Diferencias en aceptación de nuevos alimentos por tipos de hábitat

Abstract

Changes in the socio-cultural climate are altering many aspects of the rural lifestyle, including food preferences. At the same time, market saturation and firm internationalization are forcing food producers and distributors to seek a deeper understanding of consumer preferences to enable them to meet consumer needs and offer more suitable product innovations. Against this background, this paper sets out to examine rural/urban differences in the acceptance of new foods, in an attempt to determine whether habitat factors play a role in the timing and nature of the innovation acceptance process in the food market. There have been detected differences in the adoption of new foods. In this sense, the results show better acceptation of new products in urban habitats, with positive neophobia in rural contexts. Additionally, in rural habitats there are more negative emotions to new food products. The food characteristics more relevant to the consumers were quality and health properties, with more interest for the naturalness in rural habitats.