What we want to know about our food

Consumers’ food behaviour depends on their value systems. Certain values are shared at the level of societies, and are stable across people’s lives. How predictable is consumers’ food behaviour across cultures and countries? Our empirical research suggests an ‘effect of culture’: consumers from different social systems have different, meaningful perceptions of food, which may lead to different demands with respect to demand chains. There is a significant correlation between consumers who perceive food as ‘rules’ and Hofstede’s dimensions of collectivism and power distance. Concept equivalence does not necessarily exist across cultures. There are some consequences for marketing and chains.