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Department of Food Technology and Nutrition, Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Food Preservation, Ghent University,
Coupure links 653, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
b
Department of Agricultural Economics, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
Received 15 July 2002; received in revised form 8 February 2003; accepted 26 April 2003
Abstract
Sales of minimally processed vegetables and packaged fruits are rapidly increasing thanks to their image of convenience and
healthiness. In this paper, consumer perception and choice of these packaged produce was investigated through implementing a
consumer survey in Belgium. The rst part of the survey consisted of face-to-face interviews (n=294) at the point of sales with
people buying minimally processed vegetables and packaged fruits. The second part of the survey was self-administered by consumers at home after consumption (n=237). The likelihood of buying minimally processed vegetables tends to be higher among
better-educated consumers and among consumers with young children. Search attributes emerge in terms of importance during the
purchasing stage, while experience attributes gain importance after consuming the product. The most important motivation for
purchasing minimally processed vegetables relates to convenience and speed, especially for consumers who buy this product during
weekends. Although health and nutritional value scored relatively low in terms of importance during the purchasing and consumption stages of minimally processed vegetables, consumers with a high awareness of the relationship between food and health
attach signicantly more importance to these credence attributes.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Vegetables; Fruits; Consumer; Perception; Survey; Belgium
1. Introduction
Todays society is characterised by an increasing
health consciousness and growing interest in the role of
food for maintaining and improving human well-being
and consumer health (GfK, 2002a; Gilbert, 2000; IFIC,
2000). Vegetables and fruits are fully recognised for
their benets towards healthy living (Cox et al., 1996),
thanks to their protective function against cancer (IFIC,
2001; WCRF/AICR, 1997) and other chronic degenerative diseases (Leather, 1995). The World Health
Organisation suggested a daily intake of 400 g of vegetables and fruits (World Health Organisation Study
Group, 1990), in response of which many food-health
campaigns (e.g. ve-a-day) were launched to promote
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +32-9-264-6178; fax: +32-9-2255510.
E-mail address: frank.devlieghere@rug.ac.be (F. Devlieghere).
0950-3293/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0950-3293(03)00066-1
260
2. Research method
2.1. Framework and objectives
The framework of the present analysis (Fig. 1) is
extracted from a classic attitudebehaviour model based
on Engel, Blackwell, and Miniard (1995). During their
decision-making process, consumers rely on dierent
attributes or cues before deciding whether or not to buy
and which product to choose. Attributes can be divided
into intrinsic and extrinsic ones (Grunert, HartvigLarsen, Madsen, & Baadsgaard, 1996; Steenkamp, 1989).
An alternative classication includes categories called
search attributes (like price, colour and appearance),
experience attributes (like taste and avour) and
credence attributes (like health and microbiological
safety) (Grunert, Bech-Larsen, & Bredahl, 2000;
Nelson, 1970, 1974; Sloof, Tijskens, & Wilkinson, 1996).
Since attributes are evaluative criteria based on which
consumers form beliefs and develop attitudes and
intentions, insights into the perceived importance and
evaluation of attributes are a key to better understand
consumer behaviour.
Evaluative criteria may change depending on previous
experience and the stage in the decision-making process
(Gardial, Clemons, Woodru, Schumann, & Burns,
1994), because consumers may gradually become aware
of product attributes that were not experienced before
purchase. Zeithaml (1988) reported that consumers tend
to rely on extrinsic attributes such as package and its
specic characteristics in situations where relevant
intrinsic attributes (like taste, odour and texture) could
not be evaluated before buying the products. Once
experienced, these intrinsic (experience) attributes can
be expected to gain importance as evaluative criteria.
Hence, a relevant approach is to distinguish attribute
importance at purchase versus after consumption, a
distinction that was conceptualised by Grunert et al.
(1996) in their Total Food Quality Model.
261
262
the food-health association. This construct was measured as a ve-item 7-point scale (see Appendix). The
obtained data set was statistically analysed with SPSS
10.0 for Windows.
2.3. Sample description
A total of 376 respondents were approached in the
supermarkets, of whom 294 were willing to co-operate
(78%). Those 294 respondents could be separated into
two groups consisting of 235 buying minimally processed vegetables and 59 buying packaged fruits.
Respondents were personally interviewed in the supermarkets and asked to complete and return the second
part of the questionnaire. From this sample, 259
respondents sent the questionnaire back within 10 days
from purchase, which means a response rate of 88%.
