual perceptions of GM food. Beliefs relating to perceived unhealthiness and low trustworthiness of the GM products are generally seen to inhibit the attainment of individual life values such as happiness and inner harmony, long and healthy life, quality of life and security, and the more social life values responsibility for nature and responsibility for the welfare of other people (Bredahl, 1999). Thus, consumers consider risks and benefits of GM in the light of perceived consequences for themselves, as well as for other people and for the environment, where ‘other people’ primarily refers to one’s family and future generations. The benefits which are attributed to the GM cannot compensate for the perceived undesirable consequences of the GM. Moreover, for attitude changes to occur, the important life values would have to be fulfilled by providing relevant consumer benefits and by reducing actual and possible misperceived risks. Many consumers oppose genetic modification in food production also for ethical reasons which are not likely to be affected by changes in the perceived risk/benefit ratio. The provision of additional information about GM does not change attitudes to GM in food production, but activates existing attitudes and makes them more relevant for the specific food choice. This is known as the attitude activation effect (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). And since attitudes are predominantly negative towards GM food, the result of providing more information is a decrease rather than increase in the probability that consumers will actually choose a GM product (Frewer et al., 2000). Psychology distinguishes between implicit and explicit attitudes. Implicit attitudes are more stable and less flexible than explicit attitudes and will only change over a longer period of time. Explicit attitudes, in contrast, appear to be easier to manipulate and can be altered in a short period of time as new information is received. A study on implicit attitudes towards GM foods (Spence & Townsend, 2006) reveals that participants were found to hold positive implicit attitudes towards GM foods when these were assessed in a context free manner (not in a context with conventional and organic food) and this may lead to approach behavior rather than avoidance behavior towards GM food. This result suggests that attitudes can be influenced by public communication campaigns, and advertsing about GM food. In particular, implicit attitudes can be affected through repeated associations of GM food with valent information. The attitude towards buying food product, which in turn determines intention to buy the product, is mostly influenced by the perceived trustworthiness of the product, and only to a much lesser extent by the perceived product quality, which here includes taste, texture, handling and wholesomeness (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). Moreover, both perceived trustworthiness of the product and perceived quality of the product to a large extent are determined by the respondents’ general attitude towards the use of GM in food production. Trustworthiness of the product can be related to the credibile information about GM in food. Credibility, though, is a characteristic which consumers cannot experience when consuming the product, and is thus a question of communication. Communicating the credibility of claims on health is related to convincing consumers in the veraciousness of these claims. When it comes to GM, however, communication is related to the act of convincing consumers that GM is not bad. For a labelling program to be successful and for a better perception of the GM food, both the message contained in GM labels and the messenger has to be taken into consideration (Roe & Teisl, 2007). This, of course, will affect the adoption of GM technologies and, potentially, the shape of the emerging GM food sector. Labels that explicitly state GM content cause perception of more long-term health problems and lower purchase intent. When the GM claim, however, is expanded to include the reason for the genetic modification, respondents’ purchase intent increases. Labels where GM is mentioned as the means for implementing a more fundamental claim (e.g., 50% less fat or 50% fewer pesticides used), the credibility is higher. That is, the explanation of the means of implementing promised improvements may help establish credibility in the eyes of the consumer. Credibility of the information may also be supported by a certified organ, so that consumers feel adequately informed (Roe & Teisl, 2007). Messages on GM food provided by certified organs/government agencies, consumer organizations and companies should not be conflicting, but based on consensus, so that the consumers’ risk perception does not increase (Dean & Shepherd, 2007). Thus, collaboration among different agencies, companies and governmental representatives will be beneficial for getting a message across to the public. Also, the provision of contact information significantly improves the credibility and adequacy ratings of both the GM claim (Roe & Teisl, 2007). It is interesting to note that consumers perceive the production of GM food for nutritional purposes as acceptable, which indicates that this technology would be viewed as appropriate for the production of functional foods or nutraceuticals, where the benefits are perceived as superior to the risks (Mucci & Hough, 2004). Nevertheless, consumers’ acceptance of GM foods differ among commodities – conclusion supported also by Huang, Qiu, Bai, and Pray (2006). This means that consumers have some knowledge on GM and can discriminate on the consequences of applying GM to different living organisms. Information and knowledge are