Functional beverages have gained increasing market share over the last decade. As the Asia Pacific region is one of the largest and most important markets for functional foods, it is critical when developing and promoting new products that food manufacturers/marketers have a good understanding of the Asia Pacific market, including the legislative requirements and consumers’ perceptions of functional beverages. A literature review was undertaken to elucidate legislation criteria and consumers’ perceptions of functional beverages in Asia Pacific countries. Topics reviewed included the origin and definitions of functional foods and beverages; the legislative criteria for functional foods and beverages in four representative countries—Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan; and consumers’ perceptions of functional beverages. There was no concrete definition of “functional food” or “functional beverage” region-wide and correspondingly, the legislative terms and regulatory frameworks for functional foods and beverages varied from country to country and showed divergence due to cultural differences. The systematic review of consumer perceptions of functional beverages showed that product acceptance and purchase intention for different functional beverages was heterogeneous among consumers in the Asian Pacific Region, with many factors playing a role including product attributes (e.g., functional attributes, sensory attributes, and product form) and consumer perceptions (e.g., health motivation, trust in food industry, and food neophobia). The findings from this review will help guide product development and inform marketing strategies for functional beverages targeting the Asia Pacific region by providing information on legislation and consumers’ perceptions.
16 January 2025 in Journal of Environmental Management
Despite the extensive research on sustainability dimensions, the researcher has not completely addressed all the dimensions of sustainability. Most of the times, sustainability is considered as a whole variable, however, the work on separate dimensions is lacking in the literature. Particularly, human sustainability is rarely addressed by the previous studies. Additionally, various dimensions of sustainability such as social, economic, environmental and human is rarely tested in relation to the organizational resilience. Therefore, to fill this gap, this study considered to examine the role of organizational resilience in social sustainability, economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and human sustainability in a sample of FMCG employees. The study used non-probability snowball sampling to collect data from managerial level employees. Data analysis is carried out by using SPSS. Findings identified that; organizational resilience has influential role in various dimensions of sustainability. The focus of the policymakers on organizational resilience can increase the socio-economic and environmental sustainability. The operational efficiency can strengthen the relationship between organizational resilience and sustainability.
10 June 2019 in Journal of Food Products Marketing
In China, persistent and severe episodes of poor air quality have raised the population’s awareness of the deleterious impact that air pollution can have on their health and lead many people to explore physical means to limit their exposure to air pollution and therapies to help their immune system cope with this stress. Using a netnographic approach we explored Chinese consumers’ understandings of the impacts on their health caused by air pollution, and the key attributes (expected benefits, forms, and patterns of consumption) they expect of functional foods designed to help them recover from the pollution-driven impact. Relevant Chinese consumers’ discussions were selected from two Community Question Answering websites, “Zhihu” and “Baidu Knows”. The impact of pollution on the respiratory system was considered to be of the most concern and homemade TCM therapies and diet adjustment were the main forms of remedies discussed online. Results from this study will support the commercial success of functional food products designed to help Chinese consumers recover from the impact of air pollution on their health.
A challenge in social marketing studies is the cognitive biases in consumers’ conscious and self-reported responses. To help address this concern, biometric techniques have been developed to obtain data from consumers’ implicit and non-verbal responses. A systematic literature review was conducted to explore biometric applications’ role in agri-food marketing to provide an integrated overview of this topic. A total of 55 original research articles and four review articles were identified, classified, and reviewed. It was found that there is a steady growth in the number of studies applying biometric approaches, with eye-tracking being the dominant method used to investigate consumers’ perceptions in the last decade. Most of the studies reviewed were conducted in Europe or the USA. Other biometric techniques used included facial expressions, heart rate, body temperature, and skin conductance. A wide range of scenarios concerning consumers’ purchase and consumption behaviour for agri-food products have been investigated using biometric-based techniques, indicating their broad applicability. Our findings suggest that biometric techniques are expanding for researchers in agri-food marketing, benefiting both academia and industry.