From the returned questionnaires, 22 were rejected from
analysis for reason of too many missing observations or
incompleteness, which yielded a total of 237 valid
responses or a valid response rate of 81%. These 237
respondents included 192 consumers who had bought
minimally processed vegetables and 45 consumers who
had bought packaged fruits. During the analyses, two
groups of respondents were considered with the rst one
containing the entire sample of 294 respondents. The
second one was a subgroup of the rst and contained
only the 237 respondents who also completed the second part of the questionnaire. There were no signicant
dierences (all P > 0.05) between these two groups with
regard to the socio-demographic characteristics, type
of purchased produce, motivations for buying and
frequency of purchase.
The gender balance of the 294 respondents was 17.3%
male and 82.7% female, which is not surprising given
our focus on persons responsible for food purchasing
within the household. Age was normally distributed
with mean age at 43.7 years and a standard deviation of
13.3 years. More than a quarter (26.9%) of the respondents lived alone. Two-thirds of the sample (66.9%) had
children, of whom 33.7% had children younger than
twelve. The composition of the sample in terms of
employment status was as follows: 5.1% students; 9.9%
retired; 55.4% workers or employees and 13.6% selfemployed. The rest (16%) of the respondents were
working at home, housewife, househusband or unemployed. With these distributions of socio-demographic
characteristics, it can be concluded that a wide range of
socio-economic classes of the population took part in
the survey, i.e. actually bought the products under
consideration.
With respect to education, 41.3% of the respondents
had schooling until their 18th year and 58.7% had
schooling beyond their 18th year. In comparison to the
Belgian population estimates of 25% of persons (2564
years) having schooling beyond their 18th year (GfK,
Number of
respondents
41
17.4
23
19
9.8
8.1
16
14
6.8
6.0
Vegetables
1. Mixed lettuce: sugar loaf, endive, curled endive,
radicchio
2. Mixture of young lettuce leaves
3. Salade gourmande: lambs lettuce, radicchio,
curled endive
4. Shredded carrots
5. Derby lettuce: carrots, red lettuce, sugar loaf,
white cabbage
6. Mixture of red crinkly lettuce and spinach
7. Lambs lettuce
8. Mixture of cabbage lettuce, lettuce leaves,
red crinkly lettuce, parsley, chive
9. Mixture of young lettuce leaves and chervil
10. Iceberg lettuce
14
14
10
6.0
6.0
4.3
10
9
4.3
3.8
Fruits
1. Strawberries in a tray
2. Strawberries in a tub, covered with foil
3. Red raspberriesblueberriesjuniper berries
31
20
8
52.5
33.9
13.6
263
3. Empirical ndings
3.1. Attribute importance during purchase versus
consumption
Table 2 presents the average scores for attribute
importance and evaluation, ordered by descending
values. In general, the scores given on a scale from 1 to
7 were high. Typical experience and sensory attributes
like taste, odour and texture received high importance
scores already at the buying stage, although these could
not be experienced in the shop. A plausible explanation
is that those high scores result from previous experience
with the produce. In Fig. 2, the importance (ImpPur
and ImpCon) scores of dierent packaged product
attributes as perceived by the respondents are reported
and signicant dierences are indicated (Fig. 2). In line
with theory, search attributes (e.g. product appearance,
packaging in general and transparency) were signicantly more important during the buying stage,
while experience attributes (e.g. taste, odour, texture
and feeling) were more important at consumption.
