European consumer segments with a high potential for accepting new innovative fish products based on their food-related lifestyle

Consumer lifestyles influence consumer behaviour towards food product choices and provide important insights about the existence of consumer segments that vary in their response to new food products. With the aim to contribute to a more market-oriented enhancement of the European aquaculture industry competitiveness, the objective of this study was to identify and profile food-related lifestyle segments of consumers that vary in terms of their willingness to buy new aquaculture fish products. Data were collected through a survey among respondents in three large European fish markets (Spain, France and Germany, N = 1500 in total). Certain core dimensions of the food-related lifestyle construct were used as segmentation bases. We identified five consumer segments across two country groups. The segments differed mainly in terms of their psychographic profile and their intention to buy new aquaculture fish products. Our results contribute to identifying the most promising European consumer segments in terms of buying intention that can be targeted when promoting new aquaculture fish products. The findings have important strategic marketing implications for the food industry and aquaculture, while highlighting the important role food-related lifestyles can play in European segmentation for new food product development.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

New fish product ideas generated by European consumers

Food lifestyles are changing; people have less time to spend on food purchase and preparation, therefore leading to increasing demand for new food products. However, around 76% of new food products launched in the market fail within the first year (Nielsen, 2014). One of the most effective ways to enhance new products’ success in the market is by incorporating consumers’ opinions and needs during the New Product Development (NPD) process (Moon et al., 2018). This study aimed to explore the usefulness of a qualitative technique, focus groups, to generate new aquaculture fish product ideas as well as to identify the most relevant product dimensions affecting consumers’ potential acceptance.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Market validation, technical and socioeconomic analysis of fish products

Deliverable 5.5Deliverable 5.5 “Market validation, technical and socioeconomic analysis of fish products”, covers the results from several studies involving consumer activities performed in Task 5.4 “Market validation”; the profiling of key EU consumer segments for new product adoption (through large-scale quantitative and qualitative surveys), the identification of the optimal product configuration (through choice experiments), the identification of the optimal combination of packaging attributes (validated through neuroscience), the assessment of sustainability dimensions (choice experiment) and finally the validation tests (Home Use Tests and online questionnaires) of the new products in three European countries (Spain, France and Germany). It also includes the results of Task 5.5 “Technical and economic feasibility analysis of products” performing case studies for producing the four new food products (grilled seabass with lemon, sea and mountain burger, seabream breaded bites and organic seabream with couscous) developed in the framework of MedAID. The information provided could facilitate the implementation of these developments by industry.Postprint (published version

Food Sustainability Understanding in the Nordic-Baltic countries

Consumer-citizens are concerned about food sustainability. However, there is a gap between the degree of concern and the rate of choices for relatively more sustainable food products. Funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, a representative consumer-citizen survey study across eight Nordic-Baltic countries about sustainability understanding in the food context was conducted in summer 2022 by the MAPP Centre at Aarhus University, Denmark, with the contribution of a steering committee consisting of representatives from each country.The report provides research insights, which allow decision makers to know where consumer-citizens are in their current understanding of food sustainability. This serves as an important input for discussing an efficient design of and communication about a future sustainability labelling framework empowering consumer-citizens to make informed food choices

Adenovirus-Mediated FasL Minigene Transfer Endows Transduced Cells with Killer Potential

Fas ligand (First apoptosis signal ligand, FasL, also known as CD95L) is the common executioner of apoptosis within the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily. We aimed to induce functional FasL expression in transduced cells using an adenovirus vector, which has the advantage of strong and transient induction of the gene included in the adenoviral genome. Here, we report that the adenovirus carrying a truncated FasL gene, named FasL minigene, encoding the full-length FasL protein (Ad-gFasL) is more efficient than the adenovirus carrying FasL cDNA (Ad-cFasL) in the induction of FasL expression in transduced cells. FasL minigene (2887 bp) lacking the second intron and a part of the 3′-UTR was created to reduce the gene length due to the size limitation of the adenoviral genome. The results show that, in transduced hepatocytes, strong expression of mRNA FasL appeared after 10 h for Ad-gFasL, while for Ad-cFasL, a faint expression appeared after 16 h. For Ad-gFasL, the protein expression was noticed starting with 0.5 transfection units (TU)/cell, while for Ad-cFasL, it could not be revealed. FasL-expressing endothelial cells induced apoptosis of A20 cells in co-culture experiments. FasL-expressing cells may be exploitable in various autoimmune diseases such as graft-versus-host disease, chronic colitis, and type I diabetes

Defining upcycled food: the dual role of upcycling in reducing food loss and waste

Background Food loss and waste over-uses natural resources and is responsible for a considerable share of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Moreover, increasing food prices and growing food insecurity internationally make instances of food wastage appear even more irresponsible and showcase the inefficiencies of the current food system. A new concept in the toolbox for fighting food loss and waste is upcycling – value enhancing use of ingredients otherwise wasted – that leads to upcycled food. However, not all products currently called ‘upcycled food’ live up to the resource-saving and value-adding promise entailed in the idea of ‘upcycling’, and products markedly differ in how ‘radical’ the upcycling is from a consumer perspective. Scope and approach To shed light on this, we introduce a two-folded definition that hinges on current consumer edibility perception and has a view to changing consumer perception; We show that there are two types of upcycled food which each have a distinct role and contribution to preserving natural resources - one is avoiding resources are wasted that have gone into food production, thus constituting upcycled foods through alternative use, the other is diversifying and broadening the food resource base, thus constituting upcycled foods through novel use. We provide examples of these upcycled food types and highlight potential boundaries from a sustainable development goal perspective. Key findings and conclusions Mainstreaming the idea of upcycling in food systems has huge potential for improving circularity in the food system. Untapping this potential needs collaboration across the whole value chain and taking a food system perspective, such as when being well-aware of the boundaries arising from the dynamic nature of the topic and the interdependencies