Food Selection Attitudes

Food selection attitude (Dependent Variable)

There are a wide variety of food products being offered in the market, food selection can be said involving a complex process in human life. People choose the foods to eat in order to fulfil their body needs. There are numerous factors that influence people to make decision on choosing foods. Due to those results of influences, some people may choose certain food products but some people may reject the same food products (Zielinska, 2006). Today, there are more and more food industry being developed to fulfil the difference needs or demands required by the consumers. According to Gunert (2002), the complexity of food selection was due to a result of rising differentiation of the food products to

According to Rolls Royce, the positive attitudes toward an object may not be turned into the purchase action. People usually buy the food products will pay close attention to the food safety, food prices, food quality, food nutrition, food reputation, food features and others. (Bonaiuto et al.,2012; Grunert, 2003; Worsley and Lea, 2008; Yeung and Morris, 2001). They concern about the types of foods they eat which will effect on their health. They concern the influence of the foods to their body health. For example, the consumers concern about the food safety issues, “chemical additives”, high calories foods, high fat foods and the risk of chronic disease (Frewer and Miles, 2001; Worsley and Scott, 2000; Wandel, 1994; Worsley and Skrzypiec, 1998a). However, many consumers concern about the food safety, there are also some consumers who are more concerned in other issues such as food production on the environmental effects, low price of imported foods and others. Different segments of the consumer population have a different concerns on food issues (Worsley and Scott, 2000; Lindeman and Sirelius, 2001). In addition, there are proofs that food features can influence people’s food selection. For instances, food choices are influenced by the features that qualify a food as belong to a certain social group recognized by people classified with the relevant social group (Carrus et al., 2009, 2011; and features

There are a few approaches being used to study the food selection. One of the approach to study food selection is attitude-behavior relationships which adopted that the influences on food choice are facilitated by the individual’s beliefs and attitudes (Shepherd, 1999). Some researchers also used “Reasons for Eating Scale” (RES) which was developed by Harmatz & Kerr (1981) and reassessed by Williams et al. (1987). It was resulted in six factors which allowed us to understand the food choices such as habits, sensorial attractiveness, pleasantness in preparation and others. Moreover, Steptoe et al. (1995) used the tool which named “Food Choice Questionnaire” to find the dimension underlying food selections. With use of 36 items, there are nine underlying dimensions, namely convenience, ethical concern, familiarity, health, mood, natural content, price, sensory appeal and weight