- Kansas State University, United States
- Received 13 July 2015, Revised 23 November 2015, Accepted 27 November 2015, Available online 2 December 2015
Highlights
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- Millennials generally endorse ethical product factors in focus groups but not in choice.
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- Only a small segment (14% of Millennials) showed a strong endorsement of ethical products.
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- Millennials showed a strong preference for clean labels involving simple ingredients.
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- Young adults showed greater concern for the fat content of their chocolate than for its sugar content.
Abstract
Because
of changes in contemporary American culture, attitudes toward certain
product characteristics like clean labels, certified ethical sourcing,
and sugar/fat content seem to be changing, especially among Millennials.
The present project focused on Millennials’ judgment of the importance
of various product characteristics in their choice of chocolate
confections. After a series of focus groups to inform the design, an
experiment was conducted in which participants made a series of choices
between product characteristics. The choice data were subjected to a
cluster analysis to identify subgroups of consumer preferences and then
subjected to multidimensional scaling to visualize the preference space.
Most participants showed little discriminability among factors like
organic, certified ethical sourcing, and rainforest friendly, a strong
preference for clean labels, and more concern about high levels of fat
rather than sugar in their chocolate confections. For most participants,
their choice behavior reflected minimal concern for ethical factors
whereas their public declarations in a focus group suggested otherwise.
Keywords
- Chocolate;
- Choice;
- Product ethics;
- Experiment;
- Candy;
- MDS;
- Multidimensional scaling
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