Food Marketing. Influence of Organic and Domestic Claims

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Review of Business Studies, grade: 1.3, Technical University of Munich, language: English, abstract: This thesis explains the relative significance of product claims in food product marketing. Eggs are selected as the appropriate product for evaluating the importance of animal welfare and product origin claims. For illustration purposes, this study uses qualitative data for the top four egg-producing countries in Europe: France, Germany, the U.K and Italy. This data is acquired from Mintel GNPD. After the hierarchical clustering technique has been applied, European egg consumers are divided into five groups: premium consumers, product-centric consumers, indifferent consumers, fair consumers, and local consumers. Substantial differences have been found in the preferences of product claims for each cluster. This thesis attempts to make three contributions to existing research by analyzing product claims for eggs. Firstly, this study demonstrates the importance of product origin claims in marketing. Secondly, it explains different aspects of animal welfare that are relevant for European consumers, when purchasing eggs. Finally, it makes recommendations to policy makers for increasing consumer engagement and helps egg suppliers in Europe in developing international marketing strategies.