important factors affecting the consumers’ attitudes towards GM food (Huang, Qiu, Bai, & Pray, 2006). For example, consumers who have not heard of GM food have a lower approval rate than those who have heard. No significant difference exists between male and female respondents. The acceptance of GM foods does not necessarily imply willingness to buy them. Other factors such as prices may determine the purchase of GM foods. Empirically, prices of GM foods affect the consumers’ willingness to buy GM foods. Higher price, though, has a negative effect on WTP (Grunert et al., 2004). Willingness to purchase GM food is higher, when the relative product quality of the GM product is higher (Scholderer, Søndergaard, & Grunert, 2006). Researchers suggest that direct experience with high-quality products may indeed be the only way in which consumer attitudes towards GM foods can be changed in Europe. This conclusion is supported by in the works of Bech-Larsen and Grunert (2000), and Grunert et al., (2004). Preference as well as attitude change are dependent on the quality advantage of GM products relative to conventional competitor products. These results illustrate that taste experience together with substantial health benefits may improve acceptance rates of specific GM foods, but foods with health benefits should be trustworthy and demanded by consumers. Some consumers, however do not perceive the attributes “better taste” and “lower price” as sufficiently good arguments for purchasing GM foods (Magnusson & Hursti, 2002). This finding is interesting, as these two characteristics are usually two very important food purchase criteria. It may be interpreted to reflect that for GM foods the production method is a characteristic, which is regarded as more important than other criteria otherwise considered as highly important. Tangible benefits like better for the environment or healthier seem also to increase consumer willingness to purchase GM foods. Brand equity and store loyalty have also an influence on consumers’ food purchasing decision (Lusk et al., 2001). Consumers are likely to purchase GM foods from agribusinesses with high levels of brand equity or store loyalty even if competing agribusinesses with low levels of brand equity or store loyalty begin selling non-GM food. However, it should be taken into account that the education level of the consumers matters in this case, since those with more knowledge on GM, are more accepting of that technology. In summary, the lack of trust in the use of GM overcompensates for potential positive effects on hedonic, health-related or convenience-related quality, and both trust and perception of possible quality benefits are framed by the existing general attitudes towards the use of GM, which means that both communication trying to establish more trust and communication advocating tangible benefits of the use of GM face an uphill fight against the existing (and mostly negative) general attitudes (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000).

Process dimension

In the last decade, the interest in the way food is produced has increased as the most attention is focused on organic production, animal welfare and naturalness of the food production methods. The naturalness of the food production relates to the use of GMO and in this respect to health, which was discussed in the previous section. Just a short reminder of the section – consumers perceive GM food to be unnatural, unhealthy, unethical and bearing considerable risk or in other words, consumers perceive and evaluate GM food qualities negatively. The current section has to do with food process qualities that consumers evaluate positively, namely organic food production. Marketing organic food products based on credence dimensions is challenging, because consumers cannot verify the claims in the provided information. The credibility of information from sources with vested interests in the topic of the message is generally low, and advertising information is therefore a priori a source with low credibility (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). Marketing of organic products is a good example of how different countries employ different instruments to enhance credibility. In Denmark, for instance, organic food products are controlled and assigned by the state (a Danish ‘Ø’ with the Royal Crown), which is uniformly applied by all producers of organic products. In Germany, as another example, many different labelling schemes have been used, none of which are endorsed by government or other producer-independent institutions (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). Credibility characteristics are difficult for the consumers to ascertain, therefore trust becomes a key issue when buying food. For brands, credibility is to a large extent related to the brand history. For generic marks, credibility also depends on the history of the mark, but in addition to this it depends on the body assigning the mark. Generic marks are used on products in combination with brands and are intended to support the brand. They are some kind of non-company specific symbol, which certifies that a product has certain characteristics (Brunsø, Fjord, & Grunert, 2002). The labelling practices have strong impact on the consumers’ judgements of the information available on the organic products. A study on the purchase of organic diary products in Denmark and Germany (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000) shows that Danish consumers have more confidence in the information that a food is organic compared to the German consumers, which can be related to the different ways of providing information on organic production. This suggests that involvement of a third