Motivations for food choices – Results of a quantitative survey in Hungary

• Autor(a) principal: Szűcs, V.
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Hámori, J., Guiné, Raquel
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/5110
• topic: Eating motivations

Today’s consumer food choice is more complex than ever before, thus their decisions became more difficult to understand and to predict. In order to get more detailed information about the Hungarian consumers' food choice motivations a representative (gender, age, level, education, type of residency and region) self-administered questionnaire survey (N=500) was conducted among the 18-59 year-old Hungarian population. With the help of the questions (by scoring) referring to the quality of the nutrition ('How often do you think that you follow a balanced/healthy diet?') and to the frequency of physical exercise ('How often do you usually engage in physical exercise?') three consumer sub-groups were created: 'having healthy lifestyle' (32%), 'having average lifestyle' (44%) and 'having unhealthy lifestyle' (24%). Using the questionnaire’s statements (by scoring) six factors were formed: 'awareness', 'psychical', 'economic', social', 'environmental' and 'media'. For the data analysis IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0 was used. Results showed that consumers 'having healthy lifestyle' planned their nutrition along different beliefs and knowledge, while in case of group members 'having unhealthy lifestyle' planning was less typical. 'Psychical' factors had less effect on the food selection; moreover the mood-driven nutrition was more typical of less healthy lifestyle consumers. As the ratio of consumers having lower than average income was higher in the 'unhealthy lifestyle' group, they showed more sensitivity to economic impacts, like price. Minor differences were perceived regarding the 'social' factor. However it can be stated that while for the consumers 'having healthy lifestyle' dining meant a fellowship and pleasure, for 'unhealthy' people was the time to be in company and eat more. Those with an 'unhealthy lifestyle' pay less attention to themselves and to their environment (e.g. amount of food waste, level of packaging), too. Media had minor impact on the selection decisions, mainly for the consumers 'having healthy lifestyle'. Results of the present study showed that consumers’ food choice motivations have remarkable differences on the basis of the level of healthy lifestyle. The two main effecting factors on healthy lifestyle are awareness and economic factors. Awareness has positive influence on healthy way of life, but the more price sensitive consumers can pay less attention on healthy way of life.