Introduction
Consumption of fish and seafood has been increasing globally (FAO, 2020). A large part of the fish for consumption comes from aquaculture, with estimates ranging between a quarter and more than a half across the world ( EUMOFA, 2020; FAO, 2020) . Forecasts at the global level suggest that the market for aquaculture products will continue to grow (FAO, 2020). In order to be competitive in this evolving international market, new products can be developed to match consumers’ preferences. Identifying consumer segments with international relevance for food-related products becomes increasingly important in this context. Consumers place value on certain value-added attributes of new aquaculture fish products (Banovic et al., 2019), however, they differ in terms of their food-related lifestyles and such differences can help explain which attributes are most sought after by different consumer segments. The present study aimed to identify how the importance of attributes valued by consumers when choosing new aquaculture fish products varies by their food-related lifestyle. Understanding the most relevant attributes for different consumer segments is the first step towards the successful development and marketing of new aquaculture fish products.
Materials and methods
An online survey that included a discreet choice experiment was used to collect data from consumers in three European countries (i.e. Spain, France and Germany) that vary in their fish consumption and household expenditure for fish and seafood products (EUMOFA, 2017) . The survey included consumers’ food-related lifestyle, their preferences in terms of attributes of new aquaculture fish products and several demographic and psychographic measures. Consumers’ food-related lifestyle was measured using the modular food-related lifestyle instrument, which is a newly updated and cross-culturally valid scale (Brunsø et al., 2021 ). Consumer preferences for new aquaculture products (i.e. Sea & mountain meagre burger, Organic sea bream with couscous , Grilled sea bass with lemon) were assessed through a discreet choice experiment. P eople were asked to make 12 choices between three versions of the product varying in the following attributes derived from previous literature (Banovic et al., 2019, Cantillo et al., 2020) : 1) ASC label, 2) NutriScore, 3) country of origin, 4) health claim, 5) price. Multilevel latent class cluster analysis that accounts for the fact that respondents are nested within countries was conducted in LatentGold using the three core dimensions of the modular food-related lifestyle (i.e. food involvement, food innovativeness and food responsibility) to segment the consumers. To identify the classes of consumers based on their choices, Latent Gold choice analysis was performed. T he food-related lifestyle segments were introduced as covariate in the choice analysis to assess their impact on choices.
Results
Based on their food-related lifestyles we identified four segments of consumers and one country group (i.e. all three countries belonged to a single group) . The ‘foodies’ (11%) are those consumers who are highly involved in food, highly innovative and care about responsibility in food systems. The ‘adventurous’ (44%) consumers are also interested in all these dimensions, though to a lower degree than the ‘foodies’. The ‘moderate/conservative’ (40%) segment represented those consumers that score about average on all these dimensions. The fourth segment consisted of those who are ‘uninvolved’ (6%) as they score very low on all food-related lifestyle dimensions.
In terms of choice of new aquaculture fish products , we find that all attributes were significant and influenced people’s preferences towards the chosen products. However, consumers differed in the importance placed on the different attributes and in this regard we identified five groups of consumers with similar preferences within the group but dissimilar between groups. There was a highly significant relationship between the consumer segments based on food-related lifestyle and the choice groups based on people’s new aquaculture product choices. The ‘foodies’ are especially prevalent in the choice groups that value the ASC label and the NutriScore, but also domestic products with a health benefit and medium prices. The ‘adventurous’ prefer the ASC label as well as the NutriScore, but the former is of higher interest for them. They also prefer domestic products with a health benefit, but price is their top priority thereby products targeted towards them should be low to medium priced. The ‘moderate/conservative ’ share some of their preferences with the ‘adventurous’ but in addition they are more prevalent in the group that does not value the ASC label but likes the NutriScore, EU products with a health benefit and especially products with low prices. Lastly, the ‘uninvolved’ consumers were more prevalent in the choice group that is mostly interested in domestic products that are medium priced, they dislike the NutriScore but place some value on the ASC label.
Conclusion
These results have important implications for new product development in the aquaculture market as they show the attributes that are most valued by different segments of consumers. As not all consumers seek the same value-added attributes from new products, our results are highly relevant for targeting new aquaculture products to the most promising segments of consumers in order to ensure their success on the market.
References
Banovic, M., Reinders, M. J., Claret, A., Guerrero, L., & Krystallis, A. (2019a). A cross-cultural perspective on impact of health and nutrition claims, country-of-origin and eco-label on consumer choice of new aquaculture products. Food Research International, 123, 36-47.
Brunsø, K., Birch, D., Memery, J., Temesi, Á., Lakner, Z., Lang, M., Dean, D., Grunert, K. G. (2021). Core dimensions of food-related lifestyle: A new instrument for measuring food involvement, innovativeness and responsibility. Food Quality and Preference, 91, 104192.
Cantillo, J., Martín, J. C., & Román, C. (2020). Discrete choice experiments in the analysis of consumers’ preferences for finfish products: A systematic literature review. Food Quality and Preference, 84, 103952.
EUMOFA. (2017). EU consumer habits regarding fishery and aquaculture products. Annex 4 Country fiches.
EUMOFA. (2020). The EU fish market.
FAO. (2020). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020. Sustainability in action.
Acknowledgments
This study has received funding from the European Union in the frame of Horizon 2020 - MedAID (Mediterranean Aquaculture Integrated Development), grant agreement number 727315 (http://www.medaid-h2020.eu/).