party (for example, the government) will provide more credibility to the producer’s claims. It has to be mentioned that organic food products on the Danish market exist for long time and they have large market share, which additionally contributes to the established trust between consumers and food category. In other words, when organic products are on the market for long period of time and label schemes has gained consumers’ confidence, inferences based on the label will be common for both consumers who actually buy such products and for consumer that do not purchase regularly organic food. Higher degree of confidence is related to lower degree of satisfaction with the available information and thus additional information is demanded (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). When trustworthiness in labelling information is lower, consumers usually refer to retail forms with higher credibility and/or where guidance of customers is available. That is, the probability of buying organic products mainly in regular supermarkets instead of in health shops and other alternative retail forms increases with confidence in the labelling scheme. Thus, consumers substitute the use of the extrinsic cue ‘generic mark’ with the use of another extrinsic cue, the shopping environment, depending on the degree of trust in the mark. Purchasing certified organic food is one way for consumers to get information about the non-observable food quality aspects (Torjusen et al., 2001). Increased confidence in organic labelling will have the meaning that consumers believe that the products actually possess those characteristics associated with organic production: production methods which are better for the environment, better for animal welfare, better for working conditions during production. In general, environmental and animal welfare concerns have an important role in forming attitudes towards consuming organic food (Honkanen, Verplanken, & Olsen, 2006). This means that the more people are concerned with environmental and animal rights issues, the more positive attitudes they have towards organic food. Consumers with positive attitudes towards consumption of organic food are more likely to form intentions to consume such food, thus converting positive attitudes to intentions (Saba & Messina, 2003). But turning back to the confidence in labelling, it can be concluded that the resulting consumer confidence has an impact both on store choice and on product choice (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). Once a label has gained consumer confidence, it can also become the basis for consumer inferences – i.e. other quality dimensions, in addition to what the label stands for, can be inferred based on the label (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000). When it comes to labels for organic foods, it can be concluded that consumers infer other positive quality dimensions like taste (Kihlberg & Risvik, 2007) and health, (Baadsgaard, Grunert, Grunert, & Skytte, 1994) from the label ‘organic’, if the particular label has gained the consumer confidence. Specific types of packaging and high price are also associated with the label ‘organic’. Overall, consumers expect organic food to be of better quality across all quality dimensions (Grunert & Andersen, 2000). But positive inferences do not necessarily lead to a purchase, if consumers find the trade-off between give and get component unfavorable (Bech-Larsen & Grunert, 1998). The price, in such cases, will have a main role in the purchasing decision for organic food (Baadsgaard et al., 1994). Consumers’ expectancy about the eating quality is substantially higher in meat (pork) that is produced in organic and free-range systems (Scholderer, Nielsen, & Bredahl, 2004). In most cases though, the performance of organic and free-range pork is equal to, and in some times even lower than that of conventional pork. However, consumers’ expectations may be so strong that they may override differences in experienced quality. The effects of label information are substantially higher than the effects of actual meat type, which suggests that the experienced quality of organic pork is very much a matter of expectations. Further, studies show that indoor and outdoor rearing systems do not affect the appearance of pork meat (Dransfield, et al., 2005). For example, colour of meat from intensive and outside paddock systems, chemical composition, and intramuscular fat do not seem to be different due to different rearing systems. The eating quality of meat from outdoor production is similar to that from indoor production. This means that rearing has less influence on sensory quality than genotype. There are no differences in off-odour, tenderness, meat taste and off-taste, although pork from outdoor pigs was judged less juicy and more crumbly than that from the conventional indoor system. Also, pork from pigs raised with an access to the outside area had a poorer eating quality than conventional pork (Scholderer, Nielsen, & Bredahl, 2004), which means that the inconsistent effect of raising system on eating quality could not be used to marketing advantage, because expectations exceed the experienced quality in most cases (Grunert & Andersen, 2000). It is important to mention that there is a consistent effect of labeling on the willingness to pay. After tasting labelled pork, consumers are prepared to pay extra for the labelled pork. Let us take another interesting example of labeling effects on organic food perceptions. Labels stating the production methods (consisting of organic production, health-oriented production and animal welfare orientation) of broiler meat (Pouta et al., 2010) has a positive effect on the respondents’ choice. Production promoting consumer health is less preferred in comparison with organic production or production that places the emphasis on animal welfare. This may be partly explained by the perception of broiler fillets as a healthy choice compared to pork or beef, and as such there is no willingness to pay for additional health attributes such as ω-3 fatty acids. In addition, this may be because broiler meat products promoting consumer health are not currently available on the market. This suggests that when marketers want to promote a particular quality to consumers, they should first research the consumers’ perception of that particular product, so that the promotion is fully effective. In conclusion, the fact that consumers associate organic production not only with good health, animal welfare and concern for the environment, but also with good taste means that the characteristic ‘organic’ is no longer only a credence characteristic, but is also partly an experience characteristic, where expectations can be confirmed or disconfirmed after the purchase. Where consumers have expectations about the better taste of organic products, a disconfirmation of this expectation raises another potential barrier to organic demand (Brunsø, Fjord, & Grunert, 2002). This barrier can be perceived as a trade-off between taste and process. But who are actually the consumers that frequently purchase organic food? Studies show that these are consumers concerned with health related aspects of food, such as how the food is produced, processed and handled, and how this may affect people, animals and nature along the way (Torjusen, Lieblein, Wandel, & Francis, 2001). Consumers of organic food consider important food’s appearance, freshness, taste, and shelf life; recognize their own role in the food system, including concern for their local environment. Organic consumers are less concerned about a wide selection of food,[pic]low price and issues of convenience. These results address the issue that conventional consumers and those who purchase organic food have different valuation patterns regarding food and food procurement. Also, the profile of the average organic consumer appear to be working females who belong to higher income levels, are more educated, younger, married at a lesser extent, and with fewer children (Krystallis, Arvanitoyannis, & Chryssohoidis, 2006). The major purchase motives for organic products are health, nutrition, family acceptance, and enjoyment (Baadsgaard et al., 1994). Honkanen, Verplanken, and Olsen (2006) add to the motives environmental concern, food safety, sensory variables, ethical concerns or value structure. In addition, budgetary restraints are categorized as the most important motive for not eating organic food (Bech-Larsen & Grunert, 1998) and as it is earlier stated – one of the factors that limit organic food choice. The major quality aspects of organic food are freshness, nutritiousness, good taste and healthiness. Consumers find also that limited availability and high price are the main problems related to organic food (Krystallis, Arvanitoyannis, & Chryssohoidis, 2006; Kihlberg & Risvik, 2007). Honkanen, Verplanken, & Olsen (2006) add to the factors that limit organic food choice with satisfaction with conventional food, lack of trust and lack of perceived value. On the other hand, organic food consumers are less price-sensitive and are more interested in quality signs (such as the organic label) and meat production method-related information. They pay less attention to meat’s brand name, because they possibly relate pre-packaging and branding to more intensive meat production methods. Furthermore, organic consumers do not rely on animal part as meat quality criterion as much as the non-buyers, because they are more involved in food purchasing and can potentially use more reliable and sophisticated extrinsic and intrinsic cues as meat quality criteria. Overall, organic consumers are interested to a greater extent in a relatively limited number of meat quality criteria. These are mostly related to quality labels, production method and price of food and are generally compatible to their expected attitudinal profile as organic consumers. Perceptions of meat safety of organic buyers and non-buyers are the same, which emphasizes that the notion of safety is embodied in meat by definition. From that aspect, then, an organic piece of meat has nothing special to offer in comparison to its well-inspected conventional counterpart (Krystallis, Arvanitoyannis, & Chryssohoidis, 2006). Studies focus as well on cross-national differences to identify how organic is related to self-relevant consequences and to the fulfilment of personal values (Thogersen & Bredahl, 2006). For instance, Danish consumers appear to have the most differentiated and British consumers the simplest structure of associations to organic food among the four countries. For German consumers, the issue of the trustworthiness of the organic claim seem particularly salient, whereas associations to enjoyment and to additives in foods are especially characteristic for Spanish consumers. Preservation of nature is a particularly important motive for Danish consumers. What consumers associate with organic foods, that is, their reasons for buying or rejecting it, is affected by national conditions, food cultures, and traditions. Despite the identification of similar food-related lifestyles across countries, the beliefs and attribute to value chains associated with organic foods differ substantially between countries, even within the same cross-national segment. The basic motives and reasons for buying organic food are independent of the processing level of the foods (either fresh or processed food).