Some packaged product attributes like freshness, shape
and colour of the product were equally important in
both stages. This also holds for the credence attributes
(e.g. health and nutritional value). Remarkably, shape
and feeling of the packaging scored signicantly higher
after consumption versus when buying the packaged
Table 2
Importance of packaged product attributes at purchase (ImpPur) and consumption stage (ImpCon) of minimally processed vegetables and packaged
fruits; evaluation of packaged product attributes in the consumption stage (EvaCon) of minimally processed vegetables; average scores on 7-point
scale
Product attribute
Imp-Pur
Product attribute
Imp-Con
Product attribute
Eva-Con
Freshness
Labelled shelf life date
Taste
Labelled content
Transparency packaging
Product general
Health
Odour
Labelled information
Texture
Colour
Nutritional value
Appearance
Packaging general
Feeling product
Shape packaging
Labelled suggestions for use
Feeling packaging
Shape packaging
6.85
6.80
6.62
6.58
6.42
6.42
6.36
6.31
6.29
6.13
6.11
6.03
5.96
5.44
5.33
5.31
4.77
3.96
3.64
Freshness
Taste
Labelled shelf life date
Odour
Product general
Health
Texture
Labelled content
Colour
Labelled Information
Nutritional value
Transparency packaging
Feeling product
Appearance
Shape product
Packaging general
Labelled suggestions for use
Feeling packaging
Shape packaging
6.88
6.80
6.62
6.53
6.48
6.44
6.40
6.37
6.32
6.22
6.13
5.92
5.69
5.60
5.37
5.33
5.12
4.32
3.96
6.64
6.45
6.42
6.40
6.35
6.29
6.28
6.25
6.24
6.23
6.13
6.09
6.00
5.99
5.92
5.83
5.55
5.53
4.79
264
Fig. 2. Perceived attribute importance (packaging attributes in legend and graph in bold) in the purchasing (ImpPur) and consumption (ImpCon)
stage of minimally processed vegetables and packaged fruits; average on a scale from 1 (not at all important) to 7 (very important); *Signicant at
the 0.05 level.
Table 3
Factor analysis of the scores for the importance of dierent packaged product attributes at purchase (ImpPur) and consumption stage (ImpCon) of
minimally processed vegetables
Attributes (ImpPur)
Factor loading
Attributes (ImpCon)
Factor loading
Healthiness
Shelf life date
Nutritional value
Freshness
0.73
0.71
0.70
0.62
29.6
Labelled information
Shelf life date
Transparency packaging
0.84
0.83
0.79
35.8
Odour
Texture
Taste
0.87
0.84
0.81
12.2
Shape product
Feeling product
Colour product
Feeling packaging
Shape packaging
0.78
0.78
0.71
0.68
0.62
14.4
Shape product
Colour product
Feeling product
0.83
0.72
0.70
9.8
Odour
Taste
Texture
Freshness
0.87
0.86
0.74
0.62
10.0
Shape packaging
Feeling packaging
0.83
0.80
7.9
Nutritional value
Health
0.91
0.88
7.3
Transparency packaging
Appearance
0.74
0.63
6.3
265
266
Table 4
Top ve of rst-stated and second-stated motivations for buying minimally processed vegetables or buying packaged fruits (frequency and %)
Motivations for buying vegetables
Freq
Freq
101
45
28
17
10
44.9
20.0
12.4
7.6
4.4
29
12
5
4
3
49.2
20.3
8.5
6.8
5.1
30
26
20
18
15
21.4
18.6
14.3
12.9
10.7
12
4
4
3
3
33.3
11.1
11.1
8.3
8.3
267
Table 5
Top ve of rst-stated and second-stated motivations for future purchase intention of buying minimally processed vegetables or buying packaged
fruits (frequency and %)
Future purchase intention vegetables
Freq
Freq
44
37
29
24
10
24.0
20.2
15.8
13.1
5.5
29
6
3
1
1
70.7
14.6
7.3
2.4
2.4
27
26
19
16
9
20.3
19.5
14.3
12.0
6.8
6
5
4
1
1
33.3
27.8
22.2
5.6
5.6
4. Conclusions
The success of minimally processed vegetables and
fruits is growing thanks to those products ready-to-use
and convenient image (Ahvenainen, 1996; Foley et al.,
2002; Piga et al., 2000). In this article, empirical evidence is provided for illustrating consumer perception
of this product category. Minimally-processed vegetables and fruits are purchased by a wide range of consumers in terms of socio-demographic characteristics,
though with families having young children and higher
education taking the lead. The most important (reported) motivation for purchasing minimally processed
vegetables relates to convenience and speed, especially
for consumers who buy this product during weekends.
Convenience and speed are traded o to some extent
against health. This was shown by the nding that
health and nutritional value scored relatively low in
terms of importance during the buying and consumption stages, despite rather high levels of food-health
awareness. Furthermore, convenience oriented buyers
of minimally processed vegetables tend to have lower
interest in taste and information. Generally, top
importance levels were attributed to freshness, taste,
268
Acknowledgements
This research is part of a PhD, funded by the Institute
for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT). Authors gratefully acknowledge Delhaize for the permission to perform the survey
in its retail outlets. Two anonymous reviewers and
the editor are gratefully thanked for their valuable
comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Item
Factor
loading
0.73
0.64
0.79
0.75
0.49
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