Consumer Behaviour Literature Review - Essay Example

This has increased the need for food prepared away from home as well as other psychological issues that may contribute to eating habit disorders as well. There are also factors that have reduced energy expenditure such as hours in front of TV sets or computers. (Anderson and Butcher, 2006: p.19) The article by Goldsmith, Freiden and Henderson (1997) hopes to enhance the way in which choices are made by including the values or ‘desired end states’ or ‘ways of living’ as representing the primary motive that consumer have in regards to picking out one food choice over another.

‘Thus, uncovering associations between abstract, general values and more specific product attitudes and behaviours provides some explanation for differences across consumers for these dependent variables.’ (Goldsmith, Freiden and Henderson, 1997: p.352) The authors were motivated to explore the effects of projected social values on relatively ‘low-involvement’ products. These included junk food such as salty or sweet snacks, soft drinks; nutritious food such as dried fruits, granola bars, fresh fruits and then convenience foods such as take-home meals and microwave meals.

Using an eleven-point value system the subjects apply a value number to each category for the food in question. The authors hypothesise that more abstract values would be strongly aligned with general attitudes than with specific types of behaviours and that the measured attitudes would be more strongly associated with the food choice behaviours. The data for this study were obtained from surveys of 323 adult women shoppers in a local mall in a small southern US City. The results confirmed their hypothesis and the measured attitudes were positively correlated with their food choice behaviours.

In other words the higher an associated positive social value, such as drinking a popular beverage