Convenience dimension

Convenience is considered one of the most important determinants of consumer’s food choice (Buckley, Cowan, & McCarthy, 2007). It is associated with reducing the input required from consumers in either food shopping, preparation, cooking or cleaning after the meal. Convenience is defined in terms of the time, physical energy and mental effort savings offered to the consumer in food-related activities. Attitudes to convenience affect convenience-related behaviour, and are in turn directly dependant on consumers’ involvement with food and consumers’ perceived household resources. Two theoretical approaches have been dominant in attempts to explain the increasing importance of convenience: the household production approach and the convenience orientation approach (Scholderer & Grunert, 2005). The household production approach goes back to the work of Becker (1965), who argues that households produce outputs like meals for the family employing a production function in which products and services purchased, the capital stock of the household and the time used are the major production factors. So, when the opportunity cost of time increases, this will result in time used for meal production being substituted by increased purchase of time-saving products, services or kitchen appliances speeding up the production of meals. Time and effort dimensions should be explored more profoundly. As to the effort dimension, physical effort and mental/cognitive effort should be separately investigated (Jaeger & Meiselman, 2004). The demographic determinants in the household production approach are regarded as determinants of convenience orientation, or, put another way, convenience orientation is regarded as a mediator between demographic (and other) determinants and convenience-related behaviours. Other determinants are the participation of women in the labour market, changing household structure, consumer prosperity and ownership, declining cooking skills, desire for new experiences, individualism, breakdown of traditional mealtimes, and value for money (Buckley, Cowan & McCarthy, 2007). The convenience orientation approach is based on attitudinal variables and has a heavy emphasis on the importance of perceived contraints. Convenience orientation can be loosely defined as a positive attitude towards time and energy saving aspects in household meal production. The concept has been defined and developed most clearly in the work of Candel (2001), who has developed a convenience orientation scale, which is unidimensional and contains items like ‘‘The less physical energy I need to prepare a meal, the better’’, ‘‘The ideal meal can be prepared with little effort’’ and ‘‘Preferably, I spend as little time as possible on meal preparation’’. Convenience orientation, being an attitudinal construct, is expected to have an impact on convenience-related behaviours, like the purchase of convenience products, the use of convenient shopping outlets and the use of eating out and home meal replacements. Generally, convenience foods can be looked at in several ways. These foods can be narrowly classified by the type of processing technology employed: canning, freezing, dehydration, chilling, chemical preserving, etc., or by the type of food: frozen and canned vegetables; cake mixes and bakery products; soups, sauces, and condiments; processed meats and fish; chilled and frozen dairy-based products; ready-to-eat and shelf-stable dishes; plus many other types (Tillotson, 2003). Scholderer and Grunert (2005) conduct a study covering several aspects of TFQ model by investigating time and money referring to perceived and objective costs; attitudes towards expected convenience quality and intention to buy. They have found that attitudes to convenience have significant direct effect on convenience-related behavior and are directly dependent on consumers’ involvement with food and consumers’ perceived household resources. Also, the effects of objective resource constraints on consumers’ convenience orientations are completely mediated by perceived resources. In addition, the effects of perceived resources on convenience behaviours are completely mediated by convenience orientation. The relationship between objective resources and convenience behavior is rather complex. As already stated, family composition plays an important role in resource perception, which implies that subjectively family life is perceived to consume a lot of resources. When discussing convenience quality cross-cultural factors in the role of food and eating should be taken into account, as well as cross-cultural factors in the organization of household resources. For the first group of factors, the authors imply that cross-cultural validity of food-related lifstyle instrument is different across Europe and Asia, therefore generizabilty of the results is not recommended. The second group of factors consider the effects of economic development and cultural influences on the organization of household resources. Figure 13 shows different factors that affect the role of convenience in consumer food quality perception and choice.

