A STUDY ON ATTITUDE TOWARDS PACKED READY TO HEAT AND EAT FOOD PRODUCTS BASED ON HEALTH FOOD RELATED LIFE STYLES

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1 International Journal of Management (IJM) Volume 8, Issue 3, May June 2017, pp , Article ID: IJM_08_03_013 Available online at Journal Impact Factor (2016): (Calculated by GISI) ISSN Print: and ISSN Online: IAEME Publication A STUDY ON ATTITUDE TOWARDS PACKED READY TO HEAT AND EAT FOOD PRODUCTS BASED ON HEALTH FOOD RELATED LIFE STYLES Dr. K. Abdus Samad Director, Jamal Institute of Management Jamal Mohamed College (Autonomous) College with Potential for Excellence Reaccredited (3 rd Cycle) with A Grade by NACC Tiruchirappalli - 20 Pushkar Narayan Singh Part Time Research Scholar Jamal Institute of Management Jamal Mohamed College (Autonomous) College with Potential for Excellence Reaccredited (3 rd Cycle) with A Grade by NACC Tiruchirappalli - 20 ABSTRACT In this study, general food choice motives are not considered, instead more specific attitude towards packed ready to heat and eat food products are predicted based on specific attitude like health consciousness, environmental attitude and healthy food related life style. The main objectives of the study are to identify whether environmental attitude and health consciousness create positive and significant impact on healthy food related lifestyle. Finally to check whether healthy food related lifestyle creates positive and significant impact on Attitudes toward Packed Ready to Heat and Eat Food Products. The sample size for the study is 480 by adopting purposive sampling technique. The data were collected from selected malls in Bangalore city. The result of this study shows that two hypotheses were accepted and one hypothesis is rejected. Key words: Healthy Food Related Life Styles, Environmental Attitude, Health Consciousness. Cite this Article: Dr. K. Abdus Samad and Pushkar Narayan Singh, A Study On Attitude Towards Packed Ready To Heat and Eat Food Products Based On Health Food Related Life Styles. International Journal of Management, 8(3), 2017, pp editor@iaeme.com

2 A Study On Attitude Towards Packed Ready To Heat and Eat Food Products Based On Health Food Related Life Styles 1. INTRODUCTION Changes in the lifestyle of people across the world have increased the demand for convenience in meal preparation. Olsen, 2010 pointed out that consumers have been working longer hours, spending more time in the traffic, and longing to maximize their leisure time, which is more and more limited; they therefore require products and services that support and make their hectic lives easier. As a reaction to such demand, the food industry has expanded its packed ready to heat and eat food products in India. The convenience concept may be applied to different consumption dimensions: a feature inherent in a product, in the product purchase process, the preparation process and storage of such product. Convenience food is defined as any food, fully or partially prepared, for which preparation time, cooking skills or energetic inputs were transferred from the housewife kitchen to a processing or distributing party (Scholderer, Grunert, 2005). Buckley (2005) consider there are a number of factors which influence packed to ready to heat and eat food products and ready meals demanding: aging of population, changes in family structure, women participation in workforce, longer working hours, consumer prosperity, desire to proceed to healthy foods, individualism, decrease in cooking skills, and desire to spend less time and efforts in meal-related activities, such as shopping, preparing and cleaning foods. Other social-economic and demographic factors which influence this increase in consumption include work regime, family size, income level, time pressure realized and paper overload (Verlegh, Candel, 1999). In recent years, lifestyle factors have become important and are applied widely in describing how consumers make food decisions (Senauer, 1991). The lifestyle construct has a longstanding history in marketing research, which describes how people seek to express their identity in many areas such as activities, interests, and opinions (AIO). However, it has been argued that a person s lifestyle need not be consistent across different life domains. Therefore, the lifestyle should be restricted to certain life domains (Van Raaij and Verhallen, 1994). Within the narrower lifestyle perspective, health inequalities are mainly the results of people s choices and habits concerning health-beneficial (and non-beneficial) everyday behavior such as exercise habits, smoking and drinking behavior, dietary habits, and so on. In other words, food related lifestyle choices in which people differ are the main causes of health inequality (Manderbacka, 1999; Sacker., 2001). Therefore, this paper adopts a narrower and operationalizable definition of the lifestyle, focusing on health-related behavior on the determinants of food (Gil, 2000). A healthy food related lifestyle emphasizes physical health-related activities such as natural food consumption, health care, and life equilibrium. It is believed that this healthy food related lifestyle construct is helpful to explore whether or not a consumer s attitude toward packed ready to heat and heat food products influenced by one s food related lifestyle. Therefore, in addition to health consciousness and flavor, convenience and tradition, how people seek to express their identity in the food related life style towards ready to heat and eat food products is further analyzed in the study. 2. NEED FOR THE STUDY In this context, the issue characterizing this research is: how do food related lifestyles related to eating habits influence packed ready to heat and eat food products consumption? In order to answer this question, researcher identified characteristics of Indian consumers in the city of Bangalore. Although Indian eating habits have been relatively frequently studied, there are very few studies conducted in south India. This study expects to contribute with consumer behavior literature based on perception of Indian Consumers towards packed ready to heat and eat food products. Bae, Chae and Ryu (2010) identified four factors related to lifestyles regarding ready meals: health orientation, flavor, convenience and tradition. Therefore this paper mainly aimed editor@iaeme.com

