• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.574-582
• /
• 2011

The aim of this study was to classify Korean consumers based on their food-related lifestyle type, and to investigate the relationship between sushi consumption and food-related lifestyle type. Self-reported questionnaires were completed by 300 Korean adults. The SPSS 18.0 program was used to analyze the samples. Data was analyzed by frequency, descriptive factor, reliability, cluster analysis, ANOVA, and chi-square test. A factor analysis extracted four factors comprising foodrelated lifestyle, which we named Health-seeking (factor 1), Taste-seeking (factor 2), Convenience-seeking (factor 3), and Economy-seeking (factor 4). According to a cluster analysis based on those four factors, consumers were classified into three clusters. Cluster 1 was the Taste and Health-seeking cluster, Cluster 2 was the Convenience-seeking cluster, and Cluster 3 was the Passive Eating Habits cluster. The results also indicated that the selection attributes of each cluster were significantly different in terms of perception, the global state of sushi, sushi preference, frequency, companions, place of sushi consumption, and preference for different sushi sub-ingredients. Based on these results, consumer characteristics in the sushi market are discussed.