Reasons for buying ready-meals in Norway and The Netherlands
submitted by MATFORSK AS
Dutch and Norwegian consumers have the same rational arguments for buying ready (RTE)-meals.
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DoubleFresh is a major European research project aimed to develop new, fresher and healthier RTE-solutions. Analysis of today’s market and of the consumers´ wishes for the future were carried out. Focus studies have been conducted in Norway and in The Netherlands with as their main objective to generate information about Dutch and Norwegian consumers’ perception of RTE-meals in general. In addition, the researchers wanted to investigate barriers and motivators that RTE-meal consumers experience. The analysis involved three groups in Oslo and four groups in Amsterdam, with 5-8 persons per group. They consisted of frequent consumers of RTE-meals of both gender between 20 and 60 years. In the structured interview guide, rational questions, intuitive techniques and creative techniques were included. According to the research scientists, creative and intuitive techniques were used in order to go beyond what we already have known for many years about the perception of RTE-meals by consumers. |
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| These focus groups also revealed that Dutch and Norwegian consumers agree on the negative aspects of RTE-meals. They reiterate the negative consequences for our society; the ritual of cooking and eating together weakens, and the social values of cooking, doing the dishes and eating together are of less importance than one generation ago. The interviewees are worried about the fact that traditions and skills would be lost. They feel guilty because today’s children do not learn how to cook. RTE-meals remind us of the negative aspects of individualisation: Eating an RTE-meal is not a social activity, it is not enjoyable and it is not environmentally friendly as it creates too much packaging and too much transportation. The next step will be taking a pill instead of eating a meal and that will be going from bad to worse. Yet, we keep buying more and more RTE-meals, the analysis concludes. |
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