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Article
Publication date: 1 May 2006

Jane Lu Hsu and Yu‐Tso Lin

This study aims to examine the consumption patterns of fresh milk, yogurt drinks, and flavoured milk along with the product attributes that consumers perceived.

1409

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the consumption patterns of fresh milk, yogurt drinks, and flavoured milk along with the product attributes that consumers perceived.

Design/methodology/approach

Over 300 samples were collected from the three most populated metropolitan areas in Taiwan. The cluster analysis is applied in the study to segment respondents in order to reveal different consumption patterns.

Findings

Consumers who purchase larger quantities of fluid milk are those who have relatively higher household incomes. The taste and flavour of fluid milk products are the attributes that consumers value. Consumers who purchase more fresh milk products pay more attention to the fat content, calcium content, and whether the products have the certified labels. Consumers who consume large quantities of yogurt drinks value overall beneficial bacterium attributes of the products.

Originality/value

Based on the results of this study, appropriated marketing strategies are suggested and can be useful for firms to target customers.

Details

Nutrition & Food Science, vol. 36 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0034-6659

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1979

Hendrik A. Baert

States that the continuing structural disequilibrium in the marketing of milk and milk products is of concern in the EEC. Analyses the complex intervention mechanism established…

Abstract

States that the continuing structural disequilibrium in the marketing of milk and milk products is of concern in the EEC. Analyses the complex intervention mechanism established by the commission for this market.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 13 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 September 2018

Mohammed Ziaul Hoque, Jinghua Xie and Suraiya Nazneen

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of consumer perceptions of labelled information and sensory attributes on consumers’ intention to buy fresh milk.

1712

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of consumer perceptions of labelled information and sensory attributes on consumers’ intention to buy fresh milk.

Design/methodology/approach

An experiment was conducted on 117 consumers in a lab at a university. After closely inspecting the labels’ information and tasting two types of milk, participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire, using the direct interview method. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were applied to analyse the data.

Findings

The results show that products’ labelled information and the sensory perceptions increase the buying intention of both ultra-high temperature treated fresh milk (UFM) and pasteurised fresh milk (PFM). The sensory perceptions of PFM can mediate the relationship between products’ labels and consumer buying intentions, but this relationship is not true for UFM. According to our results, nutritional facts and taking responsibility for one’s health are the keys to fresh milk commercialisation in terms of higher relative weights and commonness.

Originality/value

Although the sensory aspects of milk have been rigorously evaluated in the food science literature, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, few studies have focussed on the sensory perceptions of fresh milk incorporating process categories (UFM and PFM) and their mediating effect between labelled information and buying intention in the social sciences. The study is pioneering in that it investigates the perceptions of sensory attributes affecting consumer purchasing decisions for fresh milk in an emerging market.

Details

South Asian Journal of Business Studies, vol. 7 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2398-628X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1969

Factors which influence consumer spending, among the most sought after in any field of market research, things people buy and why, is valuable data on which much industrial…

Abstract

Factors which influence consumer spending, among the most sought after in any field of market research, things people buy and why, is valuable data on which much industrial planning, advertising techniques and marketing is based, but in no other field of trade is consumer preference so closely related to pure economics, i.e., value received in money terms, as in food. With most other commodities, from clothes to cars, hair‐do's to houses, factors affecting consumer choice have different results; appearance, aesthetic quality and neighbourly competition, all play a part, though appearance in a few foods is not entirely without significance, e.g., white bread. Present high levels of consumer spending are said by politicians to be a danger to the country's economy; a more prosaic thought would be that Government spending, or squandering, constituted the greater threat. In the main, factors which influence household food expenditure are essentially down to earth—palatability, digestibility, keeping quality and how far a food will go in the preparation of meals, its value in money terms. The king‐pin in all market research on food must be the woman of the house; it is her laying out of the household purse that determines the amount of food expenditure and the varieties purchased week by week. A housewife's choice, however, is a complex of her family's likes and dislikes, rarely her own, and also determined by the amount allocated from her purse for this part of the household budget and the number of mouths she has to feed. Any tendency to experiment, to extend the variety of food, is only possible with a well‐filled purse; with a large family, a common complaint is of monotony in the diet. A factor of immense importance nowadays is whether the housewife is employed or not, and whether whole‐time or part‐time, and which part of the day she can be in her own home. To this may be attributed, as much as anything, the rise in consumption of convenience foods. Fortunately for the purposes of reasonable accuracy in the results of enquiries, housewives form a class, reliable and steady, unlikely to be contaminated by the palsied opinions of the so‐called lunatic fringe in this unquiet age. Any differences in food choice are likely to be regional, and settled dietary habits, passed on from one generation to another. Statistics from the National Food Surveys show the extent of these, and also consumer preferences as far as food commodity groups are concerned. The Surveys have been running long enough to show something of consumer trends but, of course, they do not exhibit reasons—why consumers buy and use certain foods, their attitudes to food marketing practices, and, in particular, to advertising. Advertising claims, misleading undoubtedly but within the law, have long been a source of controversy between those who worship at the shrine of truth and others less particular. Elsewhere, we review a special study of consumer reactions to aspects of the grocery trade in the U.S.A., and note that 32 per cent do not accept advertisements as being true, but 85 per cent find them interesting and informative. Advertising practices are probably subject to less statutory control in the United States than here, and the descriptions and verbiage certainly reach greater heights of absurdity, but the British housewife is likely to be no more discerning, able “to read between the lines”, than her counterpart in that country. A major difference, however, is that in Britain, more houswives prepare and cook meals for their families than in the United States. The greatest importance of advertising is in the introductory phase of a commodity; new and more vigorous advertising is necessary later to delay the onset of the decline phase of the commodity's life cycle; to ensure that sales can be maintained to prevent rises in supply costs. Advertising helps considerably in the acceptance of a branded food, but housewives tend to ignore cut‐throat competition between rival brands, and what weans a consumer from a brand is not competition in advertising, nor even new and more attractive presentation, but reduction in real price. The main pre‐occupation of the woman of the house is food adequacy, and especially that her children will have what she considers conforms to a nutritious diet, without argument or rebellion on the part of her progeny and without distinction. She knows that bulk foods, carbohydrates, are not necessarily nutritious, although her ideas of which foods contain vitamins or minerals or other important nutrient factors tends to be hazy. She does not pretend to enjoy shopping for food and therefore tends to follow a routine; it saves time and worry. Especially is this so with young married women, who may have to take small children along. Each housewife has her own mental standard of assessing “value”, and would have difficulty in defining it. Nutritional value forms part of it, however, in most women, who connote their food provision with health. The greatest concern is not necessarily positive health, but prevention or reduction of obesity, which is seen among adult members of the family, especially growing girls, as an adverse effect on their appearance, and the types of clothes they can wear. A few of the more intelligent families have an indefinable fear of ischaemic heart disease and its relation to food. When they take positive steps to control the diet for these purposes, they are quite frequently in the wrong direction and rather confused even when this is done on medical advice.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 71 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Article
Publication date: 1 May 1974

