An assessment of product class involvement in food-purchasing behavior

Purpose - This paper sets out to investigate the factors affecting product class involvement for food. Factors affecting specific aspects of involvement are also to be explored. The aim is to determine the factors that affect involvement with food and sketch the profile of consumers more likely to be involved or not involved with food. This paper also seeks to assess the factors affecting the importance attached to different aspects of food such as taste, price, nutrition, ease of preparation, and brand name. Design/methodology/ approach - Building on the literature a conceptual model is developed and empirically tested using survey data collected from supermarkets in Athens. Data were analyzed using probit and ordered probit analysis and marginal effects were calculated which show how much the level of involvement or importance is affected when a variable is changed. Findings - This study finds that younger consumers, those with higher education and income who engage in nutritional label use behavior and do not prepare food for their household are more likely to have low involvement with food. Less distinctive characteristics are apparent for the highly involved consumers. Different consumer profiles are also associated with different aspects of food involvement based on importance attached to price, ease of preparation, nutrition, taste, and brand name. Research limitations/implications - A caveat has to do with the localized nature of this study and therefore the limitations in generalizing results. Future research could use larger samples and other measures of product class involvement to test the robustness of these results. Practical implications - The study suggests that overall involvement with food, based on attribute importance, is affected by several socioeconomic and attitudinal variables. The findings also suggest that different profiles of consumers can be associated with different aspects or attributes of food such as taste, price, nutrition, ease of preparation, and brand name. The analysis can be used as a segmentation tool that can assist marketing management with marketing mix decisions, and in particular with promotional strategy in order to increase marketing efficiency. Originality/value - The paper gives new insights on consumer segmentation. It provides the profile of consumers more likely to be involved or not involved with food based on specific aspects such as price, nutrition, taste, ease of preparation and brand name.