Consumers, food and convenience: The long way from resource constraints to actual consumption patterns

Abstract

Two theoretical frameworks have been used in previous research to explain consumers' interest in effort-saving activities in the context of meal production: the household production approach and the convenience orientation approach. A model is developed that synthesizes both approaches, assuming that the influence of resource constraints on actual convenience behaviours is doubly mediated, first by perceptions of resource constraints, and then by convenience orientations. In Study 1, the model is calibrated based on a sample of 1000 French respondents with main responsibility for food shopping and meal preparation in their households. In Study 2, the model is cross-validated using a similar sample of 1000 UK respondents. Results of both studies support the double mediation hypothesis.

Introduction

Everybody agrees that the importance of convenience in the production and marketing of food products and services is increasing. In a US survey, 55% of respondents indicated that convenience is `very important' in their food purchases (Senauer, 2001). In many countries of the Western world, the share of meals eaten outside the home is increasing (Senauer, 2001). But what, actually, do we mean when we say convenience? What is its real importance, and what are the main drivers behind the trend towards increased convenience? These are the questions we would like to address in this paper.

Convenience is a multifacetted phenomenon (Costa, Dekker, Beumer, Rombouts, & Jongen, 2001; Jack, O'Neill, Piacentini, & Schröder, 1997). `Convenient' suggests that something can be done with reduced effort, and convenience in the food area usually suggests that some kind of effort is saved or reduced. Various proposals for multidimensional definitions of convenience have been suggested (Brown, 1989; Yale & Venkatesh, 1985). We find most useful the distinction of Darian and Cohen (1995), who suggest that convenience in food can be categorized along two dimensions:

• What kind of effort is being reduced? Possibilities are a saving of time, of physical energy, or of mental energy.

• In which phase of the home food production chain does the saving occur? Possibilities are when deciding what to eat, purchasing, preparation, consumption and cleaning up.

Table 1 combines these two dimensions into a typology of food convenience and gives examples for the various combinations. The typology is obtained from the food consumer viewpoint. From the production point of view, we can further distinguish between which actor in the food chain brings about the added convenience: the food producer, the retailer or a food service provider. An additional dimension may be whose effort is being reduced: since meal production occurs in a family context, some forms of convenience may mean reduced effort for the main shopper and meal preparator, whereas other forms of convenience may mean reduced effort for the whole family.

Two theoretical approaches have been dominant in attempts to explain the increasing importance of convenience. We can call them the household production approach and the convenience orientation approach.

The household production approach goes back to the work of Becker (1965), who argues that households produce outputs like meals for the family employing a production function in which products and services purchased, the capital stock of the household and the time used are the major production factors. To some extent, these production factors can substitute each other, and when their relative prices change, the relatively cheaper one will substitute the relatively more expensive one. When the opportunity cost of time increases, because salaries are raised or the housewife enters the labour market, this will result in time used for meal production being substituted by increased purchase of time-saving (i.e., convenient) products, services or kitchen appliances speeding up the production of meals (Blalock, Smallwood, Kassel, Variyam, & Aldrich, 1999; Bonke, 1996; Cullen, 1994; Senauer, 2001).

This approach has resulted in considerable research especially on the impact of the employment status of the wife on the role of convenience in food purchases. A consistent result has been that households with a working wife buy more meals outside the home, especially fast food types of meals (Darian & Klein, 1989; Jacobs, Shipp, & Brown, 1989; Kim, 1989; Nickols & Fox, 1983; Soberon-Ferrer & Dardis, 1991), although some of that effect may actually be due to the higher household income in families with both partners employed (Darian & Klein, 1989; Strober & Weiberg, 1980). Surprisingly, however, there seemed to be no impact of employment status of the wife on the purchase of convenience food items for home use, i.e., products which have undergone some form of pre-preparation (Darian & Klein, 1989; Kim, 1989; Strober & Weiberg, 1980), even though working wives seem to have a more positive attitude not only to eating out but also to quickly prepared meals (Jackson, McDaniel, & Rao, 1985).

The attitudinal measure employed in the last two studies mentioned are actually alien to the household economics approach, where differences which cannot be accounted for by economic variables are relegated to differences in tastes, which are regarded as exogenous to the approach. In contrast, such differences are central in the convenience orientation approach, which is in the consumer psychology tradition. Compared to the household production approach, it builds much less on a uniform framework, but is has as its common core the use of attitudinal variables and a heavy emphasis on the importance of perceived as compared to objective constraints.