3 Dr. K. Abdus Samad and Pushkar Narayan Singh to identify food related life styles related to packed ready to heat and eat food products consumption in Bangalore, India. 3. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Since packed ready to heat and eat food products are marketed as healthier, fresh, tasty, conventional foods and environmentally friendly, it is of interest to investigate the relationships between key factors and the consumer s attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. Unlike previous studies that use general food choice motives to predict the consumer s attitude toward food products, this study adopts more specific attitudes, such as health consciousness and environmental attitudes, to predict the consumer s attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. The main objective of the present study is to test the hypotheses that health consciousness and environmental attitudes influence a consumer s attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products through an individual s healthy lifestyle. The results might help producers and marketers to design appropriate marketing promotion strategies for packed ready to heat and eat food products consumption. 4. THEORETICAL FRAME WORK An attitude is considered as a psychological propensity that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor (Eagly and Chaiken, 1995). Values and beliefs are the core building blocks of attitudes (Verplanken and Holland, 2002). An individual may have several beliefs toward an object, and in turn, these beliefs and their evaluations together form an attitude. Previous studies show that causality flows from values through attitudes to behavior, forming a hierarchical relationship of value-attitude-behavior (Bernard, 2003; Stienstra., 2002; Thogersen and O lander, 2002). This means that values have an impact on attitudes, which in turn influence a person s behavior. The most commonly held beliefs about packed ready to heat food products are that they are healthier and promise better environmental protection. Thus, concerns for one s health and for the environment are the two most commonly stated factors for purchasing packed ready to heat and eat food products. An individual s health consciousness and environmental attitudes are believed to be determinants of his/her attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. Furthermore, an individual s healthy food related lifestyle which emphasizes physical health-related activities may enhance the impacts of health consciousness and environmental attitudes on their attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. Thus healthy life style is essential to include in the study. A healthy life style is considered as health consciousness and environmental attitudes which able to influence the consumer s attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. Lifestyle is an attempt to adapt an individual s behaviors in such a way as to achieve basic values throughout life, even though the environment is changing. Therefore, lifestyles change over time in systematic ways, but not anxiously or randomly so as to make it possible to maintain the balance between changes in the environment and an individual s own value system. This is why food related lifestyle segmentation is often used to predict consumer behavior for marketing purposes. Due to increasing disposable incomes and busy lifestyles, people are changing their dietary lifestyle to maintain or improve their health and the environment. Different from the general food-related lifestyle developed by Brunso and Grunert (1995) and Grunert (1997), a narrower and operationalizable definition of lifestyle i.e. healthy food related lifestyle, which focuses on health-related behavior on the determinants of health is adopted in this study editor@iaeme.com

