Search results

Convenience and health trends are arguably the two most prevailing consumption trends in the British food market, with single‐adult households as keener followers than many other household types. Two portfolios of food products have been developed as proxies of the twin trends respectively, and the Poisson regression technique is employed to segment these two trend markets. Results confirm some previously held views, challenge others, and make some serendipity that has not been found in previous studies. Marketers are informed of greater accessibility in the health trend market vis‐à‐vis the convenience trend market for segmentation purpose, and are advised to treat the two trend markets as non‐overlapping. A number of future research directions, including a multivariate measure of the aspiration intensity of the two food trends and a measure of the twin trends for a wider range of typical products within the consumer market, are suggested.

Food experience is gaining importance in the increase of sustainable competitiveness of tourism businesses, hence the importance of food consumption measurement in the context of recent gastronomic trends. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is not any appropriate scale to measure food consumption in the context of recent gastronomic trends. This study aims to fill this gap by developing and validating a scale that tends to measure tourists’ food preferences.

This is an explorative study with its unique construction and methodological approach. More specifically, scale development procedures were followed through reviewing the literature and gathering the opinions of 20 experts, and then the primary data were collected through the survey applied to 248 foreign visitors to Turkey. Finally, the subsequent survey was applied to 628 foreign visitors to Turkey for the sake of validity.

This study reveals a scale and validates it. The scale development and validation processes resulted in a three-factor model with 14 items to assess food consumption tendencies: modernist cuisine tendencies, fusion cuisine tendencies and local cuisine tendencies.

This study contributes to the relevant knowledge accumulation by developing and validating a scale measuring food consumption tendencies within the frame of recent gastronomic trends. The authors hope to broaden understanding and utilization of the tendencies and trends by both stakeholders in the tourism industry and academic circles.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first food consumption scale development and validation attempts within the frame of recent gastronomic trends. Considering this, it is hoped that the outcomes are unique and lead academia and practitioners in further research.

This paper aims to analyse the mainstream and emerging global challenges and trends in the global agriculture sector. The analysis leads to a discussion on the present state of the Russian agroindustry and possible future strategies for adaptation in the context of the rapidly changing global environment.

The design of this study is based on the application of the core methods of Foresight. First, a trend analysis is undertaken using reviews and expert methods. Trends identified are mapped using a social, technological, economic, environmental, political and value (STEEPV) framework to ensure that a broad range of trends are covered, which may be stemming from various factors affecting the agriculture sector. The analysis of the big picture of global trends and challenges, interacting with country-specific structural factors, translates are translated into the opportunities and threats, which will in turn help to develop possible strategies for adaptation.

This study develops two adaptive strategies for the development of the Russian agroindustry that are feasible in different short- and long–term time horizons. The first strategy is considered to be the most likely choice for the period before 2020. It includes radical imports’ substitution (of commodities as well as machinery and high-tech components) for ensuring national food security with inevitable temporary setbacks in efficiency and labour productivity. The second strategy, which becomes feasible after 2020, considers re-integrating Russia into global supply chains and expanding commodities exports (volumes and nomenclature) based on full-scale technological modernization with the use of international capital.

The study design is based on the assumption that Russia’s position as a country, which is highly self-sufficient on basic agricultural products and large exporter of crop commodities and fertilizers, will remain unchanged in the horizon of at least 20 years. However, long-term forecasts should also scrutinize the possibility of radical structural changes. Therefore, future research should concentrate on wild cards that can completely disrupt and transform the Russian agriculture industry and as well as the whole economy.

This paper suggests a number of recommendations on national science and technology policy for the three main industries of the Russian agricultural sector: crop husbandry, animal breeding and food processing (the fisheries sector is excluded from the scope of this paper). In addition, this paper proposes a number of measures towards alleviating the institutional barriers to raise the investment attractiveness of the sector.