The growing range of EEC Directives and Regulations for food products, some of which have never been subject to statutory control in this country, with compositional standards…

Abstract

The growing range of EEC Directives and Regulations for food products, some of which have never been subject to statutory control in this country, with compositional standards, and in particular, prescribed methods of analysis — something which has not featured in the food legislative policies here — must be causing enforcement authorities and food processors to think seriously, if as yet not furiously. Some of the prescribed methods of analysis are likely to be less adaptable to modern processing methods of foods and as Directives seem to be requiring more routine testing, there is the matter of cost. Directive requirements are to some extent negotiable — the EEC Commission allow for regional differences, e.g., in milk and bread — but it has to be remembered that EEC Regulations bind Member‐states from the date of notification by the Commission, over‐riding the national law. Although not so frequently used for food legislation, they constitute one of the losses of sovereign power, paraded by the anti‐market lobby. Regulations contain usual clauses that they “shall enter into force on the day following publication in the Official Journal of the European Communities” and that they “shall be binding in their entirety and directly applicable in all Member States”.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 76 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1981

A Crown Court hearing of a charge of applying a false A description under S.2, Trade Descriptions Act, 1968, is given in some detail under Legal Proceedings in this issue of BFJ…

Abstract

A Crown Court hearing of a charge of applying a false A description under S.2, Trade Descriptions Act, 1968, is given in some detail under Legal Proceedings in this issue of BFJ. It concerns using the word “ham”, ie., the natural leg of a single pig, to various pieces from several pigs, deboned, defatted, “tumbled, massaged and cooked” in a mould shaped to a leg of ham, from which the average purchaser would find it impossible to distinguish. As the defence rightly claimed, this process has been used for at least a couple of decades, and the product forms a sizeable section of the bacon trade. Evidence by prosecution witnesses, experienced shop managers, believed the product to be the genuine “ham”. There is nothing detrimental about the meat, save that it tends to contain an excess of added water, but this applies to many meat products today; or that the manufacturers are setting out to cheat the consumer. What offends is the description given to the product. Manufacture was described in detail—a county trading standards officer inspected the process at the defendant company's Wiltshire factory, witness to the extent of their co‐operation—and was questioned at great length by defending counsel. Specimens of the product were exhibited and the jury were treated to a tasting test—presumably designed to refute prosecution's claim that the meat was of “poor value”. The trial judge said the jury had no doubt been enlightened as to the methods of manufacturing ham. The marketing of the product was also a subject of examination.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 83 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1975

Natural selection—survival of the fittest—is as old as life itself. Applied genetics which is purposeful in contrast to natural selection also has a long history, particularly in…

