Abstract
This study has revealed the role of a new factor, perceived correspondence of health effects, in consumer acceptance of functional foods. Using a web survey of 1016 people, we hypothesized and verified the following: when an ingredient does not occur naturally in the carrier but the consumer assigns the same health effect to it as to the carrier, the product’s acceptance will be more positive than it would be if an identical health effect was not associated with the carrier and the functional ingredient. Factors influencing consumer acceptance were examined via binary logistic regression models. According to the results, if a functional food developer fortifies the carrier with an ingredient that does not occur naturally in the carrier, the product can expect higher acceptance if the health effects perceived by consumers are properly matched. In general, it has been found that expected taste and awareness of the product were decisive in all demographic and income groups, whereas perceived correspondence of health effects had a lesser, but still positive influence on acceptance.
Highlights
Two decades ago Childs [1] claimed that the success of functional foods depends on their consumer acceptance
The main aim of our research was to test whether correspondence of health effects has an impact on perceived fit between carrier and ingredient, and to compare the size of the effect with other determinants that in previous research have been shown to have an effect on perceived fit
We have examined the effect of different determinants on the perceived fit of 28 carrier/ingredient combinations created from 5 carriers and 11 ingredients
Summary
Two decades ago Childs [1] claimed that the success of functional foods depends on their consumer acceptance. Nowadays food fortification is still a significant trend all around the world, which is important for developing countries and for vulnerable consumer groups as well e.g., [3,4,5]. This increases the need for revealing new functional food product development opportunities that keep consumer behavior in mind. It quickly became obvious in former research that one of the most important aspects of consumer acceptance is taste or expected taste of the product [6,7,8,9,10]. Urala and Lähteenmäki [17] remark that some types of food might have such a strong effect on health that the consumer may renounce their requirements regarding taste, Verbeke’s [18] cross-sectional research confirmed the views of the majority of the scholars, namely that the customer group that accepts an unpleasant taste of a functional food in exchange for its health-promoting effects is rather limited
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