Consumer engagement

We are finding out what drives consumer attitudes towards new technologies, to help researchers and the food industry better understand consumers' responses to new foods.

• 2 December 2005 | Updated 19 March 2012

• Consumer attitudes to new food technologies and products
• What is being done
• Outputs

Consumer attitudes to new food technologies and products

New foods are always being researched and developed. But once a food is created and manufactured, are consumers going to want to buy it?

This Food Futures research aims to define:

• what drives consumer attitudes
• whether consumers will embrace foods produced by novel technologies.

Consumer engagement exists to underpin and facilitate the uptake of technologies and products of the other four, technology oriented themes in the Food Futures Flagship.

By working to understand consumer attitudes towards new technologies, the outcomes of this research will enable those involved in technology development to identify what are:

• the critical barriers to acceptance of foods produced using new technologies
• the most effective methods to encourage consumer uptake of new food products.

Key science challenges for the research are in understanding how consumers evaluate risks and benefits, and improving our knowledge of consumers' risk and benefit decision making in the marketplace.

What is being done

Our activities involve measuring how consumers perceive new products and technologies. Specifically:

• What attributes of a product are perceived positively or negatively and what is the importance of a particular attribute in the overall judgement of a product?
• What psychological and social factors influence consumers' perceptions, including attitudes, beliefs, motivations and demographics?
• What are the fundamental processes involved in decision making?

The work from this activity provides a basis for acceptance of the Food Futures technologies in a broader social context.

In particular, the research makes effective use of the broader consumer engagement community within CSIRO, Australia and overseas.

Outputs

Outputs from the consumer engagement research will contribute to:

• positioning of Food Futures Flagship technologies
• the flow-on of products to the market.

Many of the technologies being developed and used to reach the Flagship's goals potentially present an acceptance challenge to the consumer.

When we incorporate technologies to add significant value to the Agrifood industry, the paradigms of what consumers accept in their food need to be addressed.

This information can be fed back into technology development for the best outcome for the Australian food industry and the health and wellbeing of consumers.

Find out more about the research of the Food Futures Flagship.