Consumers experiences of cold chain food packaging: a qualitative study among women in South Africa
Date
2013Author
Van der Merwe, Daleen
Viljoen, Stephné
De Beer, Hanli
Bosman, Magdalena
Kempen, Elizabeth
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Food packaging defines a product’s uniqueness and strengthens consumers’ relationship
with a brand, in this way offering functional and experiential benefits. Although cold chain
food is predicted to become even more important to consumers, consumers’ experiences of
the packaging of these products have been neglected in the literature. Thus, this exploratory
study investigated these experiences of female participants in Potchefstroom, South Africa,
using semi-structured interviews and a projective technique assisted by ambiguous mock
packaging. The findings reveal that despite marketers’ intention to use packaging to lure
consumers to purchase food products, participants also valued functionality and quality in
cold chain food packaging. This study also identified a dislike of carton boxes and
preference for plastic bottles for this kind of packaging, as well as further negative and
positive characteristics for consideration by manufacturers. Although brand loyalty
and price sensitivity were stronger considerations for some participants than the packaging,
the latter seemed to play a pre-eminent role in most participants’ purchasing decisions.
Therefore, it is recommended that when designing packaging for frozen and refrigerated
foods, product developers and manufacturers should take into account consumers’ experiences,
requirements and needs of the packaging specific to cold chain food. Our research
offers a starting point for designing cold chain food packaging that complies as closely as
possible with consumers’ expectations
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/17700http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijcs.12052/abstract
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12052
Collections
- Faculty of Health Sciences [2376]