Consumer acceptance of nutrigenomics based personalised nutrition

Nutrigenomics is a new and promising development in nutritional science which aims to understand the fundamental molecular processes affected by foods. Despite general agreement on its promise for better understanding diet¿health relationships, less consensus exists among experts on the potential of spin-offs aimed at the consumer such as personalised nutrition. Research into consumer acceptance of such applications is scarce. The present study develops a set of key hypotheses on public acceptance of personalised nutrition and tests these in a representative sample of Dutch consumers. An innovative consumer research methodology is used in which consumers evaluate short films which are systematically varied scenarios for the future of personalised nutrition. Consumer evaluations of these films, which are pre-tested in a pilot study, allow a formal test of how consumer perceptions of personalised nutrition drive consumer acceptance and through which fundamental psychological processes these effects are mediated. Public acceptance is enhanced if consumers can make their genetic profile available free at their own choice, if the actual spin-off products provide a clearly recognisable advantage to the consumer, and are easy to implement into the daily routine. Consumers prefer communication on nutrigenomics and personalised nutrition by expert stakeholders to be univocal and aimed at building support with consumers and their direct environments for this intriguing new development. Additionally, an exploratory segmentation analysis indicated that people have different focal points in their preferences for alternative scenarios of personalised nutrition. The insights obtained from the present study provide guidance for the successful further development of nutrigenomics and its applications

Het gezonde van biologisch voedsel: de beleving van consumenten

On the basis of a literature study, group interviews and an online questionnaire, an investigation was carried out into what light users - people who occasionally buy organic products - believe makes food in general - and organic food in particular - health

Design, Implementation and Evaluation of PsyWeb, a Learning Environment in a Problem Based Learning Curriculum.

In this article we describe the design and implementation of PsyWeb, a rich learning environment for the new problem based study in Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam Experiences are reported for the first five (of eight) courses of the first year of the new study. Students opinions have been collected as part of a survey at the end of each course. Results indicate that students are positive about PsyWeb. The overall appreciation shows a slight increase over time. Starting with the second course, usage of PsyWeb has been logged. Usage has been quantified in terms of the number of unique IP-addresses per day. Using this measure we assume that PsyWeb has a student reach between 25% and 100% per day. Usage shows a slight increase over the courses. The implementation of a series of additions to PsyWeb has been planned for the next year

Consumers' intention to use health recommendation systems to receive personalized nutrition advice

Background: Sophisticated recommendation systems are used more and more in the health sector to assist consumers in healthy decision making. In this study we investigate consumers' evaluation of hypothetical health recommendation systems that provide personalized nutrition advice. We examine consumers' intention to use such a health recommendation system as a function of options related to the underlying system (e.g. the type of company that generates the advice) as well as intermediaries (e.g. general practitioner) that might assist in using the system. We further explore if the effect of both the system and intermediaries on intention to use a health recommendation system are mediated by consumers' perceived effort, privacy risk, usefulness and enjoyment. Methods. 204 respondents from a consumer panel in the Netherlands participated. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire. Each respondent evaluated three hypothetical health recommendation systems on validated multi-scale measures of effort, privacy risk, usefulness, enjoyment and intention to use the system. To test the hypothesized relationships we used regression analyses. Results: We find evidence that the options related to the underlying system as well as the intermediaries involved influence consumers' intention to use such a health recommendation system and that these effects are mediated by perceptions of effort, privacy risk, usefulness and enjoyment. Also, we find that consumers value usefulness of a system more and enjoyment less when a general practitioner advices them to use a health recommendation system than if they use it out of their own curiosity. Conclusions: We developed and tested a model of consumers' intention to use a health recommendation system. We found that intermediaries play an important role in how consumers evaluate such a system over and above options of the underlying system that is used to generate the recommendation. Also, health-related information services seem to rely on endorsement by the medical sector. This has considerable implications for the distribution as well as the communication channels of health recommendation systems which may be quite difficult to put into practice outside traditional health service channels