Figure 13. Objective and perceived household resources, convenience orientation, and convenience behaviors [pic] Source: Scholderer and Grunert (2005)

Convenience orientation can also be negatively related to consumption, which can be explained by the individuals’ perception of inconvenience of the product category (e.g. fish) (Rortveit & Olsen, 2009). Attitude, perceived inconvenience and consideration set size are argued to play a mediating role between convenience orientation and consumption. Consideration set is shortly described as ‘the set of brands brought to mind on a particular choice occasion’. It is argued to play critical role with regard to probability of choice. The effect of convenience orientation on attitudes towards fish and fish consumption is relatively weak – a result confirmed by Olsen et al., (2007). Consumers who perceive fish as inconvenient have significantly lower attitudes towards fish. The perceived inconvenience of fish has also a negative direct impact on fish consumption. Convenience orientation is a variable describing a personal characteristic, whereas perceived product inconvenience is a belief about the product or product category itself. Since changing beliefs about a product is regarded as easier than changing personal characteristics, perceived product inconvenience becomes very important, especially since the findings show that perceived product inconvenience has a negative influence on attitude, consideration, and consumption. An example from the Norwegian salmon industry shows that in the past, frozen salmon for the consumer market were either vacuum-packed as whole fillets (with skin and some bones) ranging from 1000 to 3000 g, or packed as whole fish (with head and tail). A shift to a more convenient size and presentation (slices of 125–140 g with no skin or bones) caused a dramatic increase in sales (Lerøy Seafood Group). This simple change in packaging probably made consumers perceive salmon as less inconvenient, resulting in fewer indirect negative effects on consumption through attitude and consideration, as well as fewer direct negative effects on consumption. All of the above suggests that convenience orientation can be crucial for food choice and consumption, but can only be properly understood when the mediating processes are explored. Considering the TFQ model, expected and experienced convenience cannot be omitted of the discussion of this quality dimension. The literature reviewed, however, is not systematic of information about the formation of expectation and actual experiences with this quality dimension. Expected food convenience is found to be judged by the ease of food preparation. Experienced convenience, on the other hand, is evaluated by two factors – ease of preparation and speed of preparation (Costa & Ruijschop, 2006). Actual speed of preparation is thus not significantly related to consumers’ expectations or the preparation times announced by products. Given the ever-increasing demand by consumers for convenience, the focus of food manufacturers should not just be confined to the time, effort saving and perceived household resources dimensions of a convenience food product, but should also centre on other convenience factors. Other convenience factors can be used to make segmentation on convenience consumers. Such segmentation will provide researchers and food manufacturers with an insight into what motivates individuals to purchase convenience foods, because consumers vary not only in their food-related lifestyles but also more specifically in relation to their convenience lifestyles (Buckley, Cowan, & McCarthy, 2007). Segmentation gives the opportunity for food manufacturers to launch specific product offerings and develop communications strategies to target each of the identified segments that address the desired benefits sought by each of the food-related lifestyle segments and the convenience lifestyle segments. Swoboda and Morschett (2001) make very basic convenience segmentation and distinguish between convenience shoppers and those who do not shop in convenience shops based on purchasing behaviour. They found that 57% of those surveyed were convenience purchasers, and that: • Convenience purchasers seem to plan the purchase of convenience food products or meals in advance. • The convenience customers place significantly more emphasis on the ease of purchase than price (both with respect to their weekly shopping and convenience purchases). The last two findings agree well with results of surveys of food-related lifestyles. As described earlier, some segments are much more convenience-oriented than others, especially the ‘careless’ food consumer. These consumers put most emphasis on quick and easy cooking, compared with the other segments. At the same time, these consumers are not as price-conscious as some of the other segments, which is the same combination of traits found by Swoboda and Morschett (2001). This ‘careless’ segment is more or less what we would expect from consumers who are convenience oriented: they are not very interested in the taste, health or process-related quality aspects of food, and food as a means of achieving basic life values is not very important to them. However, interest in convenience has been rising in the other segments too, which means that the market for convenience products is expanding: while they have traditionally appealed to consumers with little interest in other aspects of food quality, there now seems to be a rising demand for products with good taste, health and process qualities, which are at the same time convenient to buy, store, and use.

DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The purpose of the present thesis was to give an overview of the existing research works on consumers’ food quality perception and food choice from the world academic literature and outline existing relationships between the two constructs. Such kind of study was conducted by (Brunsø, Fjord, & Grunert, 2002) but it is limited to an overview of the works carried out in the MAPP research center in Aarhus, Denmark, which makes it incomplete in terms of scholarly perspectives. Moreover, the present study is the first one to establish an exhaustive contemporary list of the quality perception models. Similar work was completed by Steenkamp back in 1989, when he introduced for the first time the Conceptual model of the quality perception process. The thesis shows that the food quality concept is a complex issue. Each consumer perceives food quality in a subjective, unique and intangible way that can be classified around four quality dimensions: hedonic, health, process, and convenience. With regard to the hedonic dimension, it is clear that consumers have considerable difficulty in forming quality expectations in a way that is predictive of later quality experience. This conclusion is related to the cues used to form quality expectations. They have limited predictive validity for the hedonic quality of the product both in-store and upon consumption. Thus, consumers’ use of cues to infer hedonic quality is quite misleading, which explains why consumers often experience a low degree of correspondence between expected and experienced quality. Consumers, with low-familiarity or low-involvement with the product category, experience uncertainty with regard to the formation of quality expectations, so they rely on extrinsic quality cues, such as brands, which indeed influence perception of intrinsic quality cues. Strong brands help consumers form valid expectations about hedonic food quality through experiencing and learning the quality characteristics of the branded product. Expectations formed from previous experience, or beliefs based on information about food’s taste or other attributes, play a profound role in consumers’ responses to sensory properties of foods. The main challenge for consumers, however, is that food products like meat, fruits, bread, are usually unbranded and their quality vary. Still, there are food products, which are branded but the consumer is either unaware of their existence or s/he does not relate the particular brand to consistent quality. In this case, consumers will rely on other extrinsic cues, like price, store image, packaging, origin, and so on. Health is important part of the consumer’s food quality perception and food choice. Health quality is related to basic life values, like good health, long life, family’s welfare, high quality life, healthy body and physical well-being. Eating healthily and health concept is subjective and norms are considered to influence food intake. Consumers have developed their own way of judgment of food healthiness but they clearly demonstrate awareness on low fat, vitamins, cholesterol, unsaturated fatty acids and so on terms considered to be good indicators of food healthiness. Health is a credence characteristic of food products, so credible and effective communication plays an essential role towards the achievement of positive evaluation of this quality dimension. The effectiveness of communications depends on three factors: the credibility of the source, the receiver’s motivation and ability to process the information. On the other hand, the food manufacturer is legally restricted on the health claims. Thus, the final communication has to abide by legal requirements and in the same time, has to integrate consumers’ individual understanding of health concept. The health dimension in the current thesis has been presented through empirical studies conducted on functional food and genetically modified food. The perception of functional food healthiness depends on the base product and its image or history in healthiness, but overall consumers perceive added functional components as unnatural. Perceptions and attitudes towards functional foods can be difficult to change, since they are culturally determined in the values of consumers. By the same token, GM food is associated with considerable risk for the consumers’ health and even the emphasized substantial benefits are not a sufficient condition for increase in consumers’ acceptance. The attitude towards GM in food production is deeply embedded in more general attitudes held by the consumers, in particular attitude towards nature and attitude towards technology. In other words, cultural determinants play an important role in the consumer’s approval of a specific technology, and beliefs about its benefits and risks are rooted in more general knowledge and attitudes toward nature and technology and are therefore difficult to change. Consumers’ attitudes towards GM food, nevertheless, can be changed and researchers suggest that direct experience with high-quality products may be one of the ways in achieving it. Social, economic or demographical variables (e.g., income, age or family size) are crucial to consider when analyzing consumers’ food quality perception and choice (Furst et al., 1996). Additionally, differences in cultural values (e.g., Hofstede, 1980) are also an interesting and relevant issue in cross-cultural