An analysis of national and cross-national consumer segments using the food-related lifestyle instrument in Denmark, France, Germany and Great Britain

Executive summary 1. Food markets are claimed to be characterized by two opposing tendencies. On the one hand, food culture seems to be a domain of increasingly transnational character. On the other hand, there is substantial evidence that food culture has considerable inertia. This paper reports a series of studies aimed at investigating whether cross-national food consumer segments can be found. 2. Food consumer segments are derived using the food-related lifestyle instrument, which characterizes consumers by how they employ food and eating to obtain life values. The instrument, which has been developed especially with a view towards cross-national comparisons, consists of 69 items measuring 23 dimensions. 3. 1000 respondents were interviewed in each of the countries France, Germany, and Great Britain. 1200 respondents were interviewed in Denmark. Respondents had the main responsibility for shopping and meal preparation in their households. Data were collected by personal interviews. 4. A test of the cross-cultural validity of the data obtained using a confirmatory factor analysis approach showed that the data have at least minimal cross-cultural comparability, and sometimes higher degrees of cross-cultural comparability. 5. Nation-wise cluster analysis using Ward's method yielded sets of five or six segments per country. The segments were labelled the uninvolved food consumer, the careless food consumer, the rational food consumer, the conservative food consumer, the adventurous consumer, the moderate food consumer (France only), the hedonistic food consumer (France only), and the eco-moderate food consumer (Denmark only). 6. A comparison of the segment profiles across nations by MDS showed that most segments group naturally, even though there are numerous differences in the absolute scale means across nations for comparable segments. A cross-national cluster analysis yielded four segments which could be interpreted in a way similar to the across-nation analysis of the national segment profiles. It was also shown that the way in which the national segments are distributed across the cross-national segments supports this interpretation. 7. The results tend to indicate a rather strong tendency towards cross-national segments. This is especially strong for the groups of conservative, uninvolved, adventurous, and careless food consumers.