The Importance Given to Food Naturalness Attributes by Millennial University Students
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Research Group in Economic Analysis, Accounting and Finance (RGEAF), University of Vigo, 36310 Vigo (Pontevedra), Spain
2
Accounting and Finance Department, Faculty of Business Administration and Tourism, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(2), 728; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020728
Received: 28 November 2019 / Revised: 16 January 2020 / Accepted: 17 January 2020 / Published: 19 January 2020
(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Wildlife)
So-called natural food is one of the most significant current trends in the food business. Despite this trend, previous research on the measurement of naturalness has made no distinction between different groups of consumers. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore the attributes important to millennial university students when evaluating food naturalness. The study is based on a questionnaire administered to a sample of 372 respondents. Using a partial least square (PLS) methodology, it performs a standard confirmatory factor analysis for measurement and validations. As a result, it identifies one attribute linked to how the food is grown and eight attributes associated to how it is produced and processed. These findings have several implications. Apart from testing previous scales in a millennial context, they confirm that market strategies must take different understandings of naturalness into account contingent upon the consumer group.
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Keywords:
food naturalness; millennials; trust; importance
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Jorge, E.; Lopez-Valeiras, E.; Gonzalez-Sanchez, M.B. The Importance Given to Food Naturalness Attributes by Millennial University Students. Sustainability 2020, 12, 728.
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