Convenience orientation can be loosely defined as a positive attitude towards time and energy saving aspects in household meal production. The concept has been defined and developed most clearly in the work of Candel (2001), who has developed a convenience orientation scale, which is unidimensional and contains items like “The less physical energy I need to prepare a meal, the better”, “The ideal meal can be prepared with little effort” and “Preferably, I spend as little time as possible on meal preparation”. But similar concepts also appear in other contexts, for example in Steptoe, Pollard, and Wardle (1995) food choice questionnaire and in Luqmani, Yavas, and Quraeshi (1994) convenience segmentation study. Convenience orientation, being an attitudinal construct, is expected to have an impact on convenience-related behaviours, like the purchase of convenience products, the use of convenient shopping outlets and the use of eating out and home meal replacements.

The demographic determinants emphasized in the home production approach are here regarded as determinants of convenience orientation, or, put another way, convenience orientation is regarded as a mediator between demographic (and other) determinants and convenience-related behaviours. Household income is also here regarded as a major determinant, with higher incomes leading to a stronger convenience orientation. Other determinants are the participation of women in the labour market, where especially working more than 30 hours a week seems to be a major threshold. Family size, and here especially single vs. multiple person households, has been shown to be another determinant, with single households being more convenience oriented (e.g., Candel, 2001; Cowan, Cronin, & Gannon, 2001; Swoboda & Morschett, 2001; Verlegh & Candel, 1999).

The number of work hours of the woman is expected to have an effect on convenience orientations and behaviours because of the increased time pressure it creates. However, it has been emphasized in the psychological approaches that the perceived time pressure is a stronger determinant of convenience orientation than the actual number of working hours (Darian & Cohen, 1995). Time perception is a research area in its own right, and has been drawn upon in attempts to explain differences in convenience orientation (e.g., Chetthamrongchai & Davies, 2000).

Finally, several authors have argued that the trend towards convenience has also roots in changing consumer values, and that values like individualism and self-fulfilment may be at cross with traditions like regular family meals and spending a lot of time in the kitchen. For example, Goldsmith, Freiden, and Henderson (1995) found weak but significant relationships between various items in the List of Values (Kahle, 1983) and a pro-snacking scale (see also Swoboda & Morschett, 2001).

In the remainder of the paper, we will develop a revised convenience orientation model, which summarizes the major propositions about the convenience construct in the literature. This model recognizes the importance of resource constraints (like time and income) for explaining demand for increased convenience, but assumes that they are doubly mediated in their effect on behaviour, namely by perceived resource constraints and by convenience orientation. In this way we hope to achieve a more complete picture of the set of determinants of convenience behaviours in the food area.

We then report an empirical study that estimates the complete set of linkages from objective resources via perceived resources to convenience orientation and convenience behaviour. Finally, we report results on how convenience orientation has developed over time in two major European markets.

Our model of convenience orientation is depicted in Fig. 1. Given the discussion of the various aspects of convenience above, we regard convenience orientation as a multidimensional construct, and, in the same vein, we regard convenience behaviour as a multidimensional attitudinal construct. More specifically, we will distinguish two dimensions: attitude to convenience shopping and attitude to convenience products. We expect convenience orientation to be affected by the way in which food and eating enter the consumers' value system, which we summarize by the construct involvement with food, and by the resources (objective and perceived) at the household's disposal for meal production. Resources cover disposable time and disposable income. Convenience orientation will affect convenience behaviour, which we also divide into two dimensions corresponding to the two dimensions of convenience orientation: convenience shopping behaviour and convenience product usage.

We do, however, open up for the possibility that the relationship between perceived resources and convenience behaviours might not always be mediated by convenience orientation. This means that we believe that households may engage in convenience behaviours because of perceived resource constraints, even though their attitude towards convenience in meal production is not positive. This parallels arguments made in the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991; Ajzen & Madden, 1986) and self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986, Bandura, 1992a, Bandura, 1992b), claiming that people may engage in behaviours to which they have a negative attitude when they believe that they do not have the resources or capabilities to engage in the more desirable behaviours. A study comparing perceptions of actual and `ideal' meals did show that ideal meals were consistently perceived as less convenient than actual meals (Rappoport, Downey, & Huff-Corzine, 2001), giving support to such a direct link between perceived resources and behaviour.

The empirical part of the paper consists of two sections describing two studies. In the first study, we try to empirically estimate the model depicted in Fig. 1 based on data from a sample of 1000 French consumers. This leads to some small revisions of the model and a more precise formulation of the relationships involving the two subdimensions of convenience orientation and convenience behaviour, and of the relationships involving the various aspects of objective and perceived resources. In Study 2 we then try to cross-validate the resulting model based on data from a sample of 1000 UK consumers.