The novelty of this paper lies in the originality of the research topic and methodology. The Russian agricultural sector has rarely been studied in the context of global agricultural challenges and threats taken on the highest level of aggregation beyond commodity market analysis or agro-climatic and logistics factors. There are few or no studies that lay out a map of possible long-term strategies of Russian agroindustry adaptive development. The Foresight methodology applied in this study is customized to better fit the practical purposes of the study.

This paper aims to explore the evolutionary dynamics of innovation ecosystems in the food industry by adopting both open innovation and convergence approaches to derive practical policy implications to develop impactful innovation ecosystems to promote food production sustainably.

Starting from the cutting-edge case of Foodvalley in the Netherlands, the study adopts a backcasting approach to reach a future vision of food ecosystems from a sustainable food production perspective. The authors set the backcasting analysis in four steps: (1) description of the present and trends analysis, (2) selection of trustworthy criteria and goals, (3) development of future images and (4) analysis of how to reach the images.

The trends analysis has identified three existing innovation fields – protein shift, circular agrifood and food and health – and two strategic directions – convergence and localness decrease. The study reports how a long-term commitment may lead the valley toward a best future scenario.

The study suggests that policymakers and stakeholders can promote innovation strategies in sustainable food production ecosystems by encouraging collaboration between different sectors, reducing regulatory barriers, attracting innovative actors, and investing in education and training programs. To achieve measurable environmental and social impact outcomes, policies should promote entrepreneurship and create an enabling environment that encourages innovation and risk-taking.

The originality of this paper concerns the backcasting perspective applied to the analysis of the food ecosystem. This approach facilitates the identification of a path direction for successfully managing open innovation and industry convergence toward a desirable future of sustainable food production.

This paper investigates the use of Twitter for studying the social representations of different regions across the world towards new food trends.

A density-based clustering algorithm was applied to 7,014 tweets to identify regions of consumers sharing content about food trends. The attitude of their social representations was addressed with the sentiment analysis, and grid maps were used to explore subregional differences.

Twitter users have a weak, positive attitude towards food trends, and significant differences were found across regions identified, which suggests that factors at the regional level such as cultural context determine users' attitude towards food innovations. The subregional analysis showed differences at the local level, which reinforces the evidence that context matters in consumers' attitude expressed in social media.

The social media content is sensitive to spatio-temporal events. Therefore, research should take into account content, location and contextual information to understand consumers' perceptions. The methodology proposed here serves to identify consumers' regions and to characterize their attitude towards specific topics. It considers not only administrative but also cognitive boundaries in order to analyse subsequent contextual influences on consumers' social representations.

The approach presented allows marketers to identify regions of interest and localize consumers' attitudes towards their products using social media data, providing real-time information to contrast with their strategies in different areas and adapt them to consumers' feelings.

This study presents a research methodology to analyse food consumers' understanding and perceptions using not only content but also geographical information of social media data, which provides a means to extract more information than the content analysis applied in the literature.

Food habits are undergoing profound changes owing to the social, economic and technological transformations. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the food patterns of generation X in the past decade, in view of formulating a reflection on the trends of a fundamental component of society.

Applying latent class clustering to the food spending of a representative sample of Italian consumers has made it possible to identify the principal food patterns and to interpret them in light of demographic characteristics and sociocultural changes.

The results show a strengthening of dietary lifestyles displaying a high content of animal proteins, especially in consumers with low levels of education. The importance of convenience foods emerges, mainly among couples but also among families with children. The role of out of the home consumptions grows, mostly among single males. Parallel to this critical picture, the authors note the birth of a new dietary sensitivity that leads a niche of consumers to choose healthier foods. These evolutions offer new challenges and new opportunities for both public and private operators.

The study is limited to the analysis of family food spending. A challenging development of the study unfolds in closely examining the food choices of individuals, particularly for the consumption patterns at greater risk. Extending the study to other countries would permit a comparison between diet, lifestyles and food education policies on a supernational level.

The study indicates several possible strategies both for operators of the food sector to better respond to the demand, and for public institutions in view of contributing to correct current trends, reorienting food habits towards healthier patterns and, in any event, patterns compatible with the demands tied to the new lifestyles.

