The previous literature review gives a basis for the following research question which will be answered through the three-stage approach of interviews, questionnaire and marketing suggestions.
The main research question is intended to explore the new opportunities in the market due to the change in EU-legislation and the introduction of insect-based food in the European market. The research question is also formed in a way that it broadens the research on entomophagy and goes further in terms of suggesting relevant marketing aspects based on the findings of the research.
4.1 Research question
The research question in this thesis builds on previous literature on Europeans attitudes towards insect-based food and then further contributes by analyzing the underlying motivations which could be leveraged in marketing purposes. On this basis the following research question is created:
How can entomophagy through insect-based food be successfully marketed in the European countries?
The main research question is constructed to be decompiled and partly answered through two sub-questions. As the two sub-questions seek to give a holistic approach towards the research question they pose a key factor of relevance to the main research question. The following two sub-questions are posed as following:
What motivations should be promoted when marketing entomophagy to consumers in Europe?
How can the potential customers in Europe be segmented based on their motivation for purchasing insect-based food?
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These two sub-questions are aimed to be answered through the analysis of the results in both the qualitative and the quantitative results. Together with market-entry theory and previous literature findings, the main research question can be answered.
4.2 Three stage approach
The method to answer the research question can be divided into three stages. Explorative one-on-one interviews conducted with what can be characterized as future potential customers of insect-based food in Europe. In order to build a fundament for the further research, the understanding and basic assumptions needs to be established and verified. Qualitative research will also focus on the understanding of the research question (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). As can be seen from the appendix 1 – Interview guidelines, understanding what motives participants have and what their reasons for purchasing based food are is the key objective. In addition, associations towards insect-based food and whether this is appealing in different settings are also explored.
With the findings from the qualitative interviews, a quantitative survey can be developed, with the intention of measuring the motivational applicability from the interviews. By measuring and clustering the motivations, a segmentation analysis can be done to determine how the different groups in the market can be targeted. The third and last stage of the research methodology is the analysis of the quantitative data, and recommendation forming with regards to the marketing aspects. The combined first-hand data from the interviews will have an in-depth support function as it will contribute to the consumer behavior and attitudes, while the quantitative data will increase the reliability and broaden the perspective. The recommendations and suggestions for marketing entry will be based on both forms of data retrieved and complemented with current literature and research on relevant topics, such as unsought product marketing. Limitations and shortcomings of this methodology will be discussed in chapter 6.3.
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Figure 2 - Three stages research approach (Own research)
4.3 Explorative interviews
The main importance and key aspect of conducting explorative interviews is deducting associations towards entomophagy and the underlying motives and arguments that eventually creates the attitude for insect-based food. With the main objective being a collection of individual perceptions and associations, rather than a representation of multiple individuals, explorative interviews were found to be adequately applicable. With regards to the participation criteria in the explorative interviews a selection of requirements needed to be met by the respondents. The requirements were developed in order to get responses that were beneficial in terms of being creative and useful for the later stages in the quantitative part of the research. As the regulations previously mentioned being changed in EU countries and thereby opening up for marketing opportunities in these specific countries, country of origin or future expected country of residence became important as a selective criterion. As marketing recommendations and suggestions are the final objective of this research, interview objects would further need to fit the category of being a future potential customer. As Vanonhacker et. al (2012) mentions, people with personality traits of a high curiosity factor and openness towards innovative and new food are more likely to try insect-based food, making the curiosity factor and open mind traits selective requirements for being competent interview objects. To acquire a broad set of opinions and perspectives, people
Explorative
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from different countries in Europe were chosen to participate. This might also help in reducing or eliminating country and background specific biases to a certain extent.
4.4 Quantitative research questionnaire
The second step of the three-stage research is a qualitative research questionnaire, where the objective is to measure the effects found in the explorative interviews. More specifically, to measure to what degree the found motivations in the explorative interviews, are influencing the choice to purchase insect-based food. This can be done through factor analysis where the weighting of motivations as independent variables can be ranked, and their importance can be measured. The findings from the explorative interviews, which can be seen in Table 2 suggests that the attitude towards insect-based food can be a reflection of two components: hedonic and utilitarian motivational factors. The following equation is derived to measure the consumer attitude towards insect-based food.
𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 = 𝛽𝛽1∗ 𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻𝐻 + 𝛽𝛽2∗ 𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝐻𝐻𝑈𝑈𝐻𝐻𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝐻𝐻𝑈𝑈𝐻𝐻
In this equation, AIBF is attitude towards insect-based food, and the β’s measures the weighting
of each component. Table 2 gives an overview of the classification of hedonic and utilitarian motivations. As for the components of the questionnaire, the factors are condensed down to two utilitarian factors and two hedonic factors. This is mainly due to the frequency of mentioning in the explorative interviews, but also to narrow the scope of the study. The two utilitarian factors measured are environmental benefits and health benefits, while the two hedonic factors are taste and novelty product. The distribution and hosting of the questionnaire is done through Google forms. To give the respondents with a low awareness of insect-based food an insight to what the concept contains the following picture was added to the introduction of the questionnaire.
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Figure 3 - Intro picture for quantitative questionnaire (Foodstuffsa.co.za, 2014)
To incentivize responses an incentive system was developed, offering a reward to one randomly selected participant. This might create an incentive-bias in the results, however the extent of the limitations is discussed in chapter 6.3.
4.5 Concepts of attitude
This section will have a look at attitudes which are measured in the quantitative survey and categorize them into different measurable sections. Furthermore, the concepts of different attitude are shortly summarized, and the choice of terminology decided. Attitude in general is a psychological construct, which decide whether a reaction is favorable or unfavorable towards something or someone (Perloff, 2016). It is exhibited in an individual’s beliefs, feelings or intended behavior (Meyer, 2012). While the separation of different categories within attitudes can be done in different ways, however this paper uses hedonic and utilitarian motivation to examine the overall attitude. In psychology, the ABC-model is commonly used to explain an attitude, while the idea of hedonic vs utilitarian motivation is often referred to in marketing situations where the motive for purchase of an item is examined (Lim & Ang, 2008; Ellis, 1991). Attitude in this research is measured as the total motivation to purchase insect-based food. The decision to use hedonic and utilitarian as categorization factors is also due to insect-based food being a new product on the European market and the experience with or common knowledge on the topic of entomophagy is
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limited (Sogari et al. 2017). Furthermore, the separation of the motivational factors into two categories narrows the focus in this study and is more applicable in terms of answering the research questions.
Figure 4 - Classification of motivations (Own research + Stock et. al, 2015)
The separation of utilitarian and hedonic motivation is also consistent with how Stock et. al (2015) defined their user motives toward the and reasoning for purchasing specific goods. Classifying variables into hedonic and utilitarian motivation gives a better overview of how the different sub-sections in turn affect the motivation, and what motivations the consumer perceives as important.
Motivation/attitude to purchase
insect-based food
Hedonic motivation
Novelty food
Taste
Utilitarian motivation
Environmental aspects
Health benefits
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