Motivações relacionadas à escolha alimentar: segmentação de consumidores

Abstract

Food consumption is not only subject of interest for academics and companies of the food sector, but also it interests government authorities. This is a quantitative study and its objective is to understand consumers’ behavior on their food choices by analyzing motives, which influence people on food consumption. As food choice motivation, the following elements were selected: healthiness, taste, price, safety, convenience and social interactions. For this, visits were made in supermarkets and market places in Lavras city, which is located in the South of Minas Gerais, Brazil. People were approached and requested to participate in a survey. Thus, 309 structured questionnaires were applied via internet. Performing cluster analysis was used to search which motives influenced and characterized these consumers’ food choice. Analyses enabled to identify that there are indulgent consumers, but also there are demanding ones, who assign importance to both hedonic aspects (taste and socialization) and health-related motives. Furthermore, a cluster showed to be focused on health and another one seemed to be budget-oriented. Each cluster has a socio demographic profile, which not always coincided with the general profile of the sample; it realizes that socio demographic aspects influence on food choice and, consequently, clusters characterization. Analysis also enables to identify that the motives related to health not necessarily are incompatible with the pursuit of pleasure for a group of consumers.