Marketing Strategies for Functional Foods

“Billions of Friendly Bacteria to Help Improve Digestive Health!”, “Love Your Heart”, “Maintaining Balance “. The quotes above represent the key slogans used to promote products in the functional food market, for Yakult, Becel and Activia respectively (quotes were taken from products’ websites). The makers of these foods use extensive campaigns to effectively market their products. In the case of Yakult, marketing has responded to major developments in society. Today, the ability to consume food fast and easy has become a criterion for the specific food (Gracia & Albisu, 2001). Yakult has responded to this by packaging the drinks in individual portions which can be consumed in only a few seconds. Whether consumers buy a certain product depends on their personal choice factors, these where investigated by Kahn (1981) in his food choice model. This model collects decision making data concerning food and categorizes it in factors such as; education, culture and socio-economy. Consumer behavior when dealing with functional foods can also be analyzed using this model, although the categories of family and personal factors should be added ( Black & Campbell, 2006). The research previously described suggests that purchasing behavior of consumers concerning food, functional food in particular, is influenced by a multitude of circumstances, which managers have to take into account. Therefore, I argue that the sales of functional foods will increase when managers of these products take the personality of consumers into close consideration. This paper will provide an overview of arguments which support and show opposing views on the claim made above, supported by examples of well know functional food products.

Health Consciousness

When researching consumer behaviour towards functional food, the first important character trait to consider is the degree of health consciousness of a person. Someone with a high degree of health consciousness is more aware of what he or she...