Monika J.A. Schröder

Fast foods and ethical consumer value: a focus on McDonald's and KFC

Purpose – Aims to investigate the effect of communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to young consumers in the UK on their fast‐food purchasing with reference to McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).Design/methodology/approach – Focus groups were conducted to clarify themes and inform a questionnaire on fast‐food purchasing behaviours and motives. Attitude statements were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis.Findings – Most respondents (82 per cent) regularly purchased fast food from one of the companies; purchases were mostly impulsive (57 per cent) or routine (26 per cent), suggesting relatively low‐level involvement in each case. While there was scepticism regarding the CSR activity being promoted, expectations about socially responsible behaviour by the companies were nevertheless high. Four factors were isolated, together explaining 52 per cent of the variance in fast‐food purchasing behaviour. They were brand value, nutritional value, ethical value and food quali...

Integrating the voice of the consumer within the value chain: a focus on value‐based labelling communications in the fresh‐meat sector

Superior knowledge of customers’ perceptions of value is recognised as a critical success factor in todays competitive marketplace. Despite this, the voice of the consumer is often poorly integrated within the value chain, the UK fresh‐meat sector being one example. This supply chain has attempted to add value through the implementation of value‐based labelling schemes. Few studies, however, have assessed the value created for consumers. Using both in‐depth interviews and a postal survey of 1,000 fresh‐meat consumers based in Scotland, this paper offers a strategic insight into how coordinators of value‐based labelling schemes might integrate the voice of the consumer within the fresh‐meat value chain. Structural equation models are used to develop marketing recommendations. The main attitudes driving consumer purchases of fresh meat bearing a value‐based label are identified and the market potential for further differentiation of each value‐based label is examined. Future research opportunities are also explored.

ISO 9001 as an audit frame for integrated quality management in meat supply chains: the example of Scottish beef

A highly‐fragmented UK beef industry today faces large, powerful retailers, potentially giving rise to mistrust and lack of common purpose. Consumer confidence in beef has been undermined by BSE and similar crises. The beef supply chain has responded with a number of initiatives designed to improve the quality and marketing of the product, and Government has put in place risk management controls. This paper uses ISO 9001:2000 as an audit frame to assess quality assurance for beef in Scotland, focusing specifically on supply chain integration and integrity of product specification. Identification of responsibilities for quality within the chain, standard setting and audit are also highlighted.

Consumer understanding of UK salt intake advice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of consumer information and advice issued by the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) in terms of consumer understanding.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 118 female respondents in Scotland completed a questionnaire investigating their knowledge about the role of dietary salt and testing their understanding of educational material supplied by the FSA.Findings – A significant proportion (p<0.01) of the respondents considered themselves to be health conscious and nutritionally aware, but they were less aware of their salt intake and specific “salt in the diet” details prior to FSA information.Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to a convenience sample of relatively advantaged consumers, so that further work is required with more vulnerable consumers.Originality/value – A survey tool was employed that may be adapted to evaluate consumer information campaigns in any area of food policy.

Embedding healthy eating: nudging or toolbox?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the rationale and limitations of public nudging approaches currently to be found in the UK food choice environment.Design/methodology/approach The pa ...

Learning Good Judgement: Young Europeans Perceptions of Key Consumer Skills

A convenience sample of 27 European Union (EU) citizens and two Romanians residing in the Scottish Central Belt took part in in-depth interviews to explore a wide range of consumer decision-making scenarios which ranged from borrowing and saving to impulse buying and value for money choices. The aim of the research was to identify and assess how well educated young EU consumers perceive the consumer education process and the precise nature of consumption specific skills. Given the focus of the present paper on consumer judgement, the role of values received particular attention. The Schwartz Value Inventory served as a conceptual framework for analysing the responses. The results show that the family in its role as primary creator of values was considered the most important agent in the consumer education process because it establishes a routine pattern of decision making. Further support from social networks in the wider community and real-life experience through trial and error were cited as equally significant for acquiring useful consumer skills. There was consensus that the influence of schools was limited to providing generic citizenship education rather than specific consumer studies classes. The findings of this study point to the need for changing the current focus of consumer education and consumer policy from an emphasis on training the vulnerable consumer to a more inclusive agenda which concentrates on value education for all market players including producers and marketers.

“Good” and “Bad” Foods

With all that has been said so far, is there any sense in categorising foods as either good foods or bad foods? Does not the mere fact that something is identified as a food, and that there is an established market for it, also make it a good food? The intense, public debate conducted in the UK throughout the 1980s and 1990s on what constitutes good and bad food supplied major impulses to write this book. To date, this debate has been characterised by strong antagonisms, and very little conflict resolution. One reason for this may be that underlying assumptions and frames are rarely explicit, and are often highly personal. One of the UK’s foremost protagonists and defenders of what he refers to as good food is the journalist Derek Cooper. His definition of good food is food that is “natural, pure, nourishing and, above all, full of taste and flavour” [140]. To Cooper, modern food technology, and the terminology associated with it, are baffling [140]. Traditional and home-made foods are best, with “home style” tolerated as an industrial substitute [140]. Cooper expresses concern about the intensive, mass production of foods, because he sees this as leading to food being deprived of its traditional cultural role in society, with farms functioning purely as production units, and animals as meat machines [141]. Henrietta Green, author of the Food Lovers’ Guide to Britain and organiser of a variety of “good food” events, worries about farmers, growers and processors who are willing to compromise their standards, e.g., by substituting cheaper alternatives, or by speeding up processes [142]. Common bad-food terminology includes junk food and, in the special case of genetically modified foods, Frankenstein food. From this perspective, the term “processed food” is almost always used with negative connotations, although traditional processes, however severe, are invariably seen as producing good foods. The industry perspective on the good-food-vs.-bad-food debate is typically one of frustration with the perceived stupidity of the non-technologist and non-scientist, who simply refuses to understand that there simply are no bad foods, only bad diets [143]. This argument appears not to apportion any role to the activities of food formulation, or marketing, in terms of the development of particular food consumption patterns among consumers, that may be detrimental to their health, to the environment, and so on.

Food Additives, Functional Food Ingredients and Food Contaminants

The processing of edible biological tissues into contemporary foods frequently brings such foods into contact with defined chemical or biological entities. This is often deliberate, as with food additives, food ingredients with closely defined technological functionality and microbial starter and ripening cultures; or it may be incidental. Incidental exposure results in contaminants and residues being present in the foods. For example, crop protection and disease control agents are applied to crops deliberately, but usually have neither function nor desired presence in a finished food. This is also true of processing aids, e.g., filtering aids and release (de-moulding) agents, and of so-called carry-over additives. These are food additives with functionality in an ingredient of a food, but with no functionality after that ingredient has been incorporated into the finished product. An example would be the stabilisation of citrus oils using antioxidants, and the subsequent use of such oils in the manufacture of a flavouring, where the antioxidant effect may have been lost. On the other hand, ingress into a food of foreign matter, chemicals, micoorganisms and pests is categorically undesirable, and can only be described as contamination. Food contamination is, for the most part, a safety issue, with microorganisms and microbial toxins the main concerns. Foreign body contamination is important too. For example, metal shavings from machinery represent a constant hazard in all food factories, although this is readily managed by integrating metal detectors into processing streams. Glass however is much more difficult to deal with. Throughout the history of the food industry, there have been unscrupulous traders who have subjected food to adulteration, e.g., by substituting poorer grade ingredients for ingredients that consumers would have expected to be present in a food. Latterly, food tampering has become an important issue, both at the start of food supply chains, where malicious interference with a food may be due to an employee, and at the point of sale, where members of the public can be causing a problem.

Theoretical Perspectives on Consumer Behaviour and Food Choice

The field of Consumer Behaviour is fundamentally concerned with the study of the nature of market exchanges between consumers and their immediate suppliers. It may be thought of as a toolbox more than as an academic discipline in its own right. This is because it draws for its theoretical underpinning on the major established social sciences, in particular, economics, psychology and sociology. To gain a proper understanding of consumer behaviour one has not only to study behaviour itself but also the motivation that lies behind it. As mental states are not amenable to direct measurement, ultimately, most consumer research begins with the observation of actions. In economics, this is where things may be left. Here, the observed action is unambiguously measurable as the demand for a product, and simple rules then link this with supply factors and with the resources the consumer has available. Other observable characteristics relevant to consumer behaviour include social class and demographic group. In psychology, the observed action is merely the first impulse for a much deeper analysis of the causes of the action. Behaviours thus become vehicles used to infer mental states, e.g., motivational states and associated cognitive factors, e.g., attitudes. Unlike economics, the psychological approach focuses not only on observed behaviour, but is also particularly interested in preferences and behavioural intentions, e.g., purchase intent. The economist’s view is that preferences are revealed through behaviours. Clearly, actual behaviours can reveal preferences only within the context of opportunity sets. Economics therefore does not address the issue of behaviour barriers to consumption for specific items, e.g., a healthy diet. Such barriers may lie in ingrained individual consumption habits or in household routines rather than expressing true preferences for a product. Strictly speaking, psychology is concerned with personal factors that act upon the person so as to cause them to behave in specific, largely predetermined ways. However, individuals’ personal psychology is influenced by the features and norms of the society within which they were raised, whilst later in life, peer group and other social pressures continue to influence consumption choices. Sociology and social psychology focus on the social aspect of consumer behaviour motivations. The theoretical approaches of these disciplines maybe drawn on to answer questions about how society acts through consumers. In summary, the main objectives of Consumer Behaviour as a discipline are the observation and interpretation of consumption related behaviours and the prediction and influencing of consumer choices.

The Food Consumer in Society

Strictly speaking, the consumer is defined as the ultimate user of products, the final link in supply chains. In practice, consumption is often taken to include individual purchasing behaviours. However, the individual who buys or prepares a food may not do this only for themselves, but also on behalf of other household members, including companion animals. Cat food is extruded into the shape of little fishes, and cat meat tins decorated with cats’ paw prints, not to try to be appetising to the domestic cat, but to appeal to his or her owner. Consumption links together individual consumers, or market segments, and producers and their offerings. Whilst today a food product continues to represent its producer, the mass production and mass provisioning of foods, and the complex supply chains associated with these, have led to increasing alienation within food supply chains. Various initiatives have been instigated in response to this, in particular, quality assurance schemes.