Abstract

Natural selection—survival of the fittest—is as old as life itself. Applied genetics which is purposeful in contrast to natural selection also has a long history, particularly in agriculture; it has received impetus from the more exacting demands of the food industry for animal breeds with higher lean : fat and meat : bone ratios, for crops resistant to the teeming world of parasites. Capturing the exquisite scent, the colours and form beautiful of a rose is in effect applied genetics and it has even been applied to man. For example, Frederick the Great, Emperor of Prussia, to maintain a supply of very tall men for his guards—his Prussian Guards averaged seven feet in height—ordered them to marry very tall women to produce offspring carrying the genes of great height. In recent times, however, research and experiment in genetic control, more in the nature of active interference with genetic composition, has developed sufficiently to begin yielding results. It is self‐evident that in the field of micro‐organisms, active interference or manipulations will produce greater knowledge and understanding of the gene actions than in any other field or by any other techniques. The phenomenon of “transferred drug resistance”, the multi‐factorial resistance, of a chemical nature, transferred from one species of micro‐organisms to another, from animal to human pathogens, its role in mainly intestinal pathology and the serious hazards which have arisen from it; all this has led to an intensive study of plasmids and their mode of transmission. The work of the Agricultural Research Council's biologists (reported elsewhere in this issue) in relation to nitrogen‐fixing genes and transfer from one organism able to fix nitrogen to another not previously having this ability, illustrates the extreme importance of this new field. Disease susceptibility, the inhibition of invasiveness which can be acquired by relatively “silent” micro‐organisms, a better understanding of virulence and the possible “disarming” of organisms, particularly those of particular virulence to vulnerable groups. Perhaps this is looking for too much too soon, but Escherichia coli would seem to offer more scope for genetic experiments than most; it has serotypes of much variability and viability; and its life and labours in the human intestine have assumed considerable importance in recent years. The virulence of a few of its serotypes constitute an important field in food epidemiology. Their capacity to transfer plasmids—anent transfer of drug resistance— to strains of other organisms resident in the intestines, emphasizes the need for close study, with safeguards.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 77 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Article
Publication date: 18 February 2021

Ryan Vroegindewey, Robert B. Richardson, Kimberly Chung, Veronique Theriault and David L. Ortega

In Mali, dairy processors mostly use imported powdered milk rather than local fresh milk, constraining the development of a domestic milk sector. We investigate factors motivating…

Abstract

Purpose

In Mali, dairy processors mostly use imported powdered milk rather than local fresh milk, constraining the development of a domestic milk sector. We investigate factors motivating a firm's choice of milk input, to identify measures that can encourage demand for fresh milk.

Design/methodology/approach

We utilize case study data from nine firms that use fresh and powdered milk to varying degrees, and which are representative of dairy processing in Bamako. To model firm motivations, we assess how each input contributes to or detracts from firm competitive advantage, through its influence on cost and differentiation.

Findings

Firms using fresh milk pay a higher input price, incur higher transaction costs and face additional challenges in production and distribution. Firms distinguish themselves from competitors through four potential sources of differentiation: novel product types, quality enhancements, quality-signaling and unique packaging. However, fresh milk firms are less likely to exploit each source of differentiation.

Research limitations/implications

Competitive advantage is a useful framework for understanding firm behavior in developing markets and can be applied in other contexts to strengthen external validity.

Originality/value

The extant economics literature on African dairy development has been surprisingly silent on the threat of import competition. This research is one of the first to investigate this issue in the under-studied middle segment of food value chains.

Details

Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies, vol. 11 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2044-0839

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1984

For generations, Britain has had a household delivery of fresh milk; from the days before the Great War when it was delivered by a horse‐drawn milk float, with the roundsman often…

Abstract

For generations, Britain has had a household delivery of fresh milk; from the days before the Great War when it was delivered by a horse‐drawn milk float, with the roundsman often bringing the housewife to the door with his cries of “Milk‐O!”. The float had a churn and milk was delivered in a small can, served out by a dipper. This was the start of the distributive trade, organised between the Wars, from which the present industry has emerged. The trade gave universal acceptance to the glass bottle, returnable for household delivery, only the method of sealing has changed. There have been many demands for its abandonment in favour of the carton, of which recent years has seen a rise in its use in the increasing sales of milk by supermarkets and stores. Despite the problems with returnable vessels, the glass bottle has a number of advantages. The milk, including the cream line, is clearly visible, and short measure is most unlikely, which is a growing problem with carton‐filled milk. The number of prosecutions for short measure with cartons must be causing concern to trading standards departments. There is nothing to indicate the offence until the carton is opened.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 86 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1974

Smedleys Ltd v. Breed effectively disposes of Section 3 (3), Food and Drugs Act, 1955 as a defence in law in what nowadays constitutes the commonest source of all food…

Abstract

Smedleys Ltd v. Breed effectively disposes of Section 3 (3), Food and Drugs Act, 1955 as a defence in law in what nowadays constitutes the commonest source of all food prosecutions, viz., foreign matter in food. Their Lord‐ships' judgment is indeed a brilliant exposition of the law on the subject, but the result of their dismissal of the appeal can only be seen, as one of their number stated, that local authorities and magistrates for all practical purposes can ignore the subsection, and from the numerous reports of legal proceedings, this is what they have been doing for many years. It was resurrected in a case, similar in circumstance to that in Smedleys, a couple of years ago, in respect of a snail in black currant jam, in which the snail and black currants were identical in size and appearance.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 76 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

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