Eten van waarde : peiling consument en voedsel

This report provides a description of a scientifically-funded instrument that measures and explains the perceptions (or 'thoughts') and behaviours (or 'actions') of consumers with regards to food quality values. A description of its application is presented to generate insights into how modern Dutch consumers think about food, what Dutch consumers actually buy and the relationship between perceptions and behaviours

Willingness to pay for personalised nutrition across Europe

yesPersonalised nutrition (PN) may promote public health. PN involves dietary advice based on individual characteristics of end users and can for example be based on lifestyle, blood and/or DNA profiling. Currently, PN is not refunded by most health insurance or health care plans. Improved public health is contingent on individual consumers being willing to pay for the service. Methods: A survey with a representative sample from the general population was conducted in eight European countries (N = 8233). Participants reported their will- 25 ingness to pay (WTP) for PN based on lifestyle information, lifestyle and blood information, and lifestyle and DNA information. WTP was elicited by contingent valuation with the price of a standard, non-PN advice used as reference. Results: About 30% of participants reported being willing to pay more for PN than for non-PN advice. They were on average prepared to pay about 150% of the reference price of a standard, non-personalised advice, with some differences related to socio-demographic factors. Conclusion: There is a potential market for PN 30 compared to non-PN advice, particularly among men on higher incomes. These findings raise questions to what extent personalized nutrition can be left to the market or should be incorporated into public health programsEC (FW7) funded Food4me projectThe full text will be available 12 months after publicatio

Maatschappelijke respons op nieuwe technologieën : een literatuuroverzicht ten behoeve van Kennisbasis VI onderzoek

In dit rapport wordt een overzicht gegeven van de huidige stand van zaken op het gebied van onderzoek naar technologie en maatschappij met een focus op het werkveld van Wageningen UR, de levenswetenschappen. Er is in toenemende mate onderzoek gedaan naar de maatschappelijke aspecten van technologieontwikkeling. Er is vanuit veel verschillende disciplines onderzoek gedaan, maar daaruit is nog weinig synthese ontstaan. Zo is het maatschappelijk perspectief en het individueel perspectief op de interactie tussen technologie en maatschappij grotendeels los van elkaar ontwikkeld. Dat is vanuit wetenschappelijk oogpunt niet vreemd: specialisatie levert namelijk veel op. Discipline-overstijgende samenwerking is nodig om expertise daadwerkelijk te integreren. Een mogelijk risico van interdisciplinaire samenwerking is dat de resultaten niet goed in het peer-reviewed systeem gepubliceerd kunnen worden, ongeacht de uitkomsten. Andere vormen van output dienen daarom onderzocht en op waarde geschat te worden. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan boeken of populair-wetenschappelijke publicaties. Wageningen UR heeft naar verhouding een sterke traditie in syntheseonderzoek, onder andere in praktijkonderzoek, maar ook in vernieuwende wetenschapsgebieden als systeembiologie en complexe adaptieve systemen (CAS)

Winkelkeuze van biologische kopers : onderzoek onder consumenten en ondernemers

This study describes how health food stores can reinforce their market position and reveal further growth potential within this retail channel. Through a qualitative and quantitative study among consumers, we looked at purches pattern and motives of heavy users and light users of organic products who are both customers and non customers of the health food store. Associations with the health food store and supermarket were compared and the main areas distinguishing health food stores are described. Retailers were also interviewed in order to discover whether consumer perception corresponded with that of the retaile

A Moving Optical Fibre Technique for Structure Analysis of Heterogenous Products: Application to the Determination of the Bubble-Size Distribution in Liquid Foams

The bubble-size distribution in liquid foams measured as a function of time can be used to distinguish between the physical processes that determine the breakdown of foams. A new method based on an optical fibre technique was developed to measure various foam characteristics e.g. the rate of drainage, the rate of foam collapse, the change in gas fraction, interbubble gas diffusion (disproportionation) and the evolution of the bubble - size distribution during the ageing of the foam. The method consists of an optical sensor that can distinguish between phases with distinct refractive indexes as are found in liquid foams