Using data from five developed countries — the UK, the USA, Norway, Italy and Belgium — food consumption trends are examined. The movement towards healthier eating (internationally) is documented and discussed, and underlying factors which influence the consumer are mentioned. The five countries selected demonstrate many of the typical characteristics of the developed world's eating habits. Probable future trends are listed.

Understanding the determinants that influence consumers' attitude to adopt sustainable diets represents an important area of research to promote sustainable food consumption. The aim of this study is to investigate how (1) the individual openness to new foods (ONFs), (2) the involvement in food trends (IFTs) and (3) the social media use (SMU) can potentially impact the attitude towards the adoption of a sustainable diet (ATSD).

The authors conducted a structured survey in eight countries: Italy, Germany, Poland, USA, Brazil, Japan, Korea and China. The final sample of 5,501 individuals was analysed applying a structural equation model.

The main results show that attitude towards the ATSD is influenced differently by the antecedents investigated in each country. In particular, the ONF positively influences the ATSD only in Italy, USA and Germany. IFT positively influences the ATSD only in Italy, Poland and USA, while negatively in Germany. SMU has a positive influence on the ATSD only in Japan, USA and Germany, while a negative one in Brazil and Korea.

This study presents a cross-country comparison about the antecedents of attitude towards the ATSD, thus providing evidence for the need of ad hoc marketing strategies by companies and policies by institutions at single country level.

In this chapter, a situation analysis was made on the use of technology in gastronomy, an ever-growing and exciting research area. The use of technology is essential in food production processes as well as in all sectors, and accordingly, the number of research on the subject has increased in recent years. Therefore, in the study, information is also given about trend applications today in addition to the use of technology in gastronomy. It is aimed to present the studies conducted by different disciplines together, to reveal the current situation in the light of the studies carried out on a national and international scale and to support possible future studies.

This exploratory research opens a new avenue of tourism destination enquiry for Dhofar Governorate, Oman. It examines the relationship between the food tourism landscape in the country’s southernmost region and the Government’s stated economic development goals. Tourism is a new industry here and in need of sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to identify how the natural and human resources of the region may be harnessed to expand food tourism pathways and achieve sustainable economic development e.g. maximising stakeholder benefits.

The literature review highlights many new developments in food tourism for this baseline study. Qualitative and quantitative (i.e. mixed) methods are used including a case study, a pilot survey of key Government stakeholders in Oman’s Ministry of Tourism, food factory tours and interviews with their executives in Dhofar, direct and participant observation at food establishments and events, visits to popular roadside and market food stalls in Salalah and tourism trend analysis.

Some recent trends in food tourism elsewhere may be adapted in Salalah and spark interest in the food culture and heritage of Dhofar. This, in turn, may bring multiple benefits to the destination’s stakeholders. The governorate’s environment yields a rich variety of agricultural and other food products that may be used to provide new forms of food tourism and increase the region’s appeal to tourists beyond the Khareef season. Further possible benefits include safeguarding local food knowledge, production, culture and heritage, developing SMEs, creating new jobs and increasing visitor stay and spend.

The study is conducted solely in English, whereas Arabic is the mother tongue in Oman. Dhofar is the country’s largest governorate occupying a vast area, not all of which is covered by the study. More data are needed to inform tourism development, policymaking and planning in Dhofar.

Improving tourism’s sustainability profile, creating successful food tourism products and services and achieving Dhofar’s economic development goals require concerted effort. All are in the best interest of the tourism stakeholders concerned.

This paper provides a foundation for future research on this topic. It highlights the importance of placing food tourism development on a sustainable footing to protect and preserve Dhofar’s unique food culture, heritage, traditions and environment, extend the main tourism season and maximise benefits to stakeholders.

Recent trends in food tourism are investigated to gauge their applicability in this dynamic region of Oman. Ideas are presented demonstrating possible food tourism pathways to sustainable economic development that benefit a wide range of stakeholders e.g. food tours, food factory tours and shops, food festivals and cookery-school holidays and/or classes.