studies. Over the life course, people change their attitudes and motives, which contribute to changes in eating habits. In that respect, life course can be a driver in food consumption behavior. The fact that the demography of age in most Western countries is shifting to more elderly people suggests that increased demand for healthy meals can be expected. The significant relationship between age, health involvement and attitudes towards healthy meals implies that attitudes and health involvement change over the life course, and may explain why the elderly of the future may prefer healthy food rather than other meals on their menu (Olsen, 2003). Just like health dimension, the process dimension is a credence characteristic of food, so consumers rely on credible information when evaluating this food quality. The process characteristics or more precisely the organic production characteristics of food are considered to be better for the environment, better for animal welfare, and better for working conditions during production. In addition, consumers associate organic production with health and better taste, as the latter makes the characteristic ‘organic’ also partly an experience characteristic. Overall, consumers expect organic food to be of better quality across all quality dimensions. But positive inferences do not necessarily lead to a purchase, if consumers find the trade-off between give and get component unfavorable. In this respect, consumers find limited availability, high prices and mismatch between the expected taste and experienced taste to be the main problems related to organic food. Finally, what consumers associate with organic foods, that is, their reasons for buying or rejecting it, is affected by national conditions, food cultures, and traditions. Despite the identification of similar food-related lifestyles across countries, the beliefs and attribute to value chains associated with organic foods differ substantially between countries, even within the same cross-national segment. This leads to the conclusion that when food quality and choice are analyzed, cultural characteristics need to be considered playing important roles in the consumers’ quality perception processes related to organic food. The last food quality dimension discussed in the thesis is convenience. Two approaches attempt to analyze this quality: the household production approach and the convenience orientation approach. The household production approach emphasizes on objective production constraints and considers demographic determinants as major factors for convenience orientation. On the other hand, the convenience orientation approach has been developed relatively recently and the volume of research considering this approach is rather small. This approach has as its common core the use of attitudinal variables and a heavy emphasis on the importance of perceived as compared to objective constraints. It is considered crucial for food choice and consumption but proper understanding will be achieved only when the mediating processes are explored, i.e. attitudes, perceived inconvenience and consideration set. It is recommended that this approach is further broadened by investigating the effects of convenience orientation on the purchase of convenience products, the use of convenient shopping outlets and the use of eating out and home meal replacements. Also, for results that better reflect the perception of convenience quality of food, segmentation of consumers is advisable. It is essential to mention, that consumers apply all the four dimensions when judging food quality, which means that all of them simultaneously play a significant role in the formation of quality expectations and the consequent quality experiences. In this case, it can be said that consumers are involved in a multidimensional quality perception process when choosing food. One thing is clear that quality dimensions and applied quality cues are idiosyncratic to the product category investigated and generalizations should be carefully made. Consumer segmentation is very important when food quality is analyzed. This is because individuals are unique and as consumers they differ in the perception of food quality. Some are price sensitive, other - are product-involved, still other are conservative or adventurous. Whatever their characteristic, in order to better understand processes related to quality judgments, consumers need to be grouped in different segments and analyzed according to the specific characteristics of the group. In this respect, social, cultural and demographic variables are essential to be considered in future works, since their influence has been proven to affect consumer’s quality perception and food choice. In the current thesis, reference groups, advertisements, magazines, are not reflected in the quality judgment processes. It is recommended to do so, because they have impact on consumer’s behavior, which can be related to food choice, as well. As to the models on food quality perception, TFQM appears to be comprehensive but difficult to operationalize and quantify in empirical settings (Steenkamp and van Trijp, 1996). More research is needed on expected and experienced convenience; the effect of food sensory characteristics on experienced convenience quality, the effect of eating situation on the experienced taste, health, convenience, and process qualities.

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