Ready-to-Eat Food
Choosing something to eat is something we do
every day. We may choose to prepare and cook our meals ourselves and we may
choose not to. There are situations when a visit to a restaurant is preferred
to cooking. There are also situations when take-away and ready meals are the
best solutions to fulfill our needs and wants.
READY-TO-EAT FOOD
Food is becoming a significant culture marker
due to various lifestyle changes such as greater media attention, more eating
out and wider exposure to foreign cuisines. This brings a change in consumers
buying behaviour especially in terms of food consumed. Supermarkets nowadays
stock packages for the microwave oven frozen foods, and pre-prepared, complete
chilled dishes- that our grandparents would have marvelled at, and these
packages permit meals representing most of the cuisines of the world to be
eaten at home. These pre-prepared pre-cooked food are termed as ready meals
that are considered as the “ultimate processed
foods” with very high value addition, since they offer the convenience
of “eating off” the shelf” eliminating the kitchen drudgery associated with
making a meal at home.
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Ready-to-eat food |
Various ready meals are considered better over others as they do not
contain any chemical preservatives and remain shelf-stable without
refrigeration for at least one year. These changes are bringing a new wave in
processed food industry with a term called convenience food.
READY-TO-EAT FOOD AND IT'S FORMS
Convenience food,
or tertiary processed food, is food that is
commercially prepared (often
through processing) to optimize ease of consumption. Such food is usually ready
to eat without further preparation. It may also be easily portable, have a
long shelf life, or offer a combination of such convenient traits.
Although restaurant meals meet this definition, the term is seldom
applied to them. Types of convenience foods can vary by country and
geographic region.
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Ready-to-eat food |
Convenience foods can include products such as candy; beverages such
as soft drinks, juices and milk; fast-food; nuts, fruits and vegetables in
fresh or preserved states; processed meats and cheeses;
and canned products such as soups and pasta dishes.
Additional convenience foods include frozen pizza, chips such
as potato chips, pretzels and cookies. These products
are often sold in portion controlled, single serve packaging designed
for portability.
READY-TO-EAT FOOD AND BRAND AWARENESS
Brand awareness means the ability of a consumer
to recognize and recall a brand in different situations (Aaker, 1996). Brand
awareness consists of brand recall and brand recognition. A brand name offers a
symbol that can assist consumers to identify service providers and to predict
service results (Herbig & Milewicz, 1993; Janiszewski & Van Osselaer,
2000; Turley & Moore, 1995). Brand awareness plays an important role on
purchase intention because consumers tend to buy a familiar and well known
product (Keller, 1993; Macdonald & Sharp,2000). Brand awareness plays an important role on
purchase intention because consumers tend to buy a familiar and well known
product (Keller, 1993; Macdonald & Sharp,2000). Brand awareness can help
consumers to recognize a brand from a product category and make purchase
decision (Percy & Rossiter, 1992). Brand awareness has a great influence on
selections and can be a prior consideration base in a product category (Hoyer
& Brown, 1990). Brand awareness also acts as a critical factor in the
consumer purchase intention, and certain brands will accumulate in consumers’
mind to influence consumer purchase decision. A product with a high level of
brand awareness will receive higher consumer preferences because it has higher
market share and quality evaluation.
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Ready-to-eat food |
Being so much popular among the customers, with
a high rate of growth, the Ready-to-Eat food industry is also facing tough
competition. A recent report from market research firm Packaged Facts titled
“Prepared Foods and Ready-to-Eat Foods at Retail: The New Competition to
Foodservice” noted grocery’s gain amid the restaurant industry’s recessionary
struggles.
v Preference for Ready-to-eat food
In marketing literature, the word preference means the desirability or choice of an alternative. Preferences are above all behavioural tendencies (Zajonc and Markus, 1982). Brand preference is defined variously as the consumer’s predispositions toward a brand that varies depending on the salient beliefs that are activated at a given time; the consumer biases toward a certain brand; the extent to which a consumer favours one brand over another.
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Ready-to-eat food |
For
this study a working definition for brand preference is offered: “the biased
behavioural tendencies reflecting the consumer’s predisposition toward a
brand”.
v
Perceived quality of Ready-to-eat food
Perceived quality is a result of consumers’
subjective judgment on a product (Zeithaml, 1988; Dodds et al., 1991; Aaker,
1991). Bhuian (1997) also consider perceived quality is a judgment on the
consistency of product specification or an evaluation on added value of a
product. The differences between objective quality and perceived quality lie in
that objective quality has a pre-design standard to a product, and perceived
quality is influenced by internal and external product attributes which is an
evaluation basis for consumers (Olshavsky, 1985; Zeithaml, 1988).
![Ready-to-eat food Ready-to-eat food](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOEKL-njSUvnDzjqYwaVO5M3qJx3i0Dc7PudHX66f43_pC4mwYRoWRlmx-p0yZ4Rkq0AjuUAowLpjBBxp8Mk01W1Z6aolXIQEL9OHSrZ3OUb5YSPcabrAQfn9ANY0qwybDcv7T3AR-xQA/s400/Ready-to-Eat+Food-4.jpg)
Ready-to-eat food
Kan (2002) points out that objective quality
is that consumers will use their experience and knowledge to evaluate overall
product benefit, function, durability, technology and reliability when
consumers purchase a product. Perceived quality is a consumer judgment on the
accumulative product benefits and a subjective feeling on product quality.
v Purchase intention for Ready-to-eat food
Engel, Blackwell and Miniard (1995) present a
model of consumer purchase decision-making which divides the consumer purchase
decision process into five stages: (1) problem recognition, (2) information
search, (3) alternative evaluation, (4) purchase decision, (5) post-purchase
behavior. Mowen and Minor (2001) maintain that consumer decision making are a
series of processing results from perceiving problems, searching for solutions,
evaluating alternatives, and making decisions.
![Ready-to-eat food Ready-to-eat food](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOEKL-njSUvnDzjqYwaVO5M3qJx3i0Dc7PudHX66f43_pC4mwYRoWRlmx-p0yZ4Rkq0AjuUAowLpjBBxp8Mk01W1Z6aolXIQEL9OHSrZ3OUb5YSPcabrAQfn9ANY0qwybDcv7T3AR-xQA/s400/Ready-to-Eat+Food-4.jpg)
v Purchase intention for Ready-to-eat food
Engel, Blackwell and Miniard (1995) present a
model of consumer purchase decision-making which divides the consumer purchase
decision process into five stages: (1) problem recognition, (2) information
search, (3) alternative evaluation, (4) purchase decision, (5) post-purchase
behavior. Mowen and Minor (2001) maintain that consumer decision making are a
series of processing results from perceiving problems, searching for solutions,
evaluating alternatives, and making decisions.
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