Food Shopping Behavior Among Ethnic and Non-Ethnic Communities in Britain

Abstract

This study compares ethnic and non-ethnic grocery shoppers to establish if their brand preferences differ while shopping in British supermarkets. It is thus an investigation useful for grocery brand positioning. While this study found that grocery shoppers differ in terms of socio-economic status, personal characteristics and brand preference behavior, no significant differences were found in the preference of food brands because of cultural differences. In terms of brand name importance, the results suggests, that statistically, no significant cultural differences exist in the level of importance that consumer groups attached to a variety of food brand attributes. The results however found that, when purchasing fruit and vegetables, rice, meat and fish, non-ethnic consumers disliked “no-name” brands and attached greater importance to national brands than did the ethnic consumers. A substantial majority of both the ethnic and non-ethnic consumers perceived television and radio information sources as of very little importance. The majority of the ethnic consumers found ethnic-minority based newspapers to be an important source of food information. Implications for brand image, the buying preferences for ethnic and non-ethnic consumers, grocery retailing, limitations and future research directions are discussed.