1. Consumer preference
French cuisine has always been the most dominating food culture in France because of its richness in diversity and its delicacy. Being declared a “world heritage”
by UNESCO, it is still the most popular cuisine in the country. Consumers usually consider French food as their first choice when deciding to dine outside. Therefore, it creates difficulties for foreign cuisines to change the dining tradition of French people.
However, Italian food is in vogue in France. It usually competes with French food in the market and the frequency of people having Italian food is getting higher and higher.
Besides, being the country with the most immigrants in Europe, its culture becomes a mixture of many different cultures. As a result, different food culture enter into the country and more and more French people tend to choose exotic food when dining outside or cooking. As to exotic cuisines in France, there are mainly Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arabian, Vietnamese restaurants. Chinese and Japanese food is the most prevalent foreign cuisine, apart from Italian cuisine, in France. Also, Arabian food such as, Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian food are popular because of the huge amount of immigrants.
2. Increasing need for convenient and time-saving products
French consumers’ need for more convenient and time-saving food products is increasing every year. This trend can be explained by several reasons as shown below, which contribute largely to the growth of convenient food industry.
(1) Long commuting time
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Since offices and commercial areas are usually separated from residential areas, in addition, more and more people live in suburbs due to the high prices of living and housing in cities, people usually need to spend long commuting time every day.
Therefore, time-saving food products become the first choice for consumers who shuttle for long distance between offices and houses.
(2) The increase of leisure time
In France, people tend to spend more and more time on leisure activities, such as sports, dancing, gathering with friends, after work. As a consequence, time management becomes very important and people tend to reduce the time they spend on cooking in order to gain more time for leisure activities.
(3) Lack of cheap street food and restaurants
Being different from most of Asian countries, there are few low-priced street food and restaurants in France due to the strict rules and high cost for the setting up of street stands. Therefore, people are not able to eat outside often as in Asia. Instead, they are forced to spend more time on cooking at home. This leads to the consumption of time-saving food products which solve the problem of long-cooking time for consumers.
(4) Small family
In France, people tend to have smaller families than Asian families who usually live with their parents after marriage. Furthermore, nowadays, the percentage of single family is increasing and reached 50% of divorce on every 10 couples. As a result, since the person who takes care of cooking usually has to work during the day, time-saving food products are consumed more and more.
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Table 3-19 indicates types of convenient food products in most of the distribution channels in France. Convenient food products are in 6 different forms, such as microwave-heating frozen food, oven-cooking frozen food, canned and conserved food, fast-food, take-away food, delivery restaurant food. The diversity of each type is rich, especially for frozen food and canned and conserved food. These products are appetizers, vegetables, meat, desserts, fruits, main dishes, breads etc.
Table 0-22 Convenient food products Type of convenient food products
Microwave-heating frozen food
Oven-cooking frozen food
Canned and conserved food
Fast-food
Take-away food
Delivery restaurant food
Source: Field research
3. Growing trend for private-label products
Private-label products have gained huge popularity in France since the past few decades. In the past, famous brands often dominated the market because of the high quality of products they offered and the loyalty of consumers. Nevertheless, after the entry of many low-cost supermarkets into the market and the changing of strategies of
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existing supermarkets, private-label products become a new trend and increase the intensity of the competition in the market.
After having discovered the need of consumers for low-cost products, many supermarkets, such as Carrefour, Casino, LIDL, Auchant, Monoprix, Leaderprice, Dia, Intermarché, have increased to fabricate and sell products under their own labels. In virtue of lower costs that supermarkets have to spend for marketing and selling their own products, they are able to attract the attention of consumers with their cheap products.
Nowadays, all variety of private-label products for daily use is available for consumers. With its low price, innovation and convenience, these products begin to dominate the market and create challenges for well-known brands.
4. Diet custom of consumers
French people have very different diet custom from Asians. They usually prefer lighter food without too much grease or spices. Food is often prepared by sautéing, boiling, or roasting. It is rarely deep-fried. In addition, healthy eating is very important in France and people pay much attention on the food they eat in daily life.
Therefore, bio-food is common in supermarkets and bio-shops are at easy access for consumers. Normally, vegetables are often prepared without being cooked while in Asia, people barely try raw vegetables.
The most remarkable different between French and Asian diet traditions is that, in France, people tend to eat less and breakfast is usually sweet instead of salty while Asians tend to have more food for breakfast and choose to eat salty. The most common meals for breakfast in France are croissants, yogurt, brownies and cakes.
Another difference is that, bread is the main food in each meal instead of rice which is
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considered as the most important base in Asian cuisine. Besides, dairy products play a big role in French cuisine and they are usually in the form of cheese, cream and yogurt which are consumed enormously every day. Furthermore, wine and beers are the indispensable drinks in French dining culture, depending on the regions.
Moreover, because of the rich diversity of French condiments and sauces, people consume more French products than foreign condiments. Also, frozen and conserved food receives high attention in the market since it brings more convenience and saves time for consumers. Thus, supermarkets specialized in frozen food are common and the popular.
Dining tradition on table in France is distinct from Asian as well since the meal is given course by course and each person has their own dish instead of sharing as Asians usually do. A proper French meal is often divided into appetizer, main dish, cheese and dessert. On the contrary, Asians have the habit to have every dish at the same time. In addition, the frequency of dinning outside in France is much less than in Taiwan since there are less low-cost restaurants or street food. Therefore, food products in France are normally more diverse than in Taiwan considering that people cook more often every day.
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