Food identity conveyed: Improving consumers’ food value recognition in cross-cultural dining scenarios

Abstract

How people place value on food can intuitively influence their food consumption behaviours, and human food practices have deep connections to the socio- ecological systems we live in. Phenomena such as land overexploitation, food waste, chemical pollution and fast-food consumption show that a better orientation and a deeper understanding of the value of food is needed in the public. However, in previous studies on food and value, there is a lack of a more holistic perspective that focuses on the complex attributes of food itself, which include the effort invested, the importance of culture, and the socio-ecological impact of food throughout the food value chain.

With a focus on the complex properties of the food itself, this thesis aims to find out what these properties of food are and whether consumers' perception of these properties can lead to higher recognition of food value, thus promoting better food consumption behaviours. Therefore, this thesis firstly proposes food identity as an umbrella concept to capture a more comprehensive description of food. Secondly, a model is developed, examined, and discussed to conceptualise how consumers’ perception of food identity contributes to their food value recognition during their restaurant dining experience. This thesis adopts a quantitative methodology and selects cross-cultural dining as a sample scenario to study. 105 responses are collected through a survey targeting local Finnish consumers who dined in Chinese ethnic restaurants in Helsinki, Finland. Based on the 105 samples, the conceptual model of consumer’s food value recognition is examined and modified through principal component analysis. Meanwhile, an ordinal regression analysis is conducted to explore how the perception of food identity contributes to consumer value recognition.

The results show that, in terms of consumers’ perception, the attributes of food identity can be divided into four aspects: sensory identity, production identity, cultural identity, and preparation identity. As for the relationship between these aspects and food value recognition, the results reveal that the sensory identity and the cultural identity have a significant impact on both customers’ recognition of the food and further purchase intentions. While the production identity is only influencing on recognition of the food but failed to further promote repurchase intentions. Lastly, the preparation identity is discovered with no significant impact on both food recognition and repurchase intentions. Consequently, these results suggest that restaurant operators can enhance diners’ food value recognition by elaborating on the sensory and cultural identities of the dishes they serve. In addition, improving the consumers’ consideration of production and preparation identities of food can be a worthwhile direction for future research.