Market potentials and consumer behaviour
Project module 18: Acceptance and consumer behaviour regarding health-oriented foods
Scientific studies show that a high intake of vegetables can reduce the risk of heart/circulation, cancer and other chronic diseases. This protective effect is attributed amongst others to the carotenoids in the vegetables. Because of the relatively low consumption of vegetables in Germany, to make optimal use of the health benefits of carotenoids, the project overall project aimed to increase and ameliorate their content and composition in popular vegetables. Improvements of bio-availability of carotenoids as well as genetic modification combined with adopted modern processing methods should guarantee a sufficient intake of carotenoids from food. Overall, the project consortium consisted of nine industrial enterprises as well as working groups from five universities, one federal research agency and one Fraunhofer Institute.
Within our sub-project "Market potentials and consumer behaviour", initially the relevance of factors impacting on the purchasing behaviour of consumers regarding carotenoid-enriched foods and potential alternative products were analysed. To this end, a causal model was developed and empirically validated in a representative survey of 400 consumers in Germany. To analyse the benefit profiles of carotenoid-enriched foods and their future market potential, specifically designed interviews with consumers from typical target groups for carotenoid-enriched foods were carrid out and analysed with a multivariate method for data analysis called Conjoint Analysis. Following that, scenarios were developed in which the market potential of carotenoid-enriched foods was estimated.
Duration: Aug. 2002 – Sept. 2004
Funding: German Federal Ministry for Education and Research
Project lead: Bernhard Bührlen at Fraunhofer ISI