Fogyasztói attitűdök a funkcionális élelmiszer-fogyasztás területén

Abstract

The crisis of the food industry can be traced not only in Hungary but also in the economy of numerous countries in or outside Europe. Innovation can be an effective tool of handling the crisis, which will be expected to focus on the development of new products aiming to increase the demand. The growing number of civilisation diseases, rushing and sedentary lifestyle and our over-modernised world are all contributed to the stimulation of unhealthy everyday activities within the population. There is no surprise that the number of rate of the diseases due to unhealthy lifestyle is growing immensely. Hippocrates stated even in 5th century BC that everything we eat had an influence on our bodies. The consumers of this century seem to rediscover this ancient truth, because the role of health consciousness is increasing, although fairly slowly. A group of consumers have already started looking for such foods that are useful to consume or at least not harmful for the operation of the body. The answer for this challenge is provided by the development and marketing of functional foods, which can also be a possible way for the organisations active in the field of food industry in the time of the crisis. A number of initiatives were undertaken to define functional foods and at present there is still no uniformly accepted version in the literature. In our work, however, we summarize the same criteria of each version. In order to underpin the development of health care products, the Eszterházy Károly College made a representative survey with the selection of 1000 people over 18 years within the Hungarian population. On the one hand, the survey was aimed to measure the awareness of functional food and on the other hand to find out more about the connection between the propensity to buy, the demographic extent and other personal factors. The study emphasized the mapping of consumer attitudes, the establishment of the ranking of the motivating and restrictive factors associated with the purchase of these products. We paid attention to the role of price and information, in order to see how these factors affect the selection of physiologically favourable types instead of traditional foods. On the basis of some key factors including demography, property and attitude the consumers were ranked into consumer groups or clusters, thereby providing a basis for product positioning and creating a selective marketing strategy.