4 A Study On Attitude Towards Packed Ready To Heat and Eat Food Products Based On Health Food Related Life Styles 5. HYPOTHESES The consumer s health consciousness is positively related to healthy lifestyle. The consumer s environmental attitude is positively related to healthy lifestyle. The consumer s healthy food related lifestyle is positively related to attitude towards to packed ready to heat and eat food products 6. METHODOLOGY Questionnaires were administrated to 520 respondents, who had accepted to participate in the research. The respondents were identified based on the purchase done in the selected leading malls in Bangalore. Customers who had purchased any brand of packed ready to heat and eat food products are considered as the potential respondents. Out of 520 questionnaires, 485 questionnaires were returned, in which 480 were fully completed. For the present study, four core construct are considered. The three measurement scales are associated with study adopted and scale validated by Gil (2000). The remaining health consciousness is adopted from the study Oudi Ophuis (1989). The health consciousness scale is operationalized with an 11-item scale to assess the degree of readiness to undertake health actions. Environmental attitude is measured by a five-item measurement scale concerning selfreported environmentally friendly attitudes and behavior. A nine-item measurement scale describing the general public s concerns about the attributes of the packed ready to heat and eat food products is used to measure the consumer s attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. An 11-item measurement scale describing an individual s ways of living related to health is used to measure his/her health lifestyle. According to Gil et al. (2000), there are three sub-dimensions in a healthy lifestyle: (1) natural food consumption; (2) health care; and (3) life equilibrium. Respondents are asked to rate all of the five-point Likert scale questions, with 1 indicating strong disagree and 5 indicating strong Agree. The statistical analysis like correlation and multiple regressions were done to check the hypotheses developed for this study with the help of statistical package SPSS.V RESULT AND DISCUSSION Reliability can reflect the internal consistency of the indicators measuring a given construct. Therefore, before the hypotheses are tested, the reliability of the measurement scales should be checked. In general, the reliability of the construct should be greater than 0.7 (Cronbach, 1951) in order to meet with the general requirement of reliability for research instruments. All the four dimensions were above 0.7. The composite reliability of all the four dimensions was above 0.5, and the average variance explained by all the dimensions was above 0.7. Thus the data collected attained reliability and validity. In this study, majority of the respondents are male (68%), majority of the respondent s age group lies between years (42%), majority of the respondents monthly income lies between Rs.40, 000 to 60,000 (30%), majority of the respondents are married (39%). (i) Descriptive Statistics N Mean Std. Deviation Environmental Attitudes Health Consciousness Healthy Lifestyle Attitudes toward Packed Ready to Heat and Eat Food Products editor@iaeme.com

5 Dr. K. Abdus Samad and Pushkar Narayan Singh The descriptive statistics shows that the mean value is high for healthy life style dimension, and the standard deviation is low (.799). Health consciousness takes the second highest mean values (4.18) with second lowest standard deviation (.811) followed by attitudes towards packed ready to heat and eat food products. The dimension environmental attitudes takes the lowest mean value (4.03) while comparing with other dimensions, and highest standard deviation (.863), while comparing with other dimensions. (ii). Correlation Attitudes toward Packed Ready to Heat and Eat Food Products Environmental Attitudes Health Consciousness Healthy Lifestyle Pearson Correlation.567 **.729 **.750 ** Sig. (2-tailed) N The correlation table shows that respondent s attitude towards packed ready to heat and eat food products is highly correlated (.750) with healthy food related lifestyle and it is significant at (.001) level. Respondent s attitude towards packed ready to heat and eat food products is highly correlated (.729) with healthy consciousness and it is significant at (.001) level. Respondent s attitude towards packed ready to heat and eat food products is highly correlated (.567) with environmental attitude and it is significant at (.001) level. (iii). Multiple Regression Unstandardized Standardized Model Coefficients Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error Beta (Constant) Environmental Attitudes Health Consciousness Healthy Lifestyle R Value.842 R F : Sig Adjusted R Dependent Variable: Attitudes toward Packed Ready to Heat and Eat Food Products The dimensions Environmental Attitudes, Health Consciousness and Healthy food related lifestyle are considered as the predictors of Attitudes toward Packed Ready to Heat and Eat Food Products. The strength of relationship among the four dimensions is very high. The predictors predicted 70.8% of attitudes toward Packed Ready to Heat and Eat Food Products. The Beta columns reveal that healthy life style (.497) is the strongest predictor of attitudes toward Packed Ready to Heat and Eat Food Products, and it is highly significant. The second highest beta value (.414) is taken by the dimension Health Consciousness and it is significant at (0.001) level. The environmental attitude of the respondents beta value is positive (0.60), but very mild and it is not significant. Based on the results of the multiple regression, out of three hypotheses formulated, one hypothesis is reject, and the remaining two hypotheses are accepted. The hypothesis consumer s environmental attitude is positively related to healthy food related lifestyle is rejected based on the beta value and significant value. The remaining hypotheses The consumer s health consciousness is positively related to healthy food related lifestyle and consumer s healthy food related lifestyle is positively related to attitude towards to packed ready to heat and eat food products are accepted based on the beta value and significant value editor@iaeme.com

