A Study on the Effects of Health Functional Food Consumption Recognition and Purchase Distribution Pattern of the Elderly

This study is aiming to suggest baseline date for the establishment of policy alternative to make healthy consumption life of the elderly through investigating and analyzing actual condition of consumption related with the awareness of health functional food such as purchase behavior and consumer's problems about health functional food. Under the assumption that the vitalization of health functional food market will become an important market in the present and in the future, the fundamental marketing information about elder consumers is more important than any other information that is essential for successful marketing to domestic corporations and senior policy experts. In addition, there was a fundamental significance to provide necessary basic data for health promotion of the elderly by offering information about rights and interests of elder consumers who are members of vulnerable social group or right choice of purchasing or intake. The limitations of this study are as follows. First, the subjects were selected who live in Gangwon-do with the age of 60 and over due to the limitation of sampling, and that might be shown local characteristics. Therefore, the study result could not be generalized on behalf of all elderly in Korea and it is difficult to apply the result to more segmented market. To solve this problem, studies containing sampling by regional groups might be needed.