Japanese Health Food Market Trend Analysis

Abstract

So-called health food has attracted increasing attention for more than two decades so that the health food market share has continued to increase. However, definitions and regulations regarding health food differ among countries; thus, comparing multiple countries simultaneously is difficult. This study focused on Japan because it has established health food rules and regulations, and both macro and micro data are available for analysis. In this study, government statistics were first used to determine the Japanese health food market’s macro trend. Then, a questionnaire was administered to identify consumer attitudes and behaviors, and important factors for consumers to purchase health food were determined by conducting chi-square tests using the survey data. The obtained factors corroborated the results of the regression analysis used to determine the macro trend. Then, the following hypothesis was posed: differences between the actual sales of health food and sales estimated by regression analysis are primarily due to advertising activities and government regulations. A straightforward agent-based social simulation (ABSS) was performed to investigate how advertising and government regulations influence health food sales. Several reasonable findings that can be utilized in a future ABSS were obtained.