6 A Study On Attitude Towards Packed Ready To Heat and Eat Food Products Based On Health Food Related Life Styles 8. CONCLUSION This study provides a better understanding of the consumer s attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. The results in this study indicate that the consumer s concerns about healthy life style and health consciousness are the determinants for a consumer to form a positive attitude toward packed ready to heat and eat food products. Since a healthy food related lifestyle is the strongest predictor of consumer s attitude towards packed ready to heat and eat food products, a healthy food related lifestyle should be advocated to render the consumer attitude towards packed ready to heat and eat food products more positively. The result shows that environmental attitude is not significant with the attitude towards packed ready to heat and eat food products. Environmental attitude can be developed by advertisement message from packed ready to heat and eat food products, and make consumers to understand the environmental benefit by using packed ready to heat and eat food products by minimizing usage of water by cleaning the vessels and cooking the food, solutions used to clean the vessels, Time, saving energy by reducing long standing hours in kitchen. Based on the above-mentioned findings, the selection of advertising messages, social interaction, and so forth should revolve around the issues of health consciousness, environmental attitudes, and a healthy food related lifestyle in the future. Moreover, producers and marketers in the packed ready to heat and eat food products sector in the food industry should provide more evidence to persuade consumers to believe that packed ready to heat and eat food products is tasty and superior to conventional food. A food traceability system helps food processors comply with government food safety regulations as well as customer assurance requirements on the one hand and build brand value on the other hand. REFERENCE [1] Bernard, M.M., Maio, G.R. and Olson, J.M. (2003), The vulnerability of values to attack: inoculation of values and value-relevant attitudes, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp [2] Brunso, K. and Grunert, K.G. (1995), Development and testing of a cross-culturally valid instrument: food-related lifestyle, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 22, pp [3] Buckley, M. The convenience consumer and food-related lifestyles in Great Britain. Journal of Food Products Marketing, Binghamton, v. 11, n. 3, p. 3-25, [4] Eagly, A.H. and Chaiken, S. (1995), Attitude strength, attitude structure and resistance to change, in Petty, R.E. and Krosnick, J.A. (Eds), Attitude Strength: Antecedents and Consequences, Ohio State University Series on Attitudes and Persuasion, Vol. 4, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. [5] Gil, J.M., Gracia, A. and Sanchez, M. (2000), Market segmentation and willingness to pay for organic products in Spain, International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp [6] Gil, J.M., Gracia, A. and Sanchez, M. (2000), Market segmentation and willingness to pay for organic products in Spain, International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp [7] Grunert, K.G., Brunso, K. and Bisp, S. (1997), Food-related lifestyle: development of a cross-culturally valid instrument for market surveillance, in Kahle, L. and Chiagouris, C. (Eds), Values, Lifestyles, and Psychographics, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, pp [8] Manderbacka, K., Lundberg, O. and Martikainen, P. (1999), Do risk factors and health behaviors contribute to self-ratings of health?, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 48 No. 12, pp editor@iaeme.com

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