Consumer attitudes and perceptions towards chilled ready-to-eat foods: a multi-national study

• Autor(a) principal: Smigic, Nada
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Ozilgen, Sibel, Gómez-López, Vicente M., Osés, Sandra María, Miloradovic, Zorana, Aleksic, Biljana, Miocinovic, Jelena, Smole Možina, Sonja, Kunčič, Ajda, Guiné, Raquel, Goncalves, J. C., Trafialek, Joanna, Czarniecka-Skubina, Ewa, Goel, Gunjan, Blazic, Marijana, Herljevic, Dora, Nikolić, Aleksandra, Mujčinović, Alen, Djekic, Ilija
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/7806
• topic: Consumers’ perception; Food safety; Chilled ready-to-eat foods; Food handling

Understanding consumers’ behavior and their handling of high-risk foods at home is essential for reducing the number of foodborne illnesses. This study shows the results of a cross-national analysis of consumers’ perception from nine countries, and the identification of customers’ clusters and its characteristics in order to understand customers’ behavior, and to build safe chilled ready-to-eat (RTE) foods prevention strategies. The cluster analysis resulted in two clusters: (1) “Precautious consumers” characterized by the orientation towards pre-packed RTE foods, with consumers mainly coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. Their attitudes and self-reported practices may be categorized as less risky in terms of food-borne illnesses connected with the consumption of RTE foods; (2) “Unconcerned consumers” preferred cutting and slicing RTE foods freshly at the point of purchase, usually sold at the delicatessen department in a supermarket or at open markets. Those consumers mostly came from Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia and their attitudes and self-reported practices were riskier. These results allow a better understating of what characterizes consumers of RTE foods in different countries.