Your health!? Transforming health perception into food product characteristics in consumer-oriented product design

Keywords: food perception, health, consumer orientation, product developmentFood is part of everyday life and few things have changed more drastically in the last century than the way food is produced, processed, distributed, marketed and consumed. Food companies want to be more successful in product development, therefore this needs to be consumer oriented.This thesis develops a conceptual framework that enables transforming consumers' health perception into product characteristics, using health as a quality attribute.First, food perception is disentangled and presented in a model - the food perception model. This model represents the four main determinants of food perception, that is, individual consumers (demography, physiology, psychology, attitudes), environment (family, society), product (product characteristics, production system) and consumption moment (time, place). In this thesis these determinants are represented by consumers as well as product developers and components of a traditional Dutch meal.In expressive and associative group discussions with female consumers, images were generated in order to unravel health perception in consumer terms. These group discussions proved to be a promising and participant-friendly way to gain insight into both affective and cognitive health-promoting product characteristics. These aspects were then related to characteristics, ingredients and affective aspects for eight traditional Dutch meal components. These meal components were differently perceived in terms of their healthiness. Four consumer clusters grouped according to their health opinion had different perceptions of the attributes, ingredients and affective aspects related to product healthiness.Because product developers play a crucial role in product development - which is not an objective process - the perception of product developers (N=58) and that of consumers (N=344) was compared. Based on a questionnaire it seems they both perceive health and its relation to product characteristics in the same way; however, the perception of product developers is more extreme. Four orientations of product developers were distinguished: technology and cost orientation - which are related to the use of more traditional work methods - and customer and consumer orientation, which are related to the use of more modern and interactive work methods. In turn, these four orientations are related to different opinions about factors influencing the failure of products, working with models and cooperation.Product designers must take into account consumer groups, products, product attributes, ingredients and affective aspects. They must be aware of their own perceptions when translating consumer's perceptions into product characteristics.Improving consumer-oriented product development requires integrated use of various disciplines. This thesis proposes a stepwise iterative approach for consumer-oriented product design. Implementation of this approach will result in products which come closer to consumer wishes, and therefore contribute to the shift from a food supply chain to a food demand chain.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Sijtsema, S.J.
Other Authors:	Jongen, Wim
Format:	Doctoral thesis biblioteca
Language:	English
Subjects:	consumer attitudes, consumer preferences, consumer satisfaction, consumers, food, health, perception, product development, consumenten, consumentenvoorkeuren, gezondheid, houding van consumenten, klanttevredenheid, perceptie, productontwikkeling, voedsel,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/your-health-transforming-health-perception-into-food-product-char
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