How can packaging change children's eating habits from un-healthy food towards healthier options?

Field Lab: Children consumer behaviour

In what extent can a segmented packaging make children choose healthier breakfast cereals?

Field lab in marketing: Children consumer behaviour

The quest for growth in the German organic food retail market: Historical trends, current strategies, and future outlook

This paper aims to provide strategies for the organic supermarket chain “Alnatura” to shape the demand and its market share of the organic food & beverage (F&B) market in Germany within the next five years. Through the historic evolution and the current market assessment of Germany, compared to a benchmark country (US), as well as prospective trends in Germany, reasons and opportunities for market growth are evaluated. In addition, an industry attractiveness, competitor and company analysis is executed. Based on those findings and a conducted survey, suggestions to adjust Alnatura´s current business strategies are deduced and finally examined on its risk and feasibility.

Paradox of choice: The influence of assortment size on customer satisfaction

Recently researchers showed that more choice is not always better. Choosing from large assortments can be overwhelming, raising expectations and decreasing overall level of consumer satisfaction. Author contributes to existing overchoice studies by using real assortment of online stores to find influence of assortment size on customer satisfaction. 90 students participated in the main experiment, where they chose a smartphone case for their friend. Results of the study show that large assortment size leads to higher expectations, higher choice difficulty and higher level of satisfaction. This research does not show overchoice presence and author suggests future studies could focus more on assortment variety and more personal characteristics of consumers, like preference uncertainty.

Optimal design and operation of compact simulated moving bed processes for enantioseparations

Simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography is attracting more and more attention since it is a powerful technique for complex separation tasks. Nowadays, more than 60% of preparative SMB units are installed in the pharmaceutical and in the food in- dustry [SDI, Preparative and Process Liquid Chromatography: The Future of Process Separations, International Strategic Directions, Los Angeles, USA, 2002. http://www. strategicdirections.com]. Chromatography is the method of choice in these ¯elds, be- cause often pharmaceuticals and ¯ne-chemicals have physico-chemical properties which di®er little from those of the by-products, and they may be thermally instable. In these cases, standard separation techniques as distillation and extraction are not applicable. The noteworthiness of preparative chromatography, particulary SMB process, as a sep- aration and puri¯cation process in the above mentioned industries has been increasing, due to its °exibility, energy e±ciency and higher product purity performance. Consequently, a new SMB paradigm is requested by the large number of potential small- scale applications of the SMB technology, which exploits the °exibility and versatility of the technology. In this new SMB paradigm, a number of possibilities for improving SMB performance through variation of parameters during a switching interval, are pushing the trend toward the use of units with smaller number of columns because less stationary phase is used and the setup is more economical. This is especially important for the phar- maceutical industry, where SMBs are seen as multipurpose units that can be applied to di®erent separations in all stages of the drug-development cycle. In order to reduce the experimental e®ort and accordingly the coast associated with the development of separation processes, simulation models are intensively used. One impor- tant aspect in this context refers to the determination of the adsorption isotherms in SMB chromatography, where separations are usually carried out under strongly nonlinear conditions in order to achieve higher productivities. The accurate determination of the competitive adsorption equilibrium of the enantiomeric species is thus of fundamental importance to allow computer-assisted optimization or process scale-up. Two major SMB operating problems are apparent at production scale: the assessment of product quality and the maintenance of long-term stable and controlled operation. Constraints regarding product purity, dictated by pharmaceutical and food regulatory organizations, have drastically increased the demand for product quality control. The strict imposed regulations are increasing the need for developing optically pure drugs.(...)

Jeronimo Martins, SGPS food retail

Equity research report

Implementation of membrane processes for improvement of the detection of food contaminants

The EM3E Master is an Education Programme supported by the European Commission, the European Membrane Society (EMS), the European Membrane House (EMH), and a large international network of industrial companies, research centres and universities (http://www.em3e.eu)

Unilever food solutions new digital CRM platform- what is the combination of tools, processes and content that will help Unilever food solutions grow his business?

Unilever Food Solutions new digital CRM1 Platform - What is the combination of tools, processes and content that will help Unilever Food Solutions grow his business? Unilever Food Solutions (UFS) intend to create a new online platform to enable it to communicate with segments of the markets, which have previously been too difficult to reach. Specifically targeted at Chefs and other food professionals, the aim is to create an interactive website, which delivers value to its intended users by providing a variety of relevant content and functions, while simultaneously opening up a potential transactional channel to those same users.

The influence of sports events endorsement on children’s perceptions of healthy food products and brands

Field lab in marketing: Children consumer behaviour

Can gendered advergames make children develop favorable attitudes and behaviors towards healthy food?

This paper aims to analyze the possibility of having an impact of gender segmentation in food advergames on children’s attitudes and behaviors towards healthy food. A specific healthy advergame with three versions – two segmented by gender and one neutral gendered – was developed for the study. A total of 286 Portuguese children from 7 to 9 years old participated in the study and were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control groups. After playing the advergame, children answered a structured questionnaire to evaluate liking and purchase intention of healthy food, as well as, perceived fun and perceived healthiness. The results suggested that advergames segmented by gender did not influence children’s liking, purchase intention and perceived fun of healthy food, since children already had positive eating behaviors. Moreover, we confirmed that children presented a high perceived healthiness.

The relationship between liquidity and profitability in the food & beverage industry evidence from Europe and United States

This Work Project clarifies the relationship between liquidity and profitability based on a sample in the Food & Beverage (F&B) industry, and comparing the largest European and United States companies. The research concludes that liquidity, proxied by current ratio or quick ratio, correlates with return on assets taken as the measure of profitability, and so does the cash conversion cycle and its components. Moreover, company size correlates with liquidity, and indirectly affects ROA. This research contributes and addresses to managers in the F&B industry and recommends how they should act in order to improve profitability in the industry.

The enchained potential of the local food market

There is a rising demand for local food which traveled only short distances and is marketed directly by the producer. With growing importance of local food also the amount of literature in this field increased. Yet, literature is lacking to examine the challenges and burdens consumers face while trying to purchase local food. Evidence is shown that a gap exists between the intention of consumers who would like to purchase local food and their actual behavior. However, reasons for this gap are only discovered as byproducts of other research objectives. Consequently, this study investigates the specific reasons for the intention-behavior gap of consumers in the local food market. The study makes use of semi-structured face-to-face interviews with rural and urban respondents. The interviews are analyzed by qualitative content analysis based on Elo and Kyngäs (2008). Revealed key drivers for the intention-behavior gap are (1) the lack of awareness where to purchase local food products, (2) the limited reachability of local food producers, (3) the assortment of the local producer in regard to size and composition and (4) the lack in transparency of the prices of local food. Consequently, it is the producers turn to eliminate the revealed barriers by proactively bringing their products closer to the consumer.