Evaluation of consumer preferences for general food values in Korea: best-worst scaling approach

Consumers are becoming increasingly interested in what kind of value their food has. Many studies have focused on consumers' preferences and willingness to pay for specific food values. However, few studies have asked consumers to consider or rank the importance of different food values. This paper determined consumers' food values by implementing the best-worst scaling approach and segmented consumers based on the relative importance of general food values that consumers place on them. Among a list of eleven food values (taste, safety, origin, appearance, price, environmental impact, naturalness, convenience, nutrition, fairness, and habit) which was compiled from previous studies on food preferences, on average, safety, nutrition, taste, and price were the most important values to consumers, whereas fairness, habit, appearance, convenience, origin, and environmental impact were the least important values. However, significant variation exists among consumers in terms of the relative importance of food values. To investigate the heterogeneity among consumers, a Latent Class Analysis was performed to classify consumers into subgroups based on responses to questions. Two latent classes were found and characterized as 'safety-nutrition' and 'taste-price'. The 'safety-nutrition' cluster represents 61% of the sample and a group of people who find safety and nutrition centered values to be the most important. Another cluster represents about 39% of the sample, and relative to the first group, this group